Pedals – Tone Quest

Intro to Pedals Part 5: Signal Chain

Effective pedal order is a subject that used to be treated as a great mystery, as though the correct signal path for each guitarist can only be known by them exclusively, and even then only after some kind of mystical revelation.

That’s absolute rubbish of course. People have been experimenting with their signal chains for decades now, common results have been documented, and a rough idea of best practice has been arrived at. In this post we’ll go over what that “best practice” looks like, why it works the way it does, and help you decide if, when, and how to “break the rules” so to speak.

Let’s get into it.

Standard Practice

Pitch

First of all, anything that needs to track the pitch of your guitar should get the cleanest, most unadulterated signal that it can if you want it to have a sporting chance of doing its job properly. By this I’m referring to your tuner, pitch shifters like the Digitech Drop and Whammy, and perhaps even octave pedals.

Gain

After that, it’s a good idea to have your drive section towards the start of the chain. This includes fuzz, overdrive, boost, and distortion.

Drive pedals typically define your EQ and gain level, which form the core, fundamental part of your tone. From that perspective it makes sense to establish this first before letting other pedals do freaky things with your core tone later in the chain.

Putting drive pedals after other pedals can radically change the way they sound. There are definitely situations where that can sound cool, but we’ll cover those later. For now let’s keep things fairly simple and vanilla.

Modulation

Next in the chain would be modulation pedals. This is the wobbly stuff:

Vibrato (modulates your pitch up and down rhythmically)
Chorus (splits your signal in two and applies vibrato to one of them)
Phaser (splits your signal in two and moves them in and out of phase with each other)
Flanger (splits your signal in two and adds a subtle delay to one of them, creating a swooshing effect)
Tremolo (modulates your volume up and down, creating a shimmery or choppy sound).

Modulation pedals add character and create a sense of movement to the core tone you established in your drive section.

Time

After modulation we deal with time and space via delay and reverb. The idea of these is to take your whole signal and make it sound like it’s echoing back from or reverberating off the walls of a large space. For that reason you might want to send all of your effects into these.

The Fight for Last Place

Given that tremolo works by rhythmically dropping your volume, it’s possible that reverb tails or delay repeats which fall in that otherwise silent space might counteract the feel of it. For this reason, some people like to put tremolo at the end of their chain.

Then again, putting tremolo after delay creates the possibility of that silence coinciding with delay repeats, making it feel as though the delay isn’t turned on at all. The other possibility is your dry signal being silenced by the tremolo and only allowing the repeats through. The most likely scenario would be a mess of both. Best to experiment if you want to use delay and tremolo at the same time.

The Fight for First Place

For all their tough-guy image, some fuzz pedals can be total princesses about their input impedance. This means if they’re not the very first pedal in your chain they can behave like a spoilt brat.

Wah pedals typically go before your drive section to function properly, so if you have temperamental fuzz, you might have some experimenting and prioritising ahead of you. You’re in for a real headache if you have a fussy fuzz, a wah pedal, and a pitch-based effect that you intend on using at the same time.

The big picture looks something like this:
Pitch – Gain – Modulation – Time

I’ve seen some people on guitar forums post the chart below from Roland, stating that it’s all you need to know on the subject of signal chain. As we’ve just seen though, it’s not that simple.

There are a few issues that make it not terribly helpful for new guitarists trying to get their heads around signal chain issues:

It makes no attempt to include a fuzz
It does not tackle the tremolo dilemma
It includes a Metal Zone. Honestly, what kind of message are they trying to send to new guitarists? What’s next? Handing out crack at a kindergarten?

Gain Stacking

Hopefully you’ve now got a decent idea of standard practice for the order of most pedal types. Within your drive section though, you might have a bunch of different types of gain pedals. Let’s have a look at how you might want to order them.

Just in case your fuzz pedal is the sort of entitled infant that will throw a hissy fit if it’s not first in line, we’re going to give it what it wants: Fuzz first.

^{Of course you love your Fuzz. It’s ok to feel sick of its bullshit from time to time.}

From there though, you need to consider what you want your drive pedals to do.

If you want one pedal to provide a volume lift for another, you would place the heavier gain pedal first and the lighter gain pedal second. Order your drives from heaviest to lightest to get a big, high headroom drive sound.

If you want one pedal to add more distortion to another, you would place the lighter gain pedal before the heavier one. Order your drives from lightest to heaviest to end up with a chain of cascading nastiness.

Breaking the Rules

The number one piece of advice handed out to people who ask about pedal order is to “try it out for yourself”. Fortunately for you I’m not a complete asshole, and I acknowledge what a pain it can be to completely re-route your pedal board just to see what will happen. In this next part I’m going to try to explain the most likely outcome should you stray from standard practice.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t experiment. No one’s going to call the cops if you put your reverb first in your chain and your fuzz pedal last. There’s a pretty good chance you won’t enjoy the outcome, but you are of course free to do what you want. Experimenting and listening will no doubt give you a much better perspective than reading about it in a blog post.

Gain after Modulation

Placing drive after another kind of pedal will take its signal and compress it, smoothing it out and making it more consistent. With modulation, that kind of defeats the purpose.

Then again, maybe you have a modulation pedal that’s a little bit drastic for your tastes. Putting a subtle overdrive after it could tame it nicely. This would be a sensible reason to put drive after modulation.

Having said that, putting a killer high-gain metal distortion after modulation probably won’t be as kick-ass as you’re hoping. The distortion would sound more impressive with a clean signal going into it, and would only work to minimise and muddy-up the modulation.

Gain after Delay

Delay repeats typically decay or get quieter as they go on. If you put a drive pedal after it though, the compression will interfere with that decay. Repeats will continue for longer and potentially crash into each other. It’s a big, chaotic noise that might be fun to play with, but not what most folks have in mind when they reach for a delay pedal.

A slap back delay (one repeat with an extremely short delay time) can work either side of a drive without issue.

Gain after Reverb

Similar to the issue with repeat decay in delay pedals, putting a drive pedal after reverb will make the reverb tails carry on longer and create a big, chaotic noise. Again, fun to play with, but practically unusable unless you’re in a shoe-gazer band or avant garde noise act.

Using the Effects Loop

If your amp is already breaking up without the use of drive pedals, then your amp is acting like an overdrive pedal at the end of your chain. If you’ve taken anything from this article so far you’ll know this could be problematic.

While there’s probably a whole article I could write about how amps work, for now let’s just look at the two main parts: the pre amp and the power amp.

The pre amp sets the gain and EQ of your signal before handing it over to the power amp, which makes the whole thing louder. It’s the pre amp which is likely causing your amp to overdrive.

An effects loop lets you plug a few pedals between your pre amp and power amp. If you use your pre amp for your drive sounds, you can still maintain your signal chain by putting your modulation, delay, and reverb pedals in the loop.

What about a Phrase Looper?

There’s often confusion about where to put a loop pedal. These typically go at the end of your chain before your amp so they can catch everything, but again, you don’t have to do what everyone else does. Just remember that it will record anything you put in front of it, and its playback will be affected by anything you put after it.

Where Do I Put My EQ Pedal?

Put your EQ pedal wherever you feel the EQ correction needs to be made. If you’re trying to counteract a tonal quality of a specific pedal (like put some mids back in if you’re using a Muff, or bottom end if you’re using a Tube Screamer) put the EQ immediately after the pedal in question.

