guitar pedals

eil

Hey, I don't know much about this, but I want to buy some guitar pedals but I don't have a clue which to go for. I want echoey, spacy, dreamy sounds. Any advice?

Johnny Storm

I would say chorus, delay, reverb, phaser, echo, tremolo

Have a look at this Boss pedal demo and use th drop-down box to select the various pedal types:
http://www.bossus.com/go/compact_pedal_demo/

rcaz

eil wrote: »

echoey, spacy, dreamy sounds.

Roland RE-20. It's the digital pedal version of the RE-201 Space Echo. It'll do delays, reverbs, and chorusing (though the chorusing only comes with the delay, so if you want seperate, more flexible chorus, get a chorus pedal). It does a whole load of really cool noisey effects, too, which, although they don't often make much musical sense, are definitely harnessable, and very ****ing fun. I've wasted hours playing with mine. I'd definitely recommend checking one out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xr9P4MSl80

You could get an Alesis Nanoverb reverb unit for dead cheap second hand. I've never played one, but I've heard some great (and some mixed) reviews. If you want natural-sounding reverb, don't get it, but if you want absolutely mental reverb, worth a look. Apparently it's very digital-sounding, which you may or may not want. But it does reverse reverb ("non-linear"), which not a lot of small effects do. Although it's not a pedal, it's a very very small rack unit, which would take up the same floor space as a moderately-sized reverb. You can plug a footswitch in, but a lot of people put them in bypass loops because the built-in bypass is meant to be awful. If you're into shoegaze (My Bloody Valentine-esque), then this is meant to be a pretty damn good piece of kit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-O8EsPMss0

+1 on Johnny Storm's suggestions of chorus, phaser and tremolo. All great effects to have in your arsenal.

What bands are you into? Could you describe the sounds you're looking for with more detail?

A lot of the bands that I listen to who go for spacey, dreamy sounds (MBV, Sigur Ros, The Flaming Lips, Slowdive, Mogwai, Tortoise) also use a lot of fuzz. Now I would say than any guitarist needs a fuzz pedal or two, but that's just my opinion, YMMV. Definitely worth looking at a Big Muff as a foundation on which to build your walls of rawk noise

Delay, reverb, fuzz and chorus, I think that'd be a good start!

eil

Johnny Storm wrote: »

I would say chorus, delay, reverb, phaser, echo, tremolo

Have a look at this Boss pedal demo and use th drop-down box to select the various pedal types:
http://www.bossus.com/go/compact_pedal_demo/

thanks a lot for your reply, that demo thing is good.

El Pr0n wrote: »

What bands are you into? Could you describe the sounds you're looking for with more detail?

A lot of the bands that I listen to who go for spacey, dreamy sounds (MBV, Sigur Ros, The Flaming Lips, Slowdive, Mogwai, Tortoise) also use a lot of fuzz. Now I would say than any guitarist needs a fuzz pedal or two, but that's just my opinion, YMMV. Definitely worth looking at a Big Muff as a foundation on which to build your walls of rawk noise

Delay, reverb, fuzz and chorus, I think that'd be a good start!

thanks a lot for your reply as well!

this is the kind of thing I'm into...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCVwphpw7YE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGtAJH53ZGA

I'm into bands like MBV, Flying Saucer Attack, Animal Collective as well.

Glassheart

A big factor in Kevin Shields guitar sound was a reverse reverb with a lot of tremolo arm use on the guitar.That's partially how he achieved that really warped sound on Loveless...
Digitech have recently released a series of 'Hardwire' pedals.The reverb in this series has a reverse function which is quite rare.The pedal is true bypass and is superior in quality to most digitech pedals.

For a chorus pedal maybe have a look out for a Boss Digital Dimension on Ebay.They were made from 1988 to 1993 which ran parallel with the peak of the shoegaze movement.Robin Guthrie of the Cocteau Twins used it back in the day.

The Electro Harmonix Small Clone is also a great chorus pedal.There is one on adverts for €30 at the moment...

Demeyes

It might be worth looking into a multi-effect unit. They usualy have loads of effects that let you get the kind of sounds your after. Plus they have generally got more parameters to edit and more models imitated which can give you more variation than a single stompbox. Some of the cheaper ones are pretty dire but the ones higher up in the range usually sound pretty damn good.

rcaz

Demeyes wrote: »

It might be worth looking into a multi-effect unit. They usualy have loads of effects that let you get the kind of sounds your after. Plus they have generally got more parameters to edit and more models imitated which can give you more variation than a single stompbox. Some of the cheaper ones are pretty dire but the ones higher up in the range usually sound pretty damn good.

But they also *greatly* reduce flexibility, like only allowing you to put effects in a certain order, only using one type of each effect at a time, or only being able to use two or three effects at once.

If you're going to get into "proper" effects, as in not just using effects to colour a guitar sound, going for making new sorts of sounds altogether, indiviual boxes are the only way to go.

A lot of shoegaze tones make use of putting your reverb before your fuzz, so you're distorting all the reverb as well as just the guitar signal (That Belong video sounded just like that). You can't do that with a multi effect unit.

If you like No Age, you're gonna need you some fuzz

And I completely forgot about the Hardwire reverb! Go for that, forget about the Nanoverb.

