Note: Since the time of originally publishing this page on my pedals, I’ve done extensive re-work to my board’s configuration and you can read about it just below this paragraph. I am choosing to leave the original text on this page for historical interest. Anyway hit the two links below for the story about my updated pedal board for electric and acoustic guitar play:
Guitar pedals are smallish electronic “sound-altering” devices that can be located in the signal chain, between the guitar and the amplifier. As you can see below, there are numerous cables that connect the enterprise together creating a signal chain and quite a number of pedals that can be deployed. Pedals are commonly used to alter the signal of electric guitars and can also be used with amplified acoustic guitars, though a bit more judiciously.
At first, entering the world of pedals can be somewhat intimidating since there are many, (see above) to choose from ranging in prices, function, quality and even fashion. For example, there are a class of meticulously handmade “boutique” pedals that might draw admiration, whereas more functional devices may elicit scorn from the elitist “pederati.”
I’ve become pretty deeply involved with guitar pedals having purchased and played publicly using them… in fact, I had an article written about my board some iterations ago published in the website for Guitar Magazine. There’s a link just below:
https://guitar.com/features/gallery/mitchell-strauss-pedalboard/
Guitar pedals typically fall into three general categories and I own examples from each. The categories include:
- General utility devices, such as tuners, splitters and loopers…
- Signal modifiers, such as boost, compression, distortion and fuzz…
- Signal modulators, such as chorus, tremolo, vibrato, echo/delay and reverb…
Arrangement of pedals in the signal chain vary… some players just use one and connect it with cables between guitar and amp… Most players use more than one and may have them connected together in series in their signal chain, laying on the floor at their feet. Because they are typically foot activated, they are commonly referred to as foot pedals or stomp boxes. More organized guitarists, like myself, prefer to attach the pedals to a framework referred to as a board, where it is much easier to transport and manage them. Attachments to the board can be done with zip ties or more preferably, in my judgement, with velcro. Having a board becomes more important as the size of your collection increases, particularly if you intend to use most of them in series… The order in which and how pedals are connected to each other is a science unto itself.
Here’s its worth a note of caution… When a pedal signal chain increases in size with multiple pedals, the probability of signal loss and/or the addition of unwanted noise to the signal chain increases. If not managed the added noise which emanates from the amp can become quite obnoxious. This was a phenomenon I became aware of only after increasing the number of pedals beyond a critical mass in my sound chain and then experiencing an unwanted cacophony emanating from my amp. Those of us who use multiple pedals constantly wrestle with how the pedals should be powered to reduce signal loss and/or added extraneous noise. To whit, I use an isolated power supply attached to the underside of my board, which helps somewhat, but is not a panacea. The power supply has multiple isolated ports of differing voltage levels. The trick is to determine the power requirements of each pedal and distribute them as balanced as possible which can be quite a juggling act especially when the pedals themselves require their own specific order to be most effective.
Following is a brief description of the guitar pedals I am currently deploying in my sound chain… I start with 1) utility pedals, then follow with 2) sound modification pedals and wrap-up with 3) sound modulation devices:
Utility Pedals
I own more Boss pedals than any other brand. Boss is a Japanese company that’s actually invented many of the basic sound processing chips used by other companies, including fancy-pants boutique pedals. Boss makes solid, reliable Sherman tank-like devices. They’re not fancy, but they work and the various pedals do come with their own characteristic fun paint colors.
The Boss Chromatic Tuner TU-3 is a basic utility box. It does two things really well. When engaged you use it to tune your guitar strings. Since it’s a chromatic tuner, you can use it to tune any string to any note you wish, which is great if you use alternate tunings like I do sometimes. Secondly, when the pedal is engaged it cuts off the signal from the guitar to the amp so you can add or remove the cable from the guitar without making a bunch of obnoxious electronic noise, which keeps the dog and everyone else calm.