EQs can be fun to play with in your drive section. Just turning the level up can make it work like a boost. Cranking a specific frequency before sending your signal into a drive pedal will make that frequency overdrive more.

That’s All For Now

Hopefully that should cover most of the common questions that pop up around all things signal chain.

If I could impart any advice on the subject it would be to have a clear idea in mind about what you want to achieve before you start plugging things in, to save a lot of mucking around. Also, having said that, feel free to experiment and let your ears guide you.

Oh, and if you see this guy lurking around outside your school trying to sell Metal Zones: JUST SAY NO!

Intro to Pedals Part 4: Pedal boards

By now you’ve probably got a few pedals and have a fair idea of how to power them effectively. Let’s look at how to hook them all up together on a pedal board.

Why Should I Bother?

The point of mounting your pedals on a board is to keep them together in a manner that’s accessible for your feet, portable, doesn’t take up too much space on stage and is lightning fast to set up for a gig. There are a few different ways to do this, but the most common method involves a slotted pedal board specifically angled to keep your power supply and cable runs underneath and out of the way.

You can easily invest a lot of time and money getting it all perfect, but you need not do this to be a “pro”. Consider Eric Johnson’s pedal board for a moment. He has one of the most sought after guitar tones in the world and plays like a beast. When he takes his pedals on tour, they’re taped to a panel of particle board any-which-way, with cable runs all over the place. It’s a hot mess akin to Homer Simpson’s failed BBQ pit, and yet no one could possibly argue that it doesn’t do the job.

Clearly a tidy and efficient pedal board isn’t a pre-requisite for being a pro. Perhaps Eric Johnson is just so damn good that he can successfully work with a rig that looks like a pedal-eating monster threw up on the stage. The rest of us rookies need all the help we can get, so let’s look at how we can get things in order.

The Board

Oddly enough most pedal boards more closely resemble welded together frames than boards. The point of this is to enable you to poke your cable runs underneath and keep them out of the way.

You’ll see some that are raised at the back to angle the whole thing towards the player. This provides better access to the pedals at the back of the board if you have more than one row, and also allows you to secure your power supply underneath.

There are heaps of commercially available pedal boards on the market, catering to a wide range of budgets and rigs. Pedaltrain is one of the more expensive options, but would be considered the industry standard.

Before diving in and buying a pedal board, consider your needs. Lay all your pedals out as they would be on a board, and then measure to see what size board you should get. I’d advise you to go a bit bigger than your current requirements, as two things are almost certain:

They won’t fit on like you think they will
You’re going to get more pedals. Don’t bother arguing with me, we both know it’s going to happen.

If you’re on a tight budget, do a quick search on “Hejne pedalboard” or “Gorm pedalboard”. Ikea makes a shelving unit which used to be called Gorm, but has recently changed name to Hejne. The shelves themselves are sold separately at such a low cost they may as well be free, and there is a long standing tradition of DIY guitarists repurposing these for pedal boards.

Safety Tip:
The floor might seem like an obvious place to work on your pedal board, as that’s where it would normally live. Bear in mind though that assembling a pedal board takes time and requires the use of your hands, not your feet. Use a table or a bench while you’re putting it all together. Your knees and back will thank you for it.

Attaching The Pedals

Velcro/Hook & Loop Tape

You’ll need to attach your pedals to the board somehow, and the most common way is with Velcro. It’s worth noting that when you choose a roll of Velcro to buy, if you see words like “heavy duty” or “extra strength”, this refers to the strength of the adhesive backing. The bond between hook and loop will be pretty much the same no matter what you buy.

The convention here is to put the loop side (the soft, fuzzy side) on your board and the hook side (with the stiff, spikey bits) on the bottom of your pedals. The world won’t end if you do it the other way around, but there are a few good reasons to do this.

If you use your pedals off the board, the hook side will provide more traction on carpet
Most of the pedal-using community do it this way. If you swap or buy second hand pedals and have the hook side on your board, your newly acquired pedals (also with hook side already on them) won’t stick to your board.
Doing it the same way every time means not having to stop and think about which bit goes on the bottom of the pedal every time you buy a new one.

It’s good practice to cover your whole board in Velcro instead of putting little pedal shaped patches down here and there. This gives you the freedom to move your pedals around on the board wherever you want. Also, if you only use a little bit of loop on the board, when you remove the pedal you’ll likely unstick the loop side with it.

You want as much of your board to be covered in Velcro as possible, so cut your strip a bit longer than you need, then trim it back once it’s on your board. This will prevent you from coming up short.

When you put the loop side on your board, peel back only a little bit of the backing paper, stick the small patch of exposed Velcro down and then slowly peel more back, sticking a little bit down at a time. You’ll have a better chance of keeping it straight and not bunching it up or getting bubbles than if you peel all the backing off to begin with and stick the whole thing down in one hit.

When you put the hook side on your pedals you might notice there’s not much room for Velcro. Don’t worry if you can’t cover the whole base of the pedal, a little bit of hook tape will do.

If your pedal has feet or risers preventing it from sitting flat on your board, you can unscrew them and keep them in a safe place. I’ve discovered that the feet of a Cry Baby wah will fit between the slats of a Hejne shelf, so if you use one of those for a pedal board, you don’t have to unscrew the feet off your wah.

Most Boss pedals (and pedals like them) have symmetrical base plates. This means you can take them off and put them back on inside out. The Velcro then goes on a flat surface and the label gets preserved inside the pedal.

Alternatives

If you want something to hold onto your pedals a bit better than Velcro, there are a few other options. The first thing I’d recommend is psychiatric help. Seriously, Velcro is fine. Your pedals won’t fall off, and you can easily swap them out or reposition them without fuss. If you insist on being inconvenienced every time you move a pedal, here are a few other things to look into:

3M Dual Lock

Dual Lock is a lot like Velcro, except instead of a hook side and a loop side, both sides are identical. It’s a network of interlocking mushroom shaped knobs, which when stuck together are almost impossible to separate. Almost. I’ve heard a regular butter knife and an up-to-date lexicon of curse words can help to separate board from pedal when you use this stuff.

I haven’t tested this myself, but apparently if you get a pedal that already has hook side Velcro on it, this will stick to the dual lock on your board as though there was dual lock on the pedal as well. Yet another reason to put the hook side on your pedal and not on your board.

Cable Ties

While using dual lock might seem a bit over the top, it’s something you’ll find professional international touring musicians doing. One of the more ghetto over-the-top solutions is the use of cable ties.

There’s a real art to getting the cable ties on without them getting in the way of jacks or knobs. If it turns out you’ve put your pedal in the wrong spot, you’ll have to cut the ties off, bin them, and start again with new ones. This approach is as neat as it is fun and practical.

Bike Chain

The side of a bike chain link forms a figure 8. One hole of this figure 8 gets screwed up into the base plate of your pedal. The other sticks out to the side so you can screw it down onto your board.

This method brings with it all the joy of disassembling a bike chain and needing to reach for a screw driver and a drill any time you want to move a pedal. On the plus side, those pedals aren’t going to move or fall off your board any time soon, and it can look fairly neat.

Connecting your pedals

Next you’ll need to connect your pedals up to each other. I’d recommend using patch cables instead of solid couplers.

What’s Wrong With Solid Couplers?

