I’ve given up playing keys in the band, and that leaves me a couple of pedals that I can use for something else now. What should I use them for?
I currently have real time control over volume, echo level, reverb level, and wah. I’m thinking I can use one for fading in a harmony (usually 8va, but sometimes I do 8va + octave & 1/5 to give a nice feedbacky sound). Still need one more.
It depends on the music, I suppose. In my days of playing live, I’ve pretty much adjusted everything on the fly. But as far as using pedals is concerned, I mostly used a volume pedal for swells and pad like sounds and a wah pedal. Those were the only sound characteristics I actually changed WHILE I was playing. Sometimes, changing the delay time on an infinite delay pedal while it’s processing a signal can bring some interesting results.
All I ever used was a distortion pedal, an EQ pedal (to punch up solos) and an occasional wah. My advice is not to get too caught up in effects. That just becomes an endless distraction. In my opinion, you should worry about the actual musical material, not the gear. Really good material (and musical ability) is effective whether you use effects are not. I write all my songs on nothing but an accoustic guitar. If the song can’t hold up on an accoustic, then electronic effects will just be artificial life support.
I’m a fogie, though. All I need is an axe and a stack and I’m happy. I never liked all those MIDI racks and shit. In my experience, the more effects people use, the more obsessed and distracted they get with mapping and tweaking the shit out of every song and solo. I actually think they’re a crutch and oftn the sign of a weak musician. Really good guitarists can just plug in and jam through anything. I never saw a really good guitarist who was particularly concerned about effects.
I’m in the same boat as **BigShooter **and **Diogenes **- I try to minimize my pedal usage. Now, I ride the Volume and Tone controls on my guitars constantly, but that is a different topic altogether…
If I can ask a slight hijack question, what is the difference between feedback and distortion? (Yeah, I tried Googling it, but that didn’t work for me). Thanks.
Feedback is sound from the speakers being picked up by a microphone or pickup and being reamplified. Distortion is the gritty or grungy sound that comes about when an amplifying system is overloaded in some way. WordMan will be along to explain this better, I’m sure.
And for another hijack, while I agree that great players can make great sounds without effects, the idea that great players actually eschew effects or complicated rigs is not realistic. I’m sure that there are examples of great players with few or no effects (EVH comes to mind), but lots of great players use lots of effects, e.g. Eric Johnson.
And finally, to the OP, what effects do you have available that will accept a control pedal?
Without getting into the causes, Feedback is that piercing, high-pitched hum that you hear sometimes at loud volumes. Distortion is the fuzz tone – the “crunchy” guitar sound.
**Crotalus **- thanks for the reminder. NCUN, did you see this threadon an effects pedal book I reviewed? And also - I agree with your (Crotalus’) take on pedals; for folks who can integrate them into their rig and their tone in a seamless way, I have endless respect for - I just can’t do it and have stayed Old School. And, by the way, don’t kid yourself - EVH is a huge pedal freak. He has more old MXR Phase boxes and other effects than you can shake a stick at. Now - they have all been heavily modded - or at least, so the legend goes - just like his amps. And, true to your point, Eddie’s tone is much more about his hands and technique than any stinkin’ effects pedal - but he is a big-time user…
And again, to the OP, so far you’ve had some dinosaurs in here who really can’t help much with your pedal choices. I use some effects, but I only adjust tone and volume during a song. My chorus and compressor are set at the beginning of a gig and then turned on and off as needed. I use an equalizer the same way Diogenes does, as a booster for solos. I have a digital delay which has four different custom delays saved in it which I can select among on the fly, and I sometimes do that. I select between the clean and overdrive channel on my amp. That’s all I do.
And WordMan, thanks for the scoop on Eddie. I for some reason thought he was one of those guitar/cable/amp dudes.
I guess I’m one of the dinosaurs. I like to make my strat sound like a freakin’ T-Rex, baby.
I don’t use pedals anymore, as all my effects are onboard. But even when I did, distortion and delay were my meat and potatoes. Flange or phasing were just occasional. I never adjust them in real time. But like WordMan, I’m constantly fussing with the switches and knobs on the instrument.
major pedal user here…
One parameter I adjust in real time is the sweep or rotation speed on my Rotovibe. A Rotovibe is a Leslie rotating-speaker-simulator pedal. It’s an expression pedal (like a wah), and the lever changes the speed of the effect. It has a chorus setting too, where you can change the chorus speed with the expression lever.