The Boss Loop Station RC-3 is used to record your playing so that you can listen to how you’ve played, but most importantly, the Looper can be used to record tracks that you can then replay through your amp and play along with what was previously recorded. I’ve seen skillful guitarist record multiple tracks and then play along with them.
I do not use this device as much as I should but expect to take advantage of it more in the future. Thus far I’ve laid down some rhythm tracks and played my blues pieces along with the rhythm. It’s good for developing consistent timing with your guitar play, but as I wrote earlier it can be an incredibly tool for creativity!
My final utility pedal, The Orange Amp Detonator, besides having a very cool name is an ABY Switch. It serves a basic, but important function. By activating the pedal I can easily run my guitar’s signal chain through my Fishman acoustic amp, or my Fender tube amp, or both simultaneously. If both amps are activated simultaneously and sound somewhat “off” then they may be out of phase with each other and there is a button to compensate for that.
The Detonator is equipped with color coded lights to inform me what set-up I am using. You’ll also note that this pedal is not a Boss but made by the Orange company, noted for manufacturing excellent amplifiers.
You may note the bright colored plastic “over-buttons” attached to the metal switches on the lower part of the pedal. Those are called “Candy Toppers” and help make activating the switches more comfortable by hand or foot and they look cool. Candy Toppers are after market products.
Signal Modification Pedals
For a finger-style player like me, who may have some variance in the force that is applied to the string, a compressor is a useful as it “smooths” out or enhances the sound by eliminating stray high and low frequencies, thus creating a cleaner sound. I really do prefer the cleansed sound of my electric guitars after their signal has passed through the compressor… It is rare that I do not use it.
Like all pedals, there are a bajillion versions of compressors in the marketplace. I got swept along by the guys in my guitar store to get The Jangle Box compressor, as they uniformly agreed it was the best. It was also very expensive… Though I do not typically use this element of the Jangle Box, it can be switched with a toggle to a bright setting to create a higher pitched “sizzle” sound emulating Roger McGuinn’s twelve string tones of the Byrds. In fact, for a few bucks more there was a gold painted version of the Jangle Box celebrating the 50 year anniversary of the Byrds, a band I liked but not enough to get the gold box!
My Mesa Boogie Tone Burst serves two key functions. First it’s a boost pedal, which allows me to increase the guitar’s signal volume to the amp, which is useful when using a lot of pedals in the signal chain as each pedal and the cable connections between them can sap out a bit of signal. All of my Boss pedals are equipped with buffers that serve a similar function, but it’s nice to have a boost pedal that will give a clean bump to the guitar’s signal. The other purpose of the Tone Burst is, if desired, to add some gain to the signal which can cause some amp distortion and “fatten-up” or “add dirt” to the sound of the guitar. Unlike many gain pedals, the Tone Burst is subtle in its addition of gain.
It seems to me that the preponderance of electric guitarists and pedal users love to add gain and distortion to their sound chain. It’s a very common technique in most genre’s of rock and roll music. So it’s not unusual to see rock guitarists with multiple gain and distortion pedals in series to get that grinding sound they are expected to deliver to their listeners.
To that end, I added an additional gain pedal, also manufactured by Mesa Boogie. The Flux Drive serves as a preamp and is best placed in front of the Tone Burst as it determines how much gain will be added and directed towards the amplifier to thicken the signal and add some “hair” to the output. The Tone Burst then follows and sculpts the signal to affect highs and mid-tones which are valued and ordinarily expected with electric guitar outputs.
The guitar tone I personally like is influenced by my previous experience playing acoustic guitar. I like a cleaner sound than do most of the run of the mill electric guitarists, so I am careful to limit the amount of gain I throw into my signal chain, hence the more frequent use of the subtle Tone Burst pedal alone with guitars like my Taylor T3c; however, with the Taylor Solidbody, more grind is called for to pull the best tone from the guitar and it is with that axe that I fire up the Flux Drive. By and large, the Mesa Boogie Tone Burst and Flux Drives are great pedals and two of my favorites. I like the way they looks too.
