Why use pedals?

Hasie

I've been playing guitar a little more than a year and half now. Most people I know of always have this selection of pedals they use.

The thing is, I can't get myself to to hand out more than 1k for a pedal just too drive my amp a little more (a boost or overdrive), and that is just one pedal. It just does not "feel" right to spend so much for a bit more overdrive and for something I might fiddle with twice a week when I feel like playing some metal.

So I am curious as to why everyone have so many pedals and if they are really worth all that money.
Are they really necessary?
Is it just to play around with and keep things interesting while learning and even if you are an advanced player?
Will the necessity for pedals maybe develop over time as I become more skilled?

???

Please discuss.

doc-phil

It's fun. And we all suffer from GAS and love getting new toys.

For my playing purposes in the context of a church band, I need effects, especially reverbs and delays.

While my amp has plenty gain, overdrive pedals offer different flavours and gain stages which is useful.

G-Man

In a live setting having individual pedals gives you more versatility and options while playing, especially for tricky songs where changing between clean and dirty is needed. Some amps have pedals for these functions but many don't.

They also look cool. ?

ezietsman

What they said.

Here's the long story.

Long ago amps didn't have 'gain' or 'drive' knobs on them. Also, pedals didn't exist. Most amps were designed to not distort the guitar sound at all but because they used valves, you could turn them loud enough to distort the sound. This is much easier to do with smaller amps than it is with more powerful amps (which didn't really exist). Lots of american blues players couldn't afford the biggest amplifiers so they used (mostly Fender) smaller amplifiers but in order to get enough volume from the amps they had to turn them up, which caused them to have a different sound. Guitar players in England (Clapton, Townsend etc) heard these recordings and wanted that sound. The sound they could get but not enough volume for the kinds of shows they were playing. This directly led to the Marshall amplification company and the JTM45, which was the loudest and dirtiest amp at the time. It was designed to be dirty and loud. Keep that in mind.

That was in the early 1960s. Fast forward another 10 or so years and guitar players everywhere wanted that dirty, and dirtier a sound. Marshall amps evolved to give more and more distortion and, because PA systems were really rubbish until the 80s, they needed lots of volume too. This is why you see rock bands with walls of Marshalls. They needed them then. Then, public address systems improved to the point where you didn't need such powerful amps anymore and indeed, people don't actually use walls of amps anymore. Maybe just 1 amp and the rest are either props or off.

The thing is THAT sound of amps on the verge of exploding, that is the sound you hear on records and live recordings from those days. We like that sound. It sounds good. Very good. That is the sound of all the valves in your amp being fed more signal than they can cleanly amplify, which leads to the distortion.

But now, we want that sound, but we can't use that volume anymore. No club owner will allow you to play your 20 watt or 40 watt amp on 10 at a gig. They will not, because it is so loud it hurts. So amplifier manufacturers started adding 'master volumes' to amps so you can get the preamp to overdrive but not the poweramp. This drastically reduces the volume of the amp but allows you to have as much overdrive as you want. The problem is, that kind of overdrive doesn't sound the same as a fully cranked up amp. You cannot take your fully distorting amp and make it clean by turning down your guitar volume knob. It just doesn't work.

This is where pedals come in. They were initially designed to push already overdriven amps to overdrive even more. But then, as amp volumes had to come down, they became more and more useful because the better ones can give you approximately that cranked amp sound but a much lower volume. Mind you, only recently, in the last 5 years or so, did you start finding pedals that will clean up and respond more like a real amp.

Today there are 1000s of pedals for every different kind of overdrive or effect you can think of, so you can have one that gives a Vox overdrive and another for Marshall overdrive and another for Mesa Boogie, in a small space on your pedal board. Then you run that stuff into a small, cheapish amp and Bob's your uncle. It is certainly a lot easier to do that than to learn to control the amplifier. Also, not everyone has an amp that can do all the sounds. My two bigger amps are both 1950s and 1960s designs that just doesn't do high gain. My HT5 does however, but it doesn't sound nearly as good as the other two. So when I want to play Iron Maiden I need to use the HT5 or I could get a pedal to help those other two along a bit.