For starters, most pedals have their jack sockets in different positions. Those which do actually line up will also tend to have their sides slope in on an angle (the top of pedal is slightly smaller than the base of the pedal). This means that a jack plug is going to extend out of the socket at not-quite-90-degrees. Pedals joined with solid couplers won’t be able to sit flat next to each other. If you make them do so by adhering them to a pedal board, you’ll be applying upwards force on both jack sockets which could lead to them being damaged. A whole lot more force is added every time you step on a pedal to use it.

^{Connect enough pedals together with solid couplers and they’ll form a circle}

Replacing a damaged socket might not be that big of a deal, but if those sockets are mounted directly onto the circuit board, that could get damaged as well. In that case, good-bye pedal.

Even if the sockets line up exactly (they won’t) and you mounted your pedal super securely to the pedal board, stepping on it will still introduce a small amount of movement. It might take longer for damage to happen, but it will happen.

Then there’s these bastards:

These offset or “Z” couplers might seem like a decent work-around. The trouble is that when you apply that downward force, they tend to want to rotate, which is even worse for your pedals.

Using a patch cable instead means the connection between pedals remains flexible, and any movement is isolated to the pedal you’re stepping on.

Some people will tell you they’ve used solid couplers for years and never had a problem. That’s fantastic news for them, but it doesn’t negate everything I’ve said so far. Imagine if your neighbour said they haven’t locked their front door in years and yet they’ve never been robbed. That doesn’t mean it can’t or won’t happen, that it hasn’t happened to other people, or that you should follow their naïve example.

Soldered vs Solderless Patch Cables

You’ll find much debate online about whether you should go for soldered or solderless patch cables. The argument in favour of soldered cables is that a soldered connection is about as secure as it gets, and any solderless solution is going to be a compromise. The argument in favour of solderless cables is that if you’re inexperienced with a soldering iron, your joins are likely to be bad, and a good solderless connection is better than a bad soldered one.

Both points are equally valid, and the decision to buy one over the other comes down to how well you can solder. That’s for you to figure out.

Whichever one you go with, cut your cable a bit longer than you need to make sure there’s enough length to bend around the slats of your board and actually make a connection without being pulled tight. A little bit of slack is good. Besides, you can cut down a cable that’s too long, but if it’s too short it’s useless.

Personally I buy pre-manufactured patch cables. The length might not be 100% what I’m after for every pedal placement, but I can get close enough without having to assemble cables myself. If you take this path, once again just make sure you’ve got enough length.

A quick word on braided cables: These things are great for long cables like the one that you plug into your guitar, or from your pedal board to your amp. They prevent kinks and tangles, and keep your cable relatively straight. With short patch cables though, you want as much flexibility as possible. Getting around the slats on your board and connecting to your pedals requires sharp turns that can’t be made with stiff cables. I’m not sure why short, braided patch cables exist, but they’re not much good for pedal boards.

Cable Direction

Its good practice to have your power cables running 90 degrees to your audio cables, or keep them separated as much as you can. There’s a possibility you’ll encounter noise and interference if you bundle them all up together in the same direction.

Do I Need a Loop Switcher?

The longer the path between your guitar and amp, the more top end you’re likely to lose from your tone. If you have a lot of pedals on your board, even when they’re turned off, the signal path to your amp is considerably longer than if you plugged straight into the amp.

You can get around this by using buffers. Most Boss pedals have buffered bypass, so chances are you already have some buffering in your signal path and don’t need to worry about this.

The other work around is to use a true bypass loop switcher. This will get every pedal completely out of your signal path until you select them on the switcher. If you have more than five or six pedals in your chain, and your signal seems to have lost a noticeable amount of top end, a loop switcher might be worth trying.

The other thing switchers are good for is enabling access. You could have all your pedals routed through the switcher, and then access them from a single neat row of buttons at the front of your board. This greatly cuts down on having to step over a row of pedals to get at the one you want.

Another access benefit of switchers is cutting down on “tap-dancing”. Say you want to change from one sound to another mid song, but doing so requires turning three pedals on at the same time. If those three pedals are in the same loop of your switcher, you need only step on one button to activate all three pedals.

There’s not a lot to consider when buying a loop switcher. Cheaper ones will have cheaper parts, so in theory the switches you step on every time you play could wear sooner than higher quality ones.

A simple switcher could in theory be entirely passive. It’s a mechanical device that re-routes your signal without the need for electricity. You will of course need some small amount of power if you want an indicator LED for each switch. More complicated switchers have digital controls which enable you to program different combinations of pedals to each switch.

One thing few people consider when buying a switcher is how far apart the sockets are on each loop. If your jack plugs are wide, they might not fit side-by-side in a looper with closely positioned sockets. You could fix that by getting patch cables with narrower jack plugs, but it’s something to think about.

That’s all for now

We’ve covered choosing a board, securing your pedals to that board, dealing with patch cables, and looked at whether or not you might benefit from a loop switcher. Next time we’ll look at your signal chain. Deciding what order to hook your pedals up in is a big deal which will have a huge impact on the sound that comes out.

Intro to Pedals Part 3: Power Supplies

So far we’ve looked at why you might want to alter your sound with pedals, and outlined a sensible approach to discovering which pedals might be relevant to you. I’ve covered how multi effects units aren’t completely useless, but that few people stick with them, they don’t hold any re-sale value, and as such aren’t where you want to spend the bulk of your gear budget.

If you’ve been following so far you’ll probably have a few pedals and have plugged them in and started having fun with them. It’s time to start thinking about power solutions.

Powering pedals can be fairly impractical. You’ll either go through a lot of 9 volt batteries or have a comical arrangement of wall-wart power adapters. Surely this isn’t what the pros do?

There are of course more practical solutions. Before we get into those, we’ll need to pause for a moment and get a boring but essential bit of science out of the way. When plugging a power lead into a pedal you always need to consider four things:

Voltage, Current, Polarity, and Isolation

Voltage

Most pedals operate at 9 volts, some require more, and some can take more (eg overdrive pedals with different amounts of headroom available). Not providing enough voltage might not damage your pedal, but it will quite likely sound horrible. Providing too much voltage will almost certainly fry your pedal. Before you power up a pedal, be sure of its voltage requirements.

Current

This is a simple concept which confuses many. Current is measured in amps (A) or milliamps (mA), and is a way of measuring how thirsty a device is, not a limit on how much electricity you can throw at it. The mA requirement of your pedal is the minimum it requires to function, and likely how much it will draw from your power supply.

It is perfectly safe to connect a 200mA power supply to a pedal requiring 100mA. The power supply will make 200mA available, but the pedal will only take the 100mA that it needs. If a power supply doesn’t provide enough mA, the pedal won’t function properly or even turn on. Best practice is to have your power supply offer more mA than your pedal requires.

Polarity

Like the tip and the sleeve on your audio cables, power cable connectors have two separate parts to consider. They will either be centre positive or centre negative.

Most pedals will be centre negative, but occasionally (like with some old Proco Rats) you’ll get one that’s centre positive. Be sure of which way around your power lead is, and which way your pedal is designed. If you get this wrong your pedal will either simply not turn on, or end up completely fried. Toss a coin. Whatever the outcome, you’re not going to be using that pedal today.

Isolation

This refers to making sure your pedals don’t share a ground connection.