What kinds of guitars are you playing? The MBV sound had a lot to do with the vibrato unit on the Fender Jaguar and Jazzmaster guitars. No other guitars have vibrato systems like it. Apparently what he did was, have a guitar with just two strings on it, tune them to the same note (but not exactly correct), and then manipulate the pitch with the vibrato. I've got a Jazzmaster, I couldn't recommend one highly enough. Worth bearing the guitar in mind, but back to effects

That swelling noise the guy in No Age makes when he crouches down is a delay pedal, he's playing with the repeat rate to raise the pitch. If you're into that, look for a nice delay, and if you don't want a really complicated delay, get something analogue. The Behringer VD-400 is a direct clone of the Boss DM-3, and the Behringer Vintage Time Machine is a clone of the Electro Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man. Great delays (with questionable build quality and dodgy bypass, however) for very very reasonable prices.

You could spend years and €€€ talking about and buying delay pedals, thought. There are tons of choices.

koolka

hey while we're on this topic could anyone tell me the difference between overdrive and distortion? sorry if it sounds like a stupid question but I never really understood the difference

Giblet

El Pr0n wrote: »

But they also *greatly* reduce flexibility, like only allowing you to put effects in a certain order, only using one type of each effect at a time, or only being able to use two or three effects at once.

If you're going to get into "proper" effects, as in not just using effects to colour a guitar sound, going for making new sorts of sounds altogether, indiviual boxes are the only way to go.

A lot of shoegaze tones make use of putting your reverb before your fuzz, so you're distorting all the reverb as well as just the guitar signal (That Belong video sounded just like that). You can't do that with a multi effect unit.

If you like No Age, you're gonna need you some fuzz

And I completely forgot about the Hardwire reverb! Go for that, forget about the Nanoverb.

What kinds of guitars are you playing? The MBV sound had a lot to do with the vibrato unit on the Fender Jaguar and Jazzmaster guitars. No other guitars have vibrato systems like it. Apparently what he did was, have a guitar with just two strings on it, tune them to the same note (but not exactly correct), and then manipulate the pitch with the vibrato. I've got a Jazzmaster, I couldn't recommend one highly enough. Worth bearing the guitar in mind, but back to effects

That swelling noise the guy in No Age makes when he crouches down is a delay pedal, he's playing with the repeat rate to raise the pitch. If you're into that, look for a nice delay, and if you don't want a really complicated delay, get something analogue. The Behringer VD-400 is a direct clone of the Boss DM-3, and the Behringer Vintage Time Machine is a clone of the Electro Harmonix Deluxe Memory Man. Great delays (with questionable build quality and dodgy bypass, however) for very very reasonable prices.

You could spend years and €€€ talking about and buying delay pedals, thought. There are tons of choices.

Boss GT-8 + Gt-10 have a chain configuration option to change the order of effects. You can even put your guitar amp into the chain!

rcaz

How about using overdrive, fuzz, another fuzz, chorus, tremolo, reverb and delay all at once? I always thought complicated setups like that were impossible on multieffects.

I'm still against the multieffect idea, though. Your quality range is really narrow, you have either Boss, Zoom, Digitech, and you have to stick to all the effects from that company. You miss out on a lot of great sounds that way.

mattfender

Space echo is beast, Messin with it earlier you can get that tone from Y Control by Yeah Yeah Yeahs, my next pedal :pac:

Giblet

El Pr0n wrote: »

How about using overdrive, fuzz, another fuzz, chorus, tremolo, reverb and delay all at once? I always thought complicated setups like that were impossible on multieffects.

I'm still against the multieffect idea, though. Your quality range is really narrow, you have either Boss, Zoom, Digitech, and you have to stick to all the effects from that company. You miss out on a lot of great sounds that way.

True, you could only have 2 types of overdrive at the same time, but you can have amp modelling. You can have the setup you described above with just one fuzz short. Why would you want three anyway? you can have another effect and compression and wah too all at the same time, as the gt-8 has seperate chorus delay, overdrive, amp, compression, wah, reverb controls as well as two custom effects along with that. They've really moved on these days. You can also have seperate tap delay as well and you can hook up a midi controller to control any parameter of any of these effects. Want more gain? Hook up a foot pedal. Try hookingup a footpedal to the feedback setting of the delay, or the rate setting of the tremolo. It's not a bad set up and not to be sneezed at.

rcaz

The Hitcher wrote: »

Why would you want three anyway?

Just one thing I did the other day; I put a really loud Big Muff into a really loud Boss SD-1 into a really distorted, but really quiet RAT. Almost constant indistinguishable noise, when you stop playing it feeds back, and it's really quiet. When you turn off the RAT, you get a bit of clarity back, and it's really loud again. I like doing that.

I'm sure the Multi-Effect things are really good, but they weren't designed for the kind of application I enjoy, and from the sounds of what Eil is into, they wouldn't be his cup of tea either. Purely speculation, of course, I'm not trying to speak for the OP.

But can you argue against my point about being stuck with one company?

Dave Total

You cant go wrong with the Boss DD-5 http://www.totalmusicsupply.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=101495
The line 6 Delay modeler is quality as well. You might want to consider a multifx unit as well so you can combine effects and create your own spaciness. The boss Gt 10 is cool and of course, the mighty line 6 pods!

B_Rubble

Yeh! but you can go wrong with totalmusicsupply...let's say - less than helpful customer service - be warned!

rcaz

Dave Total wrote: »

You cant go wrong with the Boss DD-5 http://www.totalmusicsupply.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=101495
The line 6 Delay modeler is quality as well. You might want to consider a multifx unit as well so you can combine effects and create your own spaciness. The boss Gt 10 is cool and of course, the mighty line 6 pods!

I've heard mixed reports on the DL4. Have a look here, that thread kinda put me off the idea of looking for one.