Here's my personal thoughts on the matter.

People use them wrong. Invariably the clean and overdriven sound will be at the same volume and then the "loud" parts of the song are at the same volume as the 'quiet' bits. This sucks. It takes away the dynamics and breaks 'the fourth wall' if you will. The moment that happens you realise something is wrong, but most people don't recognise it for what it is. If you go to an orchestra performance you'll see what I mean. Changes in volume is massively important. Most bands don't care/know/try at this and it makes them suck.

Pedals don't sound like real amps. Real overdriven amps have THAT sound and they go cleaner as you play softer and go dirtier as you play harder. You control them as if they are a part of the instrument. Pedals mostly don't do that at all so the guitar becomes an input device to your pedal board and people use them as such. This leads to more suckage.

You don't need pedals. You can get away without them. I played in a band that had fast dirty/clean changes all over the place. The other guitar player used pedals and I used my single channel 18 watt amp or my HT5 on its dirty channel. I flipped between clean and dirty by turning the volume knob (Tele) or pickup selector (Les Paul) on the guitar. It works perfectly once you get fast at it. Just another skill to learn. The disadvantage of course is that you have to work the guitar's controls and the way you play to alter the sound. Another skill learned.

That all said, most people do use pedals and a lot of them do get it right and it sounds great.

Also, pedals don't cost R1k each any more. They're more expensive, but still cheaper than multiple amps.

Sjoe, that was a bit of a story, haha.

V8

doc-phil wrote: It's fun. And we all suffer from GAS and love getting new toys.

^^^ This!

I went mostly pedal-less for a few years. Just used drive & reverb from a amp. Eventually got myself a multi-fx again just to see what I was missing. The OD/distortions are awful though.

EZ has summed it up EXCELLENTLY! :applause: A good amp that breaks up with playing dynamics is a joy. And using your guitar's controls to shape that base sound it a great skill to develop.

But pedals are useful...

Delay - have to have one. From a slapback to a Edge (U2) sond to a tape echo w/flutter or a nice ping pong - so versatile - if I only had to have one pedal, it would be a quality delay. But a good 'un costs!
Reverb - If your amp doesn't have (or it's crappy).
Flanger - I like a subtle movement, especially if I'm pedalling off a open string or chugging away on a metal riff.
Wah - Umm, no explanation needed. It's the only pedal that survived the cull I had a few years ago. The ugly sounding, nasty as ****, tone sucking Crybaby bass wah. Coupled with a delay and a fuzz, I can do some stoopid ass things that I thoroughly enjoy.
Octaver - Depending on your style of music - plus it's easy to setup as a kinda pseudo synth sound, which I quite like!
Fuzz - I only use it when I kick in the Wah - a truly paint peeling tone.

And maybe a looper. Not much for live use - but jamming at home, it's more fun than you can shake a stick at.

My one dirty pedal secret is I still have a MT2 Metal Zone....stashed somewhere. ???

ezietsman

V8 wrote:
doc-phil wrote: It's fun. And we all suffer from GAS and love getting new toys.
^^^ This!

I went mostly pedal-less for a few years. Just used drive & reverb from a amp. Eventually got myself a multi-fx again just to see what I was missing. The OD/distortions are awful though.

EZ has summed it up EXCELLENTLY! :applause: A good amp that breaks up with playing dynamics is a joy. And using your guitar's controls to shape that base sound it a great skill to develop.

But pedals are useful...

Delay - have to have one. From a slapback to a Edge (U2) sond to a tape echo w/flutter or a nice ping pong - so versatile - if I only had to have one pedal, it would be a quality delay. But a good 'un costs!
Reverb - If your amp doesn't have (or it's crappy).
Flanger - I like a subtle movement, especially if I'm pedalling off a open string or chugging away on a metal riff.
Wah - Umm, no explanation needed. It's the only pedal that survived the cull I had a few years ago. The ugly sounding, nasty as ****, tone sucking Crybaby bass wah. Coupled with a delay and a fuzz, I can do some stoopid ass things that I thoroughly enjoy.
Octaver - Depending on your style of music - plus it's easy to setup as a kinda pseudo synth sound, which I quite like!
Fuzz - I only use it when I kick in the Wah - a truly paint peeling tone.