I purchased the Boss Equalizer GE-7 Pedal as a later addition to my signal chain mostly because I was in a pedal-fever and thought I needed this device, kind of, as icing on the pedal cake. Amongst my pedals it was probably the least expensive, but at this writing I am not persuaded that it was a necessary acquisition. Theoretically, the pedal can serve the purpose of sculpting sound output across seven bands of aural frequency. Supposedly it is more subtle than other available bass and treble controls on the amp or elsewhere in the signal chain.
I am not convinced it is a particularly subtle device, as small changes in the sliders can make significant tonal differences, so it must be used cautiously. Further, I’ve noticed that this pedal, particularly when raising the value on the higher frequencies, adds significant noise to the amp’s output which is highly counter-productive and annoying! So despite the fact that Josh at JHS pedals thinks an equalizer is essential, I remain dubious, and this pedal sits on a shelf making room for the above Mesa Flux Drive on my board.
Sound Modulation Pedals (the most fun to use)
The Super Octave OC-3 is one of many similar pedals in the marketplace that takes a plucked guitar tone and then synthesizes parallel tones that can be, depending on settings, octaves lower and/or higher. The Electro Harmonix POG octavers can go as high as 3 octaves above and below the played tone. While all that tone synthesizing possibility can be beguiling, the Electro Harmonix pedals are very finicky from a power supply standpoint, and unless you really know what you’ve doing, the POG’s will make you guitar sound like an organ, which is not really what an octave effect should sound like.
The octave effect created by the OC-3, the way I like to use it, is far more subtle than the POG as it only creates a tone one octave below the one played and is most pronounced with the heavier wound guitar strings. It gives the base tones a snappier, fatter, and subtle growl which can be quite appealing to the ear with both electric and acoustic guitars. It’s very easy to go off the rails with an Octave pedal and create bizarre tones, so I use it with caution.
The Super Chorus CH-1, is designed to thicken a guitar’s sound by taking its original tone as played and then modulating it so that the effect of multiple guitars emanating from the amp is created. The effect is created by splitting the original signal and altering it in pitch, timbre, slightly delaying it and then feeding it back.
The Chorus can lend a subtle acoustic sound to an electric guitar, which appeals to my sensibilities and the type of music I play; however, with four control knobs it is also easy to get shimmering or vibrato-like effects too… pushed too far the guitar can start to sound organ-like, which sounds too synthetic to me…
I’ve had a tendency to mix chorus effects in with other pedals, but I think this pedal may be most effective used on its own, or perhaps in conjunction with some octave effects.
Tremolo pedals make a very distinctive, pleasing and highly recognizable sound effect that works by varying the out put of the guitar’s volume… not to be confused with Vibrato which is a variation of pitch.
The Boss Tremolo TR-2 is a fairly simple device to control. The rate of volume change (rate), the degree of volume change (depth) and the abruptness/dissolution of the volume change (wave) are all individually controlled to the taste of the guitarist. It is a pretty essential pedal.
When I tug out or push in the handle on my Bigsby which is on my Taylor T3c electric guitar, the pitch of the tone changes because the strings are being stretched and relaxes. In other words, the strings move from sharp to flat relative to the proper tune, which makes a beguiling affect to the guitar’s sound.
The Boss Vibrato VB-2w does electronically what the Bigsby arm does. Adjustable is how frequently (rate) the pitch changes, how much the pitch (depth) changes, and the rapidity of onset and decay of pitch change (rise time). This is the only Waza Craft Boss pedal on my board. Waza Craft pedals are reintroductions of vintage original pedals with some extra fairy dust added. In this case there is a switch that adjusts the pedal from original mode to custom mode, which adds some bass response and tone sculpting.
A little bit of Vibrato goes a long way. I find that an aggressive vibrato setting is disorienting and not pleasing to my ear. In fact, the custom setting pushes the vibrato out from the range of subtle to too in your face. So, when I use this device I keep it throttled back across rate and depth and allow the pitch change to come on in a moderate time frame. Since vibrato and tremolo are similar modulation effects (but approached differently), I would not recommend using them simultaneously unless you supply your listener some dramamine.