Pedals often use their ground connection like a sewer line. They dump certain audio frequencies (like the clipped part of your signal in a drive pedal) by sending them to ground. If you hook your pedals up so they share a ground connection (think “pedal sewer line”), these audio artefacts, along with some electricity, could end up being reintroduced to the audio signal of other pedals in your chain. Just like you wouldn’t want your neighbours’ sewerage backing up in your house, your pedals don’t want to be awash with crap from other pedals in the chain.

This could result in anything from a mild, low level hum all the way through to crazy, high-pitched, whistling oscillation noises which can be tricky to troubleshoot.

For example, some folks will complain that a delay pedal at the end of their chain is making a weird noise, when in fact a fuzz pedal at the start of the chain is generating it. It might just be that only the delay pedal is picking it up and making it audible. The solution is not to remove the fuzz or the delay, but to make sure they’re not sharing a ground connection.

So What Should I use?

Daisy Chains

The first thing most rookies try, no doubt because of the low cost and simplicity of it all, is to daisy chain your pedals. This involves one power adapter which plugs into a series of connected cables. This might work for some pedals some of the time, but is generally considered a horrible idea.

All of your pedals are drawing their power from the one source, potentially under-powering them, leading to them not functioning correctly and not sounding quite right. The more noticeable problem though is that they all share an earth connection which could lead to audio interference between pedals (see isolation section above).

If you insist on doing this, you can get away with it under some circumstances. I’d maybe consider it if you have a simple pedal board with only a tuner and a drive pedal or two.

Mixing digital and analogue pedals seems to be the main issue. I believe analogue pedals tend to generate most of the noise in a shared ground connection, while digital pedals pick it up and make it audible. While we’re at it, digital pedals should probably be isolated from each other too. When it comes to power, they just don’t play well with others.

Of course, make sure the adaptor at the start of your daisy chain is providing the correct voltage and enough current for all of your pedals. You’ll typically want a 9v adaptor with a crazy high current. Add together the mA draw of all the pedals you’re going to daisy chain, and make sure the power supply can offer at least that much, preferably more.

1 Spot are the kings of daisy chain solutions, while most other budget pedal brands like Mosky, Donner, and Joyo tend to have something on offer.

Power Bricks

You can buy a power “brick” which takes up only one wall socket space, will convert your AC mains power into DC power at the correct voltage for your pedals, and will have multiple outlets for your pedals to plug into.

They vary massively in price, so let’s have a quick look at what you’re paying for and which features might be important to you.

Some bricks provide surge protection, and most should provide clean, regulated power to your pedals.

The main thing which separates the cheap power supplies from the expensive ones is isolation. The whole point of getting one of these is to provide isolated power to your pedals, so it makes no sense to get one which doesn’t. There are inexpensive ones which are nothing more than a tidier version of a daisy chain solution, offering no isolation whatsoever.

Maddeningly, some claim to be “isolated” while not actually being isolated in the sense we’re thinking of. The power supply itself is isolated from other devices, sure, but we want each of its outputs to be isolated from each other. Look for the words “isolated outputs” or something like that. Don’t be content with merely seeing the word “isolated” in the product description.

The number of outputs will have an impact on the price. Get one with more outputs than you think you need. I don’t care if you think you have all the pedals you’ll ever need to power up, I know you’re lying to yourself even if you don’t. If you get a five outlet power supply, don’t come crying to me when pedal number six shows up and you have nowhere to plug it in.

However much you save by getting the smaller power supply, think of how much more expensive it will be when you have to buy a second one. It will happen. You’ve been warned.

Some will come with a few outputs which are a higher voltage. This can be handy if you have pedals which require more than 9 volts, or it could be a waste of an output if you don’t. Some of these will be switchable between 9 volts and 12 or 18 volts, which is the best option. Just make sure you’re not paying for a power supply with outputs you can’t use.

Just like with the daisy chain solution, you’ll need to figure out how much current you need. Add up the mA of all of your pedals, and make sure the power supply you get can deliver equal to or greater than that amount. There’s no point getting a power supply with over 20 outputs if it only has enough mA to drive one pedal.

Also consider the size of the power supply. If you intend on sticking it underneath a pedal board, you need to make sure it will fit.

It used to be the case that no modest budget power bricks were isolated, and if they said they were, it was mere marketing trickery. That’s not the case as much these days. Check the specs and read reviews. You’ll find many units where someone has bought one and tested the outputs with a multimeter to confirm if they are indeed isolated.

At the budget end of the spectrum, have a look at Caline and Mosky. At the more mid-priced to professional end have a look at:

Probably one of the most expensive yet best value power supplies on the market is from GigRig. They provide a modular solution, meaning when you run out of outputs, you’re not stuck having to buy a whole new power supply. You can simply buy another adaptor with more outputs and plug it into an output of the unit you already have.

To kick start the whole thing, you buy their “Generator”. This provides clean, regulated, surge protected power at a whopping 5 Amps. From there you plug in a “distributer” which gives you 4 outputs. Into each one of those outputs you can plug in an “Isolator” which each provide 4 isolated outputs. This results in 16 isolated outputs. If pedal number 17 ever turns up you can get another isolator and plug it into one of the outputs of one of your other isolators.

GigRig pride themselves on being the best in the business when it comes to durability, quality control, aftermarket support, and most importantly making sure your guitar tone remains pure and untainted. For the record, I don’t have an affiliate marketing arrangement with the GigRig. It’s common knowledge in the industry that GigRig is the Rolls Royce of pedal power supplies.

Next time we’ll look at pedal boards themselves, patch cables, and a few things to look out for when putting it all together.

Intro to Pedals Part 2: Choosing Pedals

So you’ve decided that you want more from your guitar sound than what you get when you plug straight into your amp. It’s time to get a pedal or two, but which ones should you be checking out to begin with?

Multi Effects Units

A fairly common way to get an idea of what’s what, is to get hold of a multi effects unit which supposedly has everything in it. It’s significantly cheaper than buying one of every kind of pedal in existence, and side steps having to deal with mounting them to a board, hooking up lots of patch cables and worrying about power requirements.

If you have access to one of these, maybe on loan from someone else or acquired second hand for some freakishly negligible cost, it might be helpful to play with. You can scroll through all the effects while making an awful racket and taking note of which ones you find interesting.

I’ll stop short of recommending you spend significant money on one of these units, or spend a significant amount of time trying to sculpt a usable combination of sounds with one. I would strongly discourage buying a new one at full retail price.

What will inevitably happen is, over time you’ll discover at least 60% of the sounds in that unit are of no interest to you, and those that are happen to be important enough to you that you want a decent quality version of that effect in an individual pedal. I can’t think of a single guitar player who started out with a multi effects unit and went on to use it exclusively throughout their professional career.

Resale value on these things can be punishingly low, so selling it on once you’re done with it seems hardly worth it. This is not where you want to invest the bulk of your gear budget.

Having said all that, many professional musicians do occasionally gig with top quality modelling gear when they’re travelling light or they don’t want to take their expensive vintage equipment to a particular gig. Worthy of note among these are the Line 6 Helix range, and Neural DSP Quad Cortex.

Those aren’t cheap though, and for the same or less money you could buy one of the actual amps or some of the effects that they’re trying to sound like. Why not have the real thing? When you buy modelling equipment you’re paying for access to a vast range of sounds, most of which you’ll never use.