And maybe a looper. Not much for live use - but jamming at home, it's more fun than you can shake a stick at.

My one dirty pedal secret is I still have a MT2 Metal Zone....stashed somewhere. ???

I should have added that I was only talking about distortion / overdrive pedals. Effects pedals are a must have, if that's your game. I find that the only effect I routinely like is reverb, but not enough to keep a reverb pedal around. I have a delay pedal that is going nowhere, that will be used instead of reverb but I mostly only play with dry amps. Go figure. Guitar -> cable -> amp then there aren't any distractions ?

V8

ez wrote: I should have added that I was only talking about distortion / overdrive pedals. Effects pedals are a must have, if that's your game. I find that the only effect I routinely like is reverb, but not enough to keep a reverb pedal around. I have a delay pedal that is going nowhere, that will be used instead of reverb but I mostly only play with dry amps. Go figure. Guitar -> cable -> amp then there aren't any distractions ?

Heh, I saw your post pop up while I was composing mine and you nailed the drive description (I figured that you were talking specifically about drive pedals), so I had to edit mine!

I should add that the ones I listed are what I've enjoyed, it's such a personal thing and based on what style of music you play it'll vary.

But a Delay is pretty common to most genre's and I definitely missed not having one - especially something you can setup with multiple patches, like one of the Nova's or a flashback x4's. A patch for 'verb-y blues, one for psychedlic ping pong delay's, another for metal-y solo's.

Hasie

ez wrote: I should have added that I was only talking about distortion / overdrive pedals. Effects pedals are a must have, if that's your game. I find that the only effect I routinely like is reverb, but not enough to keep a reverb pedal around. I have a delay pedal that is going nowhere, that will be used instead of reverb but I mostly only play with dry amps. Go figure. Guitar -> cable -> amp then there aren't any distractions ?

Thanks. At this moment I have an Ibanez RG1550FM into a HT5R. I like the simplicity of no pedals - I think it helps me focus more on my actual playing. And I like the way I can control the volume on the clean channel and the overdrive on the gain channel with just the volume knob of the guitar and using dynamics - this also helps me express myself better on the acoustic.

MIKA-the-better-one

Without sounding like a dick, you hve been playing a year and a half you said, or call it two years. Most likely at this point you are still flushing out the basics of guitar and honestly pedals are not for you. Some people never.
A wise producer/ engineer once said "if you don't get it then its not for you" So thats probably applicable. At 2 -5 years I had no real concept of a pedal.

BUT, most songs you hear get there sound via a pedal of some sort. Its a way to customize your tone to you as a player as you define it with years of playing. Some players build there whole sound from pedals, some need one or two. Some use them to inspire and some to challenge.

Its like asking a painter why he cant just paint with basic colors and not shades of that color. 1000 rand is cheap for a pedal. I know guys this side of the world spending $1000 like its nothing on pedals. TO some it may sound like nothing but to a player its everything and that inspires the confidence in performance.

Nitebob

The never ending quest for tone! First time I played electric in a P & W band was with a Crafter hybrid with a soapbar pickup (and a piezzo under the saddle) through a Marhall 30DFX amp. Loved the tone, but wanted more flexibility, enter the stratocaster with three pickup settings....

Moved to CT and joined another band..."sorry, no amps" So I bought a Boss BD2. Great pedal with a sweet tone, but without reverb and chorus....

Point is, you want to get creative and have your own sound, or fill your sound better.

These days I play more acoustic, and even thats going through the TC Helicon Play Acoustic, has the Body Res, HOF Reverb and Corona Chorus built in...the hunt for a pitch shifter and (maybe) Delay pedal is now on...