The Echoplex pedal is one of my absolute favorites. It is a delay pedal, which makes an echo of the notes you play. The original delays, one of which was called an Echoplex, were boxed-up mechanisms much larger than a pedal and actually used tape recorders to capture the original sounds and then to play them back making for an interesting aural experience.
It’s interesting to note that the tape delays would suffer sound degradation over time as the tapes wore out and had to eventually be replaced with new tape and then the process would start all over again. My Echoplex digital pedal was designed to emulate the original Echoplex tape delay even to the point of offering a rotating knob that can be used to “age” the sound output of the pedal. I actually prefer the cleaner non-aged delay that the Echoplex offers.
The range of delay that the pedal can produce is between 4 to 750 milliseconds which is like the original tape delay and quite a range. A just noticeable echo is referred to as slap-back and I like that effect but longer delays are fun too.
I am of the opinion now that using multiple pedals all at once should be done sparingly. Too many pedals in the mix can make a real muddle and it becomes hard to discern what you are trying to accomplish. The Echoplex works well alone or in combination with the Octave and perhaps the Compressor but really no more than that.
Generally speaking, reverb is the secondary sound created when the original sound emanating from a voice or guitar bounces off the wall of a playing space and makes a somewhat degraded echo of sorts. Consequently, the reverb sound is dependent on the size and shape of the performing space as well as the substance of the walls. A reverb pedal simulates reverb echo and the Boss Reverb RV-6 offers the player multiple ways to enact the simulation. The echo of a reverb pedal is not as extreme as what can be produced by a delay pedal, although there are some obvious overlaps between the two.
The Boss Reverb RV-6 offers more than a half dozen variations of the effect though I am loath to use all of them. For example there is a setting for delay, but as discussed earlier, I have a really good Echoplex Delay so why use the RV-6’s. There’s also a “shimmer” setting which is a kind of a gimmick, sounding a bit like a flanger which is a psychedelic effect I am interested in. There are several legit choices for reverb including a Room setting and a Hall setting, both of which I use. In addition there are two settings, Plate and Spring which actually reenact older original devices that simulated reverb in the past. Plate and Spring are a little more aggressive sounding which does not appeal that much to me. All is all, a Reverb pedal is pretty essential and usually the last modulation pedal placed in the signal chain.
Other Pedal Considerations
Pedal Connections
There must be dependable connective cables between all the pedals in a signal chain, as the failure of any single cable will bring down the whole system. In the case of my signal chain there are at least eleven connections between pedals, so if one fails that is a lot of rooting around trying to sort out where the problem is.
To avoid connection failures I use the best that my local store has to offer. They are made by George L. The user purchases separately the cable and hardware and constructs them. What’s really nice is the user chooses the length of cable depending upon where the connections are to be made. The George L. components are considered excellent and limit to the extent possible sound degradation that can occur along an extensive signal path. Nevertheless, creating a perfect connection between cable and end plugs in a bit fiddly and sometimes trial and error is required before a perfect cable is constructed.
Pedal Order
As I mentioned earlier in this dissertation, pedal order in a signal chain is a science unto itself. Though guitarists find reasons for exceptions, the general order for pedals from beginning to end goes something like this:
- Utility Pedals
- Sound modification Pedals
- Sound modulation Pedals
- Utility Pedals
With that said the pedals in my current board configuration are in this order:
- Boss Tuner
- Jangle Box Compressor
- Boss Octave (though a modulator, wisdom suggests locating it early in the chain)
- Mesa Boogie Flex Drive Gain Preamp
- Mesa Boogie Tone Burst Gain and Boost
- Boss Chorus
- Boss Tremolo
- Boss Vibrato
- MXR Echoplex
- Boss Reverb
- Boss Looper
- Orange ABY Switcher