This brings us to the most important question you need to keep in mind when shopping for pedals: “What are the effects I need in order to generate the guitar sounds I want to play?”

Knowing What to Use

Put together a playlist of the kind of music that you’re likely to play on guitar. Listen to what effects the guitarists in those recordings are using. This will be your starting point. I’m going to make a few suggestions here but you don’t necessarily need these pedals to play that music.

Get a Tuner

OK forget what I just said about not needing the pedals I suggest here. Every guitarist needs a tuner, and that means you, too. Pedal tuners are about the most practical on the market. When you consider the alternatives are either rack mounted, headstock/clip on tuners, or a pitch pipe, this just makes sense.

Important things to look for in a tuner are:

Accuracy
Tracking speed (when you pluck a note, you don’t want to have to wait for the tuner to “find” it)
Visibility in different lighting situations (consider dark/low light in a club versus bright sunlight at an outdoor gig)

The TC Electronic Polytune is hugely popular, and for what it’s worth I’m a big fan of the Korg Pitchblack Custom. While the visibility isn’t quite as impressive as the Custom version, the standard Korg Pitchblack performs much the same and costs a fair bit less.

You don’t have to spend a fortune on a multitude of features here, but you only want to have to make this purchase once and be done with it. This isn’t a fun or exciting pedal, and if you cheap out on something that’s a massive compromise, you might find yourself going through the banality of shopping for another one in the not-too-distant future. There’s no such thing as a “beginners tuner” so you might as well make the investment in a proper one straight away.

Your Average Rock Band

Straight away you’re going to need some sort of overdrive, and it’s quite likely you’ll only need one. If you’re going to play the odd lead break, you may want to also invest in a lead boost. That would sort most rock guitarists out, and this is reflected in the amount of “dual overdrives” on the market (essentially an overdrive with a second switch to engage a boost).

It’s not all that uncommon to want to make use of several different gain stages:

a light, just-past-edge-of-break-up overdrive
a more aggressive, higher gain overdrive
a lead boost

Stacking all of those into each other could also approximate a decent full-fat distortion in a pinch.

Your Average Covers Band

Covers bands play a bit of everything, so surely you’re going to have to get the lot, right? Not necessarily.

Assuming your amp already has reverb, you’ll be surprised just how far you can get with a range of different gain stages (see above) and a delay pedal.

Depending on the material you’ll be covering, you may want to get some sort of modulation. Most commonly this will be chorus and tremolo, but occasionally you may need a flanger/phaser/vibrato etc.

If you’re doing 60s rock covers, you’ll want to get a wah pedal, a fuzz, and maybe a uni-vibe.

The Heavy Stuff

If you’re playing heavy music, some kind of distortion is a must. A lot of metal guitarists will achieve this via an amp with a high gain channel. If you take this route, it’s still worth looking at some kind of lead boost. Consider how loud it is when the rest of the band is pummelling out a down-tuned heavy riff at full volume. Your tiny little single note lines don’t stand a chance of being heard in that mix without some kind of assistance.

Stepping on a Tube Screamer or some kind of Tube Screamer derivative at this point would help a great deal. It would tighten up your bottom end, increase your mids, and in doing so raise your most audible frequencies so the audience can hear you. If you crank the level knob you’ll also enjoy a cheeky increase in overall volume. Most lead boosts will operate like this: they’ll likely lift your upper mids and increase your volume.

If you don’t have a high gain amp, you’re going to need a distortion pedal. There are so many types of distortion pedal on the market I could dedicate an entire series of posts just on this topic. I’ll try to give you a quick over view to get you started on your search.

The good old fashioned Boss DS-1 was a go-to pedal in the 80s but is a bit too shrill and spikey sounding for some rigs. Dialling the tone knob all the way back on one of these might get you the exact sound you’re after without spending a whole lot. A Rat might be worth a look if you want something old school but a bit darker and thicker sounding. They’re kind of a cross between a DS-1 and a Fuzz Face.

If sludgy, doomy, fuzz-meets-distortion is what you’re after, check out the world of Big Muffs. There’s a lot of variation between the different Muffs available, so do your research and try a few out.

If you’re chasing a more modern, djenty sound, there’s quite a lot of options. Check out Deizel pedals for starters. This company is renowned for making epic sounding high gain amps, and they’ve done a decent job of capturing that distortion sound in their pedals.

James Brown (no, not that one, the guy responsible for the design of the Peavey 5150) now has a pedal company by the name of Amptweaker. His distortion pedals are next-level awesome. The MXR 5150 overdrive pedal is geared towards the distortion sound of that amp, and like the Amptweaker stuff, comes with a built in noise gate.

^{Music hasn’t sounded quite the same since either of these two guys came along.}

If you’re looking to spend a little less, there’s the Hotone Djent. It looks like a toy but sounds like the business.

Conclusion

These are all just broad suggestions on where to start if you’re not sure. Whatever you run with for your first pedals, get cheap ones to start with.

Yes, I would discourage spending good money on a multi effects unit to try it all out, on the basis that you’ll probably move on from it and not get your money back. I will however encourage you to take a similar approach with a handful of cheap pedals instead. You might experience a few less effects, but you lose less money and focus on the more relevant pedals to your playing style.

While you figure out what flavour of overdrive or fuzz or distortion etc you’re into, you’re going to swap out and trade your way through a whole bunch of pedals. Better to do that with cheap ones first of all. Even if you start with expensive pedals, you can still be almost certain you’ll end up moving them on at a loss once you refine your tonal tastes.

Here’s how I’d recommend the commencement of your pedal journey:

Listen closely to recordings of the genre of music you’d like to play
Take note of the effects involved
Buy some cheap versions of those effects
Once you know what sort of sounds you like, have a look at which pedals on the market do a top notch version of that sound within your budget

Just a word of warning: once you start experimenting with pedals, it’s a slippery slope towards full blown pedal addiction. You’ll quickly find all sorts of pathetic excuses to spend more than you should on just one more pedal. Always keep in mind what you’re trying to achieve with your tone before you browse for pedals, and likewise keep a close eye on your budget. You have been warned.

Once you’ve got a handful of pedals you’ll be wanting to hook them all up in a practical and portable manner. In my next post I’ll be exploring all the non-pedal parts of your floor based gear: pedal boards, patch leads, power requirements, and other stuff you could potentially lose a heap of money on through buying the wrong gear or cutting costs in the wrong area. This post will cover all the hidden expenses we forget about while lusting after the gear that makes cool sounds.

Intro to Pedals Part 1: Why Pedals?

As I was piecing together my own pedal board from scratch, I stopped to reflect on all the mistakes that brought me to this point. This whole blog was started to provide others with the information I wished I had when I was starting out, so they could avoid wasting money on the wrong gear for the job. To that end, I’d now like to specifically look into the world of pedals.

It’s a huge topic, and probably too much for one post. To spare everyone from having to scroll through a massive wall of text, I’ve decided to break it up into a series of posts.

For today though, let’s just dip our toe in the water with a couple of simple questions: “Why do I even need pedals?” and “Where the hell do I start?”

Why Do I Even Need Pedals?

Stop me if you’ve heard these before:

*Insert guitar legend’s name here* used to just plug straight into their amp without any pedals, and they sounded fine
Why worry about all that stuff? Tone is in the fingers!
You wouldn’t need pedals if you had a decent amp
Want to sound good? Get lessons and practice more! Then you won’t need pedals!