It never stops! ???

singemonkey

Naturally I'm with EZ. Your basic guitar tone should not come from a pedal. It should come from the amplifier. That's the soundbox of an electric guitar. Electric guitars sound their best when their tone comes from an amplifier - not from a preamp (either on-board or off-board; a drive pedal is just an external preamp). But this doesn't make me anti-pedals.

It just makes me anti-drive pedals. I don't use *effects* pedals to create my guitar tone. I use them for special effects. What a concept, eh?

So while I don't like or use drive pedals, I looooove fuzz pedals. A fuzz pedal totally changes the character of your sound. And almost every one does it noticeably differently. The idea is not to create a good guitar tone. It's to make the guitar sound weird for effect. Sometimes it sounds good, but that's not even necessary. It must just stand out and work in context.

The same is true of every other effect with the exception perhaps of reverb. That's the only effect I'll ever just leave on for a whole gig.

It's about hooks, people. You put in melodic hooks in your song. Rhythmic ones. Lyrical ones. And special guitar effects you put in for the same reason. In the middle of that song, the guitar solo is graunchy wah, and then it's gone. Something surprising, and fun, and most of all, memorable. You start a song with the arpeggiated chords with a fat tremolo wobble. Or that lick is mad, bubbling, octave-fuzz.

This was why effects were invented - in order to make people's songs stand out in the crazy competitive song-writing market in the 1960s. For me that's still their main purpose - not to make you sound like X. Use everything sparingly and it'll make your stuff more memorable and more fun to listen to. Use multiple effects on every guitar line, and that disappears.

If the notion of special effects sounds too whacky for you, then maybe you should can the whole thing - as many great guitar players have done - and focus on getting a truly responsive amplifier that enhances the sound of your playing. Well, you should do that anyway.

singemonkey

MIKA the better one wrote: Without sounding like a dick, you hve been playing a year and a half you said, or call it two years. Most likely at this point you are still flushing out the basics of guitar and honestly pedals are not for you. Some people never.

This is why I advised people in my "first gear" thread to avoid spending money on effects when they're starting out. You need to figure out the guitar, and effects are a big distraction. You start trying to 'play' the effects instead of the guitar.

Hasie

This is all some great information. Enjoying it. ?

Sakkie

I have a small BOSS bass combo pedal.

I use the built-in tuner and the compression effect which is always engaged, because I have &^@!#$ technique.

Also, pedals look cool.

ezietsman

Pedals only look cool to the one standing in front of the board. Nobody else can see them usually. They're kinda opposite to guitars, where the audience can see your guitar and will see it looks cool or not, but you yourself don't really see or notice the looks of your own guitar. Same with your amp. Pedals however, you see them but nobody else. So the way they look is not important.

Eujean

singemonkey wrote: Lyrical ones.

Let's be honest, lyrics are those things in between solos... ?

V8

ez wrote: Pedals only look cool to the one standing in front of the board. Nobody else can see them usually.

Unless you are a player yourself, then you notice everything. Not that aesthetics are important to me, either guitar, amp or pedals... but I once heard a funk wah bass tone so sweet - during the break I went over and inspected his floor board. Actually I drooled over it. :-[

Super cool guy, over a beer, we chatted about how he put it together and used it. Was a good nite out.

MIKA-the-better-one

The guitarist here uses a clean or semi clean level and builds his pedals off that.... Loops , Octaves, Overdrive Reverbs... SWEETNESS all inspired by pedals.

AND

ChrisDanger

Maybe watch some rig rundowns of guitarists you like to see how they get their live sounds.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=rig+rundown

You might have to dig a bit. Sometimes they interview the techs, but the artists will play and go through how they set the pedals and the sounds they make. Just scan the preview to skip to the sections on pedals.

psyx

You guys are all overlooking the sweet chorus effect ?

I don't play live, but for me pedals are a little unnecessary. Guitar, cable, amp. HOWEVER, some effects like delay, chorus and most fuzzes can't really be done by any proper amp. So for particular applications you need pedals in your arsenal.
Then there is the power of the tube screamer... Mid humped OD can do wonders for your tone, especially high gain. It tightens up your tone and helps you cut through the mix quite well.