Guitar Parts illustration    Glossary of Terms    Equipment Dictionary

Guitar Effects Pedals:

An effects pedal (pictured below) is usually a small to medium sized "box" usually shaped like a pedal. It will have an input and an output jack. A series of knobs and or buttons. Usually one or two BIG buttons to turn the pedal on/off with your foot. There are many different effect specific pedals out there. It's main function is to provide your guitar with many different sound capabilities, Such as Distortion, Delay, and Wah.

The pedal hooks in line with your guitar and amp. The cable coming from your guitar would hook into the "input" jack of the pedal. One end of another cable would hook into the "output" of the pedal and the other end into the input of your amplifier.

The different buttons or knobs on the pedal allow you to adjust the parameters of the effect. For example a delay pedals buttons/knobs would have labels like: Level, Repeat, and Time. Moving these knobs/buttons would give you the sound you are looking for. For instance Level usually refers to how loud you want the effect, moving the knob or button up and down would let you set it Loud, or "barely" there. Thus Repeat would set how many times a note was repeated, and Time would set how long a sound or series of notes can go before they are  repeated.

Distortion: An audio effect that distorts the input in a controlled way. Hard Rock/Metal genres are the most obvious application for this effect. I suggest listening to the example.

Click here to listen to a short example of Distortion

Chorus: an audio effect used to thicken a sound by layering several versions of the input sound with slight variances such as delay and change in pitch/tone simulating an ensemble of the original  sound.

Click here to listen to a short example of Chorus

Delay: An audio effect, also sometimes referred to as echo that repeats a portion of the input signal. Depending on the capabilities of the effect unit delay can be anywhere from a few milliseconds to several seconds.

Click here to listen to a short example of Delay

Wah Wah: A word that imitates the effect. The wah effect is achieved by a wah pedal which has a foot control that allows the guitarist to sweep thru different band pass frequencies and thus gives more expression thru tone. It sounds a lot like a human voice. An example of a popular song that uses this effect would be "Voo Doo Chile" by Jimmy Hendrix (and covered by Stevie Ray Vaughan).

Flanger: an audio effect made by slightly delaying two identical audio signals. The resulting sound is slightly odd but cool, kind of like a jet plane cutting thru the wind.
 

Click here to listen to a short example of Flange

Volume: An effect that simply turns the volume of the input signal up or down depending on which way the pedal is pushed.

Multi Effects: Simply a pedal or rack with the capability of producing many different effects in one unit.

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