First of all, if anyone comes at you with that noise, there’s a particular guitar fingering exercise you can demonstrate for them which should serve as an adequate rebuttal:

Extend your fret hand towards them, and curl your index finger, ring finger and pinky towards the palm of your hand, locking them in place with your thumb. In this position, elevate your hand slightly, whilst adopting an exasperated facial expression.

This person is either incredibly ignorant of the wonderful world of guitar tone, or has no gear of their own and is adopting a “sour grapes” position to save face. For this reason, the finger exercise above should suffice as a response.

If however, you actually want to stoop to their petty level, here are a few considerations:

*Previously mentioned guitar legend* probably played a style of music which didn’t typically make use of pedals, or they played in an era which predates commonly available pedals. They’d probably use every pedal they could get their hands on if they were around today.
Hold your fingers up to your ears. Can you hear tone? No. All you can hear is bullshit.
A high gain amp might negate the need for a distortion pedal, but you’ll be hard pressed finding one that’ll rock a wah. There are more pedals out there than just drive pedals and reverb.
No amount of lessons and practice will make a nylon string acoustic guitar generate harmonic tremolo or octave fuzz.

The truth of the matter is that electric guitar is a unique instrument, quite distinct from its acoustic ancestor. Electronically manipulating the waveforms generated by your pickups is as much a part of playing the instrument as strumming chords and picking notes.

As an electric guitarist, your amp is as much a part of your instrument as the strings and frets. The same can be said of effects pedals.

So Where the Hell Do I Start?

I’ve seen people rush off and buy random pedals fuelled by the knowledge that they’re just a thing guitarists use and being bummed that they didn’t have any yet.

I’ve seen enthusiastic but not-so-helpful people advise new guitarists that they simply MUST have this pedal or that pedal, predominantly because that’s what they use and like.

The first place to look is not a catalogue of pedals, but your music collection. Listen to the style of music you intend on playing on guitar, and try to identify the sounds involved in the guitar tone. After all, pedals are but tools of the trade, so step one is to work out which tools will be required for the job at hand.

In my next post I’ll go over the process of choosing pedals for different musical circumstances. See you then.

Cheap Clone Pedals

If you’re on a tight budget but have found yourself hooked on pedal acquisition, you’ve no doubt discovered the wonderful world of “clones”. Thanks to a peculiar quirk in intellectual property law, it’s the look of a pedal and its name that you’re not allowed to replicate. You’re free to copy the circuit to your heart’s content.

Disclaimer:
Just to be clear, I’m not a lawyer, and this is my feeble, uneducated understanding of the matter. If you choose to do this you do so at your own risk. Please chime in on the comments section if you know what’s actually going on here.

The important distinction to make is that I’m not talking about counterfeits. I’m talking about pedals that are assembled in different enclosures and marketed with different names. Counterfeits do exist, but that’s not what I’m referring to here.

Anyway, cloning makes perfect sense in some cases. There are pedals like the Klon Centaur and Marshall Bluesbreaker that are long out of production, and can only bought for “collectors” prices. If the original manufacturer no longer makes them, where’s the harm in someone else having a go?

There’s a somewhat ethical grey area after that. There are boutique pedal manufacturers who build everything by hand, carefully measuring and choosing every component with painstaking quality control. They charge a fair price for such effort and craftsmanship, which happens to be more than most folks want to pay for a mere tonal tool.

With this approach comes a long waiting list for your pedal to be made. Analogman’s King of Tone notoriously has a 2-3 year waiting list. So if you can’t stomach the wait, you might want to consider the used market. Knowing the waiting list creates scarcity, used versions of these sell for highly inflated collectors prices.

What’s an impatient, cash-strapped muso to do? Clones of these pedals which are available for a small fraction of the price get awful tempting. You might justify it by thinking that the original manufacturer is already selling more than they can make, so they’re not missing out on sales. After all, is a mass-produced cheapo unit really competing with hand built boutique pedals?

I’m not going to weigh in here. On one hand I have massive respect for boutique builders. On the other, I have a modest income, yet would still like to participate in the pursuit of guitar tone. So whether you throw stones from your ivory tower in defense of boutique builders, or bypass the builder and gather cheap imitations without regard, I’m not here to judge. You do you.

Are clones as good as the real deal?

Yes and no. On the one hand they typically have the same circuit, and as such will (in theory) sound and function exactly the same. In order to mass manufacture something at a cheaper price point, quality control corners often get cut and cheaper components become a must.

Ironically enough, the cheapest generic brand pedals tend to be closest to the original circuits. They’re not looking to re-invent the wheel, so going with what’s already there is a quick and easy solution. In the meantime, mid-priced brand name pedal manufacturers tend to want to make their own pedal, merely inspired by the original. Their own spin on it might be better, worse, or just plain different.

A great example is the EHX Soul Food. Inspired by the Klon Centaur, opinions all over the net are divided over whether it differs too much with its brash high frequencies, or whether it’s a welcome fresh take on the original. Meanwhile, the Mosky Golden Horse gets universally praised for doing more or less exactly what a Klon should, for around half the price of the Soul Food.

In my quest for a decent uni-vibe style pedal at a budget price, I discovered the Animal Pedals Car Crush. Animal Pedals are put out by One Control who are best known for making respectable, mid-priced loop switchers. The Car Crush was the cheapest vibe pedal I was aware of that made use of a photo cell circuit.

I asked online for recommendations for other cheap photo cell vibes, and if anyone had experience with this one. One helpful soul opened his much cheaper vibe pedal, the Moen “Jimi Nova“, and compared it to the innards of a Car Crush. Wouldn’t you know it, they’re the same pedal, but the Moen one costs half the price.

The artwork on the Car Crush is way cooler, and you might have some of your peers turn their noses up at the sight of a generic Moen pedal on your board. Whether it’s worth twice the price to rectify that is a question for your conscience.

What do I need to be concerned about with cheaper pedals?

Moving parts
The most obvious things that can go wrong with any device will likely involve moving parts. Check for flimsy switches, and free-spinning knobs that do nothing to affect the sound. Make sure the input and output jacks are ok.

Power
If you plug a switched on power lead into a pedal, the split second before a firm connection is made could result in a bit of a power spike through the pedal. More expensive pedals will likely have some small amount of protection built in, while the cheaper ones will end up fried before you’ve played a note.

I’ve heard anecdotes of this happening to Mosky pedals in particular. If all the generic brands are using the same circuits, they’ll all likely be just as susceptible.

Best practice is to plug your power in first, THEN switch the power on. Still, it’s nice to know if the connection wasn’t as firm as you thought it was, you haven’t killed your pedal.

Noise
This is particularly a problem for pedals with plastic enclosures that aren’t well shielded. That’s not to say all plastic pedals suffer from this, but they are the main culprits.

There are also some pedals which function with a high noise floor. You might consider fixing this with a noise gate, or spending a little more money on the original purchase and finding a better version without so much noise. Then again, maybe your tolerance to the noise makes it not a problem. This is just something to weigh up when trying cheap pedals.

The Bottom line

Nothing comes close to the quality control, aftermarket service, and sense of community you find when you purchase a top end pedal. The expression “buy cheap, buy twice” definitely holds true here as well. Then again, you shouldn’t let a tight budget stand in the way of getting amongst it while cheaper options are available.

