pedals

[Bbach1]

I have never tried a wah wah pedal or any other sound pedal except reverb. I have been saving myself for marriage. So what do they do exactly? I see they run from cheap to way too much. Waste of time?

[Dak Lander]

Very often.

Lots of really great players get their tone from the amp and guitar settings.

 

That being said, there can be a time and place for pedals.

 

I'll loan you my Cry Baby Wah if you're really interested. I have some things coming up that I'll be needing it on so I'll need it back. I think you know how to get ahold of me.

Sould have said something while you were out here. I'd have sent it back with you.

[Blue Strat]

What exactly is the question? Are you asking about a Wah pedal specifically, or just effect pedals in general?

 

Also, depending on the music you listen to, I'm fairly certain you've heard an effect pedal in use before. Flangers, phasers, chorus, wahs, auto-wahs, tremolo, reverb, delay, echo, ring modulator, distortion, fuzz, overdrive, etc. Lots of different effects out there to try. Check out the sound clips of the Danelectro mini-effects on the Musician's Friend website if you want to know what each effect does.

[Teahead]

Blue makes a good point, chances are you've probably coveted a pedal tone at some time or another. Dak also makes a good point, lots of players just use a well chosen guitar and amp. I would second that, no matter how great the pedal, it needs a good basic sound to shape. Start with a good amp and guitar, if you find you hit walls with just these two, then you might want to start looking into pedals.

 

It really depends what you're trying to do. You can get some great Hendrix tones with a Strat through a Plexi, but you'll get many more of them when you start adding Wah, Fuzz, Uni-vibe and Octavia!

 

Certain songs, like Voodoo Chile (slight return) and Machine Gun, demand pedal tones because that's how Jimi played them. You won't get those sounds any other way, even Jimi needed to expand his expression to communicate some of his ideas.

 

No matter how good my technique became, I couldn't "out-sustain" my Keeley Compressor, no amount of "finger magic" would reproduce the capabilities of a good delay unit, and no picking hand in the world can 'stroke' my amp like a Treble Booster does.

 

My point being, there is a pedal to bridge just about any gap that you may find in your expression. However, you shouldn't go buying "bridges" if you're not certain that you need to cross your "musical river" at that specific point. The best pedals are usually the more subtle ones, that can be used to cross "rivers" at many points.

 

Why not give us some examples of the kind of tones you're searching for? Then folks can steer you toward examples of what they consider to be suitable products.

 

Tea.

[Teahead]

By the way, click here to visit tonefrenzys soundfiles. Scroll down the page and there are a few dozen examples of various pedal types. Familiarise yourself with what they do and you're ready to start deciding what, if anything, you need.

 

Good Luck! Tea.

[Bbach1]

Hey, thanks for the advice and the links. I shall do some exploring. I still listen to a lot of 70's rock, such as Peter Frampton, and I wonder how some particular sounds are produced. And to my brother Dak, I hate to borrow equipment. I am so very picky with my own and understand that musical equipment can be prized possessions. Therefore I will politely decline and yes, I should have visited with you some more when I was down there (or over there). I was a tired little boy after 14 days away from my own bed without that familiar lump sleeping beside me. I still think a "rent a lump" business would do well for us homesick travelers.

[Teahead]

Originally posted by can't work for no one:

I still think a "rent a lump" business would do well for us homesick travelers.

I heard that you can...ahem, "rent" those kinds of ladies in lots of places!

Tea.

[The Lone Chicken]

Back in the late 70's, in my hometown of Virginia Beach, VA, when I had my '63 Fender Strat, there was a guitar player that I admired by the name of Bob Page (he played in a Christian fusion band called ISAAC--I believe that I shared about him some time ago in a thread titled "unsung guitarists" or something like that), and I remember that he got some neat sounds from the effects pedals that he used, especially from his EH "Electric Mistress" flanger. And so, in the course of wanting to emulate his sound, I invested in effects devices like the ones he used (mostly EH, which back then in VA were not all that expensive compared to other brands available at the time). As I have since grown up some (at least I like to believe that I have ), I came to realize that effects are not meant to CREATE your sound so much as they are meant to AUGMENT and EMBELISH your sound, or maybe just particular songs, depending on what you're trying to get across, what sort of aural "picture" you may be trying to paint, and what instrumentation you may be trying to emulate or "model" (I believe that's the word that is often used now in the area of sound and effects). My current setup includes an Alesis GuitarFX, which can produce just about any effect one can imagine (I especially like chorus and tape delay settings, as well as flange and phase), but I find myself more often than not going with a simpler sound--just my '03 Fender Strat and my Ibanez Toneblaster 25R amp, with just a touch of reverb--and I also find myself going with an acoustic sound more. I guess I said all that to say this: God created you to sound like YOU, not someone else, and although effects pedals can be very useful in helping to broaden and augment your sound (and sometimes they can be just plain fun to play around with), I don't believe that they're meant to "take over" or dominate your sound.

[Base]

These sound pretty good:

 

Sound Path Innovations Inc. totally new, innovative, revolutionery and at long last improved effects pedals for guitarists:

 

Time Distortion: Makes guitar solos seem longer. (Can also be achieved by w@nkers.)

 

Blame shifter: Shifts the pitch of mistakes down one octave so that the audience thinks it was the bass player.

 

Depander: Filters out popular cover songs.

 

Overjive: Makes Hootie songs sound like an Auction.

 

Active Pickups: Amplifies "signals" sent to attractive audience members.

 

Fluff Box: Filters out excessive musical substance.

 

Phaser: Phases out un-wanted band members without them knowing.

 

Low capacatance device: Makes low audience numbers appear like a full house.

 

Noise eliminator: Sprays Super Glue over the drummers arms.

 

Noise gate: Automatically shuts the mics off over the drum kit during a guitar solo.

 

Rehash: Stores and plays back your favorite riffs constantly and forever.

 

Feedback Eliminator: Drowns out "constructive criticism."

 

Band Pass Filter: Eliminates sexual advances between band members.

 

Depressor: Changes any chord to E minor.

 

Paralytic Equalizer: Makes you as good as other guitarists by injecting them with a bottle of Jack Daniels.

 

Re-mixer: Re-arranges perfectly good songs so they sound different but are exactly the same.

 

Pitch shifter: Makes the rhythm player's request for more lead work sound like he can actually play.

 

TS-1 (Talent Stretcher): All the above effects in one convenient pedal-pack.

[Thomas Wilburn]

Or my favorite pedal ever, the Stevie Ray Vaughnnabe! Every guitarist should have one.

[Guitar Geezer]

Can't Work....did not know you were Dak's Bro

 

Oh Yeah...pedals...

Got two (Since my Roland has a few built ins)

Morley Bad horsie Wah (Earlier Steve Vai model)

and Danelecto Daddio Overdrive

 

FWIW

 

LynnG

[Blue Strat]

Every guitar player should have a fuzz of some sort. Some good ones are:

 

Big Muff Pi

Fuzz Face

Fender Blender

Maestro Fuzz Tone

 

The Big Muff Pi is probably my favorite, with the Fuzz Face a close second.