One perameter I’d like to change while playing is delay length. I’ll occasionally tweak the delay length on my digital delay to change the length of the sample. But what I’d like is a multi-tap delay pedal, where you tap the rhythm on the pedal, and it sets the appropriate delay length - that will then be in time with the rhythm. Since the pedal has an infinite-repeat mode, I’ll also change the delay length while it’s playing and loopign, to give a tape speeding-up/slowing-down kinda effect.
I’ll also occasionally change the rate on my phaser. But that’s usually set per song, and not changed during the song.
In case you don’t know already you can do that with a Lexicon JamMan if you can find one. Or Digitech came out with a reissue stomp box version. Looks like a gas. If you have 300 bucks.
Effects? On the fly? Do I look like Robert Fripp over here? Plug in, crank up, rock out. 
Oh - another EVH anecdote - apparently he loves Steinberger guitars - the headstockless wonders that came with a “trans-trem” - a whammy that apparently keeps the strings in relative tune or something when you depress the bar (as I have indicated, I am not Mr. Effects). I remember reading an interview when Diamond Dave rejoined them for two new songs on a greatest hits CD - Eddie used the trans-trem on the fly in one of the songs (“Magic” something?) which sounded really cool…
Coming back to this thread, **Dio **- I gotta push back on this one a bit. Again - I approach effects the way that you do, so I am not trying to defend my position or anything. But I gotta disagree with this - without thinking, off the top of my head, I come up with **Tom Morello **of Rage Against the Machine, **Adrian Belew **of Zappa, King Crimson, Talking Heads and solo work, **The Edge **of U2 and Andy Summers of the Police - each have a signature tone / guitar approach *driven *by use of effects pedals and each is very, very well respected as guitarist. There are dozens of other respected players who may not be as overt in their use of effects, but live by them - again, look at **EVH **(constant phase shifting on the first few albums; known for his pioneering work with Bob Bradshaw, the guy who made rack-mounted, multi-effect rigs before POD’s came out), **Mark Knoplfer **and his signature Strat quack + chorus tone, **Brian Setzer **with rockabilly slapback echo and a bit of compression…
You get the idea. So I am okay with the basic point of your post, but disagree with your absolute assertion - thoughts?
WordMan - Obviously I’m with you on this one (see my post #6 above) but I lack your knowledge of what rigs people actually use. I’ve done a bit of browsing on the Guitar Geek site, which has some pretty detailed stuff about a lot of pro rigs. The info appears to be gathered from talking and emailing guitar techs, and from magazine interviews.
I’m old enough and took binoculars to concerts often enough to know that some of my favorite guitarists in the 60s and early 70s played with little (Hendrix, Clapton, Page, Justin Hayward, ) to no (Martin Barre, Townshend) help from pedals. I can’t recall being at many concerts in the past twenty years where the guitarist didn’t have a major pedal array at his feet.
Since the OP appears to have abandoned his own thread, I feel free to continue this little hijack, this one with a bit of personal experience with effects at the professional level. From the late 80s until 2000, I played lead guitar in a cover band which made great money playing the country club and wedding reception circuit in Maryland and southern Pennsylvania. While this was not the artistic highlight of my forty years of playing for pay, it was the financial highlight. For that gig, I needed whatever pedals it took to sound like the original recording, because that’s what those good folks were paying for.
I also thought of another player who used a ton of effects in his prime: isn’t Steve Lukather considered a pretty good player?
On one hand Luke is considered a top player - he is a legendary session player who played on hundreds of hits we all know alongside being part of Toto. In terms of sheer professionalism as a studio ace and the money he made as a gun for hire, he is deeply respected. On the other hand, he is considered one of the guys who pioneered the over-processed 80’s tone that ultimately drove many guitarists (including me) back to more retro gear. He still uses EMG pickups (like Zakk Wylde of Ozzy and Black Label Society) which deliver a high-output, definitely not Old School tone. So yeah, he is respected and yes he is a huge effects guy, but not quite in the same way as the guys I mentioned in my post…
ETA: and yes, Crotalus, I agree - some folks are known for plugging straight in, but most of us need an effect or two in order to cover songs. I hate 'em, but have a boost for leads, a delay for U2 and other songs, and a compressor for jangly stuff…
I never tried to do straight covers for largely that reason. I did “versions,” not straight copies.
Speaking of Zakk Wylde, there’s a guy who’s rig consists of a Les Paul and a Marshall stack and not much else.
I’m digging like mad right now for a cite on this, but one of the reasons that you might not see a huge pedal array in front of a guy when he’s playing live is because his guitar tech is working the effects for him in the background so that the player is able to do more stage antics. I know from reading that Dimebag from Pantera did this all the time. He just kept a few pedals of his own, but much of his live effect processing was handled by his tech off stage.