Know Your Dirt

In the world of high gain guitar sounds we have boost, overdrive, distortion, and fuzz.

Boost can add a little gain and EQ shaping with a bit of a kick in volume.

Overdrive was born from the sound of an amp literally being driven too hard. This term could cover anything from an almost clean edge-of-break-up sound, to a cranked Marshall sound.

Distortion is a bit like overdrive on steroids, with more aggressive clipping and more compression.

Fuzz is a different thing altogether. This is where we encounter some of the harshest “square wave” clipping available.

Then there’s the grey area where these overlap. When these sounds were initially discovered there were no clear distinctions between them. Some boosts creep into overdrive territory. Some overdrives could just as easily be described as distortion, or dialed back and used as a boost. There are at least a handful of pedals around where internet debates continue to rage over whether they’re distortion or fuzz.

Overdrive Pedal Types

The number of overdrive pedals on the market right now is staggering. If you took one of each model and piled them on top of each other, you could use it as a bridge to Mars and save Elon Musk a lot of bother.

Mercifully though, many of them fall into categories which help when you’re comparing them to decide what you’re after. Let’s take a look at a few.

Tube Screamers
Ibanez brought out the tube screamer as an overdrive pedal designed not so much to bring all the crunch on its own, but to push the front end of a tube amp into its own overdrive. It dumps your bottom end and cranks your mid range right up, with some mild clipping for good measure.

Some folks use these after their regular overdrive or distortion as a lead boost. Others use it before their distortion to clean up an otherwise boomy bottom end. You’ll often see these in front of a Peavey 5150/6505 or Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier in metal bands for this reason.

First there was the TS808 described above (and the small version, the Tube Screamer Mini).
Then the TS9, a bit brighter and harsher sounding, and arguably more aggressive.
The TS9DX which was a TS9 with more settings, including one which leaves the bottom end in tact.
The TS10, which by all accounts seems to be a cheaply made TS9, maybe with a smidge more gain on offer.

…then everyone copied it with their own little touches here and there:

Behringer has a dirt cheap clone with the exact same circuit as the TS808, but in a cheap plastic housing.
Also at the budget end of the spectrum is the Mooer Green Mile.
JHS have artfully captured every variation of the originals from TS808 to TS10 plus a few others in their “Bonsai” pedal.

Nearly every pedal manufacturer out there has their own version of a Tube Screamer, so if you need to tighten your bottom end and push your mids, you have a lot of options open to you.

Blues Breaker
In 1966 John Mayall and the Blues Breakers recorded what became known as “the Beano Album”. Eric Clapton’s guitar sound on that album was obtained by way of a Marshall 1962 combo amp (JTM45) with everything cranked up to 11. That album made blues history, and so did Clapton’s tone. The amp went on to be nick-named the “Blues Breaker” as a result.

A pivotal moment in blues guitar history

Skip forward to the early 90s and Marshall brings out an overdrive pedal based on that sound, this time officially called the Blues Breaker. It provided a mild, transparent overdrive, with a healthy amount of top end and just enough break-up to turn heads.

Two things drove the popularity of this pedal through the roof:

It soon went out of production
It was spotted on John Mayer’s pedal board around the time he started to become a household name

Since then, many pedal manufacturers have produced “Blues Breaker style” pedals. These pedals typically use the original as a starting point but then add their own subtle spin on it.

The first and most notorious was Analogue Man’s “King of Tone“. It brings a little bit more gain than the original and is essentially two of the same overdrive pedals in the one enclosure. This allows you to experiment with gain stacking and boosting one with the other. The single pedal version is called the Prince of Tone. If you don’t want to join the 2-3 year waiting list for a new King of Tone, and don’t want to pay collector’s prices for a second hand one, there’s always budget clones to consider.

Other Blues Breaker style pedals include the JHS Morning Glory, Pantheon by Wampler, and 1962 by Keeley.

Klon Centaur
Between 1990 and 1994 around 8000 hand built Klon Centaurs were sold. They were so highly sought after that since being discontinued, some have been selling for thousands of dollars.

The Klon is one of the most versatile drives around. It gives a slight upper mid boost, but for the most part just adds gain without touching your tone. At low gain settings it can act as a clean boost. Wind up the treble knob and we’re heading towards treble booster territory. Of course, wind the gain up and magic happens.

Klons differ from Tube Screamers in that they don’t roll off your bottom end, have higher headroom, and don’t compress as much. Their mid boost is a higher mid frequency than the one that Tube Screamers boost.

Another run of these pedals was released in 2014 under the name “KTR”. Printed on the front of these are the words “Kindly remember: the ridiculous hype that offends so many is not of my making”.

There are more clones of this pedal (or Klones as they’re affectionately known) than any other.

At the budget end of the spectrum we have:
Mosky Golden Horse
Caline Pegasus
Joyo Tauren

Electro-Harmonix Soul Food is at the pricier end of the budget list, but quite popular.

J Rocket Archer and Wampler Tumnus are among the most respected Klon style pedals. Wampler also has the Tumnus Deluxe which includes bass, mid, and treble controls.

The Ryra “Klone” is considered an almost immaculate part-for-part clone of the original.

So now if you hear someone talking about a Tube Screamer type, Blues Breaker type, or Klon type overdrive, you know what they’re talking about.

A few other worthy mentions:

The Boss BD-2 Blues Driver is a simple, decent sounding, full frequency overdrive that stacks well with others. It’s inexpensive and doesn’t attract a lot of hype, but is well respected and gets the job done.

The Fulltone OCD has become a bit of an institution. While most pedals will have a few useful sounds at different points along the sweep of their gain knob, the OCD sounds great across its whole range. It can go from a subtle dirty boost all the way through to aggressive distortion. Version 1 of these had a somewhat mid-pushed sound; the versions that came after it are a little mid-scooped.

Classic Distortion Pedals

The Boss DS-1 was one of the first widely adopted distortion pedals on the market. It’s pretty much remained a staple on pedal boards since then. Like the BD-2, it’s inexpensive, well regarded, and gets the job done. The top end is a bit harsh for some rigs, so you might need to turn the tone down to get a good sound out of it.

The Boss HM-2, dubbed “The Swedish Chainsaw”, was a key part of the guitar sound for bands like Entombed and At the Gates. The way it handles bottom end makes it perfect for low tunings. The odd thing about this pedal is that it has a massive dead spot on the gain knob between 3 and 8 o’clock. That didn’t seem to matter to those on the Swedish metal scene, as they only used one classic setting: every knob all the way up.

They’re out of production now* and fetch a somewhat elevated price second hand, as their appeal has never died off. Luckily there are a few decent modern adaptions available like the Walrus Audio “Red” and the Lone Wolf Audio “Left Hand Wrath”. Of course, where there’s an old Boss pedal there’s usually a cheap Behringer clone of it. Not to disappoint, Behringer has the HM300 with a more pronounced mid range.

^{*Update: Boss has just released a “Waza Craft” version of this pedal. Well worth checking out.}

No discussion of distortion pedals would be complete without mentioning the fabled Metal Zone. The Boss MT-2 is probably the most mocked and maligned pedal ever to hit the market. It features

Such a high noise floor it’s practically unusable
A gain knob that goes from “gee that’s a lot of gain” at zero to “no one could possibly use this much gain” at around the half way point.
A ridiculously broad range of overly sensitive EQ controls that make it incredibly easy to dial in a terrible tone, and a major project to find a good one (which the slightest bump will change back to a crap one)
As an added bonus at no extra charge, the social stigma of being spotted with one on your pedal board.

