Guitar Pedals for Boosting, Compressing or Distorting a Signal
Most guitarists will be asked by a question: which pedal they would keep if they landed on a desert island with only an amp, a guitar and one effect, and the answer always would probably be some sort of booster pedal.
Booster, compression and preamp pedals affect a guitar's signal in a non-distorted, clean way. Booster or preamps pedals raise the overall level of a signal; electric players often use these to egg their tube amps info overdrive. On the other hand, compression pedals narrow a tone's dynamic range by limiting the attack on a note, which also amplifying its decay. Put the compressor pedals or preamp at the beginning of the effects chain to send clean, hot and level signals to the rest of the stomp boxes. Slap a noise gate pedal at the end of the chain to unwanted noise and silence hiss from other pedals. (Careful with noise gates, they may clip off your guitar's sustain, and creating an unnatural stutter.) Though clean-sounding booster pedals are fine above all, what many players want most is a way to add a bunch of distortion effects to their sound. The most common three different ways to dirty up your tone are: · Overdrive. When players first cranked their tube amplifiers up to 10, original overdrive occurred. Overdrive is literally the sound of vacuum tubes pushed to their limits. Thus, Overdrive pedals either boost the guitars' gain, sending the players' (tube) amplifiers into the overdriven state, or try to replicate the sound of the overdriven tube amps. · Distortion. Distortion pedals altering waveform, and overdrive the sound of overdrive by boosting levels. · Fuzz. · the Rhythm Kings guitarist Willie Kizert and Ike Turner captured one of earliest recorded fuzz tones when They tracked the song "Rocket 88" through a Fender Bassman amp, which had blown a tube after being dropped on the street in the rain. Literally the sound of a busted amplifier, fuzz distorts distortion itself in order to create the kind of buzzy, hum-tone heard in songs like the Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." |