Distortion Pedal

Distortion Pedal

Guitar Effects Pedals Explained

So, let's say you have been playing your electric guitar for awhile and haven't quite figured out how to sound like your favourite band. You know how to play all their songs, but the guitar just doesn't sound right. You've heard about effects pedals, but you have never used one. Could one of these pedals be the answer to all your questions? The answer is yes--and no! An individual effect pedal may produce one of a thousand different sounds, and it's up to you to decide which ones are adequate insofar as what you're trying to achieve musically.

To begin, you'll need to go to a music store and see what's available and try out different effects pedals to hear for yourself the sounds they produce. A number of distortion pedals, for example, are on the market, and they produce sounds decidedly most appropriate for metal, punk, grunge, blues overdrive, or any number of different styles. Each one is activated by stepping on it while one plays. It remains on until one steps on it once again to turn it off. If your amp's distortion channel just doesn't give you the sound you want, it may be worth trying out a distortion pedal or two. Other pedals operate the same way--that is--they are activated by stepping on the pedal one time and deactivated by stepping on the pedal again. Digital delay effects, which allow repetitions of the last note played, and chorus effects, which provide a smooth element to one's clean channel, are popular pedals that follow this operation.

Not all pedals, however, are used in the same fashion. Wah pedals, like the popular Crybaby pedal, are used by first stepping all the way down on the pedal to activate a switch and then gently rocking the pedal back and forth as the "wah" effect increases and diminishes to one's liking. Volume pedals operate similarly. One can rock the pedal to one position to decrease volume gradually or all at once. Another pedal that rocks back and forth is the whammy pedal, which simulates the use of a whammy bar for electric guitars that do not come equipped with them and for those players who don't want to knock their guitars out of tune by using an actual whammy bar.

Another option that one should take a look at when browsing through the effects pedal selection at the music store are multi-effect pedals. Several brands manufacture effects pedal boards that provide lots of different effects in one unit. While such products are usually more expensive than an individual pedal that performs one function, they can be a more economical choice since for one price one can set several effects before one's feet. Many offer both distortion pedal-style, single-tap pedal action as well as a rocking pedal for wah, volume, or whammy effects. It's important to keep in mind, however, that multi-effect pedal boards have a reputation for providing inferior quality to those of individual pedals.

Can I use a distortion pedal trough a power amp?

Can I only use my distortion pedal with a power amp?
Guitar ---> distortion pedal(metal muff) ---> power amp

If not, then can I use a multi effects pedal, like a line6 POD?
But my amp doesn't have an output, what can I do?

Okay, I'm a little confused. A power amp is usually a rackmount unit that accepts a line level plugin and has outputs for powering speakers. A guitar amp is actually a combination of a preamp and a power amp, and if it's a combo, speakers too.

So if you don't have an output.... then what do you have?

First, if it *is* a power amp and you just haven't seen the speaker outs (or are talking about some other kind of outs), then what you should know is that power amps have a flat frequency response - what comes in is basically what comes out, just much louder. Usually the speakers they plug in to are relatively flat too... at least compared to guitar amp speakers.

Guitar speakers have a roll-off on the top end, ie, the highest frequencies get chopped off. This is because when you amplify and distort a signal you generate a lot of (usually very nasty) noise in your upper frequencies. The easiest solution is to use a speaker that rolls those off, leaving us with a nice smooth sound.

Speakers used for sound reinforcement and home entertainment and music reproduction are called full-range, full-spectrum, flat response, etc, meaning that they try to reproduce all frequencies. What this means is that if you put an unprocessed guitar signal into them, you'll hear a lot of nasty noise. You'll need to process your signal with something that will emulate that speaker... either a speaker emulator, or a multifx pedal or processor that does the same basic idea.

Accordingly, multifx processors tend to sound very good when used with these types of amps and speakers - Line 6 POD's, for instance.

You can run your distortion pedal into something like a POD, then into a power amp, sure. That will give you the distortion sound you want, the processing necessary to sound like it's coming from an actual guitar speaker/amp, and then on to the power amp.

If you have some other configuration, then ... well, I dunno. I could throw random stuff out there, but it won't necessarily help you.

If you do have a guitar amp, and you're talking about plugging into the fx return in the fx loop, so that you bypass the preamp and go straight to the power amp, then sure, you can try doing that. Again, though, part of what the preamp does is shape your tone - including rounding off some of those high frequencies. Sometimes with certain pedals it makes things muddier, sometimes it's better to go straight to the power amp, sometimes its not.... really depends on the amp and on the pedals.

I was actually messing around with this yesterday... Plugging into the input jack on my Crate Power Block versus plugging into the line in jack, which bypasses the preamp. I have a preamp installed in the guitar, so I have the juice to do that, and I was pleasantly surprised that the sound was still pretty decent - the Crate is actually a fairly "transparent" amplifier, with minimal coloring, as long as you don't push it too hard (then it starts to sound like poo).

Hope this helped!

Saul