Visual representation of the sound of the Boss MT-2

Still, whether for irony, comedy, or perhaps *cough* different *cough* tastes, some folks still go after these. Apparently they don’t sound as bad if you put them through your effects loop. I’m not convinced.

In the confusing cross-over department:
There’s the Pro Co Rat, which sounds like a really aggressive distortion pedal, but is actually a fuzz circuit.

The Big Muff, which gets used interchangeably as a fuzz or distortion but is in fact neither. Accurately speaking, a Big Muff can only truly be classified as a Big Muff. Probably the most accurate description I’ve ever heard was “think of it as the noisiest compressor you’ve ever heard and go from there.”

Just like they’ve done with Tube Screamer sounds in the Bonsai, JHS have collected just about every variation on the Big Muff there ever was and crammed it into one pedal: The Muffuletta.

Fuzz

In the world of classic fuzz there is the Tone Bender and the Fuzz Face, with both spawning endless clones, tributes and adaptations. The Tone Bender has more pronounced mids and treble (great for cutting through the mix), while the Fuzz Face is known for its earth-shattering fat bottom end, amply demonstrated by Jimi Hendrix.

There are almost as many varieties of fuzz pedals on the market as there are overdrives. Combining fuzz with octave is a fairly classic one. For reference, check out the MXR Octave Fuzz.

JHS have released their version of re-issues of 4 classic fuzz pedals with their “Legends of Fuzz” line. Check out the Fuzz Face inspired Smiley, the Tone Bender inspired Bender, the Big Muff inspired Crimson, and the Univox Octave Fuzz inspired Supreme.

A quick word about transistors in fuzz pedals:
Fuzz circuits that utilise germanium transistors can sound like a million bucks, until you expose them to hot conditions which make them sound like rubbish. Silicon transistors are more consistent and aren’t affected by heat, but aren’t held in as high regard by tone purists. Honestly though, if you plug into a silicon Fuzz Face and don’t get a killer tone, I wouldn’t go blaming the silicon.

Enough for now!

That’s probably way too much information for a single blog post, but hopefully it’ll provide a good starting point for anyone trying to make sense of high gain pedals.

Tips for working with overdrive and distortion

For the vast majority of folks reading this, I’ll bet it was over driven guitar sounds that inspired you to start playing in the first place. So here’s what typically happens when amateur guitarists start their journey into dirty sounds:

You plug into your “affordable” practice amp and push it into overdrive territory. Chances are it sounds horrible. You have a listen to some of your favourite recordings as a reference point, and notice how big and clear everything sounds. Now then, back to the amp.

You crank the gain and tweak the EQ until it sounds big, clear, and epic. Chances are you’ve messed around with the “mid” knob and discovered that turning it up muddies the sound while turning it down gets you close to the sound of your favourite recordings.

In your bedroom that sounds great. When you finally get in a band though, something weird happens: you step on the distortion and your sound disappears.

What the hell is going on?

Frequencies
A live band setting is a competition for sonic real estate, and if you’ve scooped out your mids, you’ve already lost. The bass guitar and bass drum dominate the low end, and the drummer’s cymbals own the top end. Your pathetic little guitar sound doesn’t stand a chance in the high and low frequency ranges when up against those sonic giants. Turns out your place is in the mid range.

First of all, you’re not an idiot for turning down the mid when dialing in your sound. On a lot of inexpensive amps, the mid knob mostly controls lower mid which sounds awful when turned up. The frequencies that are going to make you cut through the mix are in the upper mid range.

Also, if you listened to a few recordings for reference, the overall mix of the whole band was probably somewhat mid-scooped. You’ve tried to emulate that with your guitar sound, which is understandable.

Probably the best approach would be to set all your EQ knobs to 12 o’clock, have your band make a lot of noise, hit a chord and then make subtle adjustments until you get a sound you like.

When you do this, you might be surprised how little bottom end you need. It doesn’t cut through the mix anyway and might be muddying up your sound. I’ve heard it said that some sound guys will drop the bottom end right down on the guitar channel of their mixer before they’ve heard you play a note. If you tune right down for heavy music, rest assured your sound will be bottom heavy anyway because of your tuning. Be low in pitch, not EQ.

Gain and Compression
When you add gain, you also add compression. With compression, the loudest parts of your sound get quieter, and the quiet parts of your sound get louder.

Those quiet frequencies suddenly getting turned up plays a big role in why we like high gain sounds. There’s a lot more easily observable harmonic content, so the whole thing sounds rich and complex, like a whole orchestra coming out of your guitar. Also, with more of your guitar’s frequencies lifted (and kept up) by this compression, it takes a lot longer for a note to fade out.

So we have a sound that’s full, rich, and sustaining for days. Where’s the problem? Well the louder frequencies have also gotten quieter and your overall sound is perceived as being smaller.

We get so used to the idea that turning up the gain introduces more clipping, that we expect our sound to get bigger and more aggressive the more we turn it up. Doing so turns up your compression which actually contributes to a quieter sound. Aint that a kick in the pants?

As with setting your EQ knobs, you’d be well served to set your gain knob while your band makes a racket. Start down low and roll it up to taste, remembering to only use as much as you feel you need. Cranking it all the way up is pointless and silly, as it will do nothing to increase your volume or testicular diameter.

So that’s where your sound went. You’ve started with a nice big uncompressed clean tone, turned on your distortion and suddenly all that compression has squeezed your signal to a shadow of its former self. Your only hope of being heard was if your EQ had some obnoxiously high mids dialed in, but chances are you scooped those out.

Balancing clean and dirty sounds.
It’s possible to use the power of compression for good instead of evil. Adding a little to your clean sound will add some much needed sustain, and smooth out your transients. Transients are those little spikes in volume that happen when you hit one note louder than another.

A funny thing happens in the ears of audience members when they hear these transients. Their perception of your overall volume is arrived at by taking the average of your regular guitar signal and these transients. It feels like you’re louder than you actually are.

So when you turn on your overdrive and introduce compression (utterly squashing those transients into line), it feels as though you’ve gone from a loud clean sound to a quiet dirty one. The solution here is to turn down the gain on your dirty sound and add compression to your clean sound.

The obvious way to do this would be to use a compression pedal for your clean sound. The not so obvious way is to leave your overdrive on all the time, and flip between dirty and clean sounds by rolling your guitar’s volume knob up and down.

Using a boost for solos
So you’ve compressed your clean sound, and tweaked your gain and EQ for your dirty sounds, but you’re still having trouble getting heard when you play leads.

The answer here is to have a boost that you turn on when you take a solo. This could be a separate setting on a multi-channel high-gain amp, or a boost pedal.

A good solo tone is one you can hear
Mick & Dan, “That Pedal Show”

Be prepared to dial in a sound you wouldn’t ordinarily lean on too much so that your quieter single note playing can cut through the mix better.

Your boosted sound should typically have much less bottom end, heaps more mids, a bold amount of high end, and a subtle increase in overall volume level. If you were on your own and strumming chords, this might sound positively revolting. In a full band setting while you rip out a solo, it’s surprisingly effective.