5 Pedal Types Every Beginner Should Have

so i remember about a decade or so ago when i was just learning about guitar pedals i've been playing guitar for about eight years at that point and i was starting to get more serious about electric so to get into pedals and to learn more about them i started going down to a local shop to me here in atlanta called atlanta discount music and i will never forget the first day i walked in and looked at their pedal shelf with hundreds upon hundreds of pedals and felt completely overwhelmed but after a decade or more of experimentation and buying and selling and trading pedals and using them every single day i've learned a thing or two about pedals and so today's video is for you beginners the players that were like me about a decade ago who are just starting out want to put their first pedal board together but you don't know where to start now if you're interested in going deeper into not just pedals but amps and guitars and guitar tone in general and learning how it all works i made a video course dedicated to that specific subject called the tone course it's a video course that is everything that i know about guitar tone if you check it out in the link via the description box down below you're going to get 40 off the tone course as well as 40 off my brand new video course fretboard fundamentals so if you want to learn more about those video courses check out the link in the description box down below so let's get started by taking a look at our first pedal today and that is an overdrive now this was the first place that i started all those years ago the first pedal i ever bought was an overdrive now like the name suggests overdrive pedals introduce gain or distortion or overdrive into your guitar signal going into the front of your amplifier if you have a super clean amp that doesn't overdrive or break up on its own this can get you there or if you have an amp that overdrives and pushes on its own you can actually add more gain and push it harder with an overdrive pedal and this is the one type of pedal that you're likely going to have dozens of over your life as a guitar player because they all have different flavors and different feels and they all do slightly different things but at their core no matter what type of overdrive circuit you happen to be using they are introducing clipping or distortion into your guitar signal to either add it to clean amp or augment what's already there happening with your amp now there are several different types of overdrives that you're going to encounter in the pedal world the first one being what's called a transparent overdrive this is the morning glory from jhs this is based off of a famous overdrive circuit called the blues breaker and this is a fantastic transparent overdrive now transparent overdrives are actually my favorite type of overdrive because they keep the character of your guitar and your amp intact so if you're playing up les paul into a marshall or a strat into a vox with a transparent overdrive it's still going to have that feel and that flavor this is just adding something on top of it [Music] [Music] compare that to something that's a little more colored like this this is the timmy from paul cochran this is another legendary overdrive this is another one of my favorites this is gonna add a little bit more color to your signal and it's gonna have the same kind of sound no matter what guitar or amp you might be playing [Music] hey [Music] [Applause] then we have amp at a box or sometimes known as preamp style overdrives like this 87 from lawrence petros design this overdrive is designed to emulate the type of overdrive that you would get from an amp in this case a marshall from the 80s it's going to have that classic marshall bite and grit and these are not transparent at all they're not designed to be these are designed to impart a specific sound a specific feel on top of whatever you're playing this type of overdrive works great in front of clean amps something that doesn't already have a lot of overdrive going on [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] the last thing to think about with overdrives is how much gain do the pedals have on tap the morning glory i would say is a light to medium gain pedal it can get super gainy meaning it can add a lot of distortion to your signal but i think it works best adding just a touch of gain to a medium amount of gain to your signal with the timmy i like setting it so it's adding a medium amount of distortion or clipping to your signal and with something like the 87 this is more of a high gain almost distortion type sound the reality is the world of overdrives is vast and deep you could make an entire three hour long video just talking about overdrives but i would encourage you to go out and experiment take your guitar to your local music store and try out a bunch of different overdrives and you'll start to find things that you like and things that you don't like next up is one of the most useful pedals that you're ever gonna have on your board and i i highly recommend that every guitar player have one of these on your board and that is a boost pedal now there are a few different types of boost pedals out there the most simple would be one like this this is the vertex boost and this is simply a clean volume boost this pedal is not adding any distortion or clipping or anything to your signal whatsoever it's designed to take what's going in to the front end of the pedal and just make it louder in fact way louder this has up to plus 16 db of boost on board i bought this pedal years ago and this has been a mainstay of my boards and my session work for a long time pedals like this work great after your overdrives or fuzzes or distortions because they're not coloring the overdrive sound you're getting from those pedals and you can get a great solo boost or you can slam the front end of your amplifier and get way more gain out of your amp which is the natural tube distortion the preamp and power amp distorting coming from the extra gain or extra volume going into the front end of your amplifier [Music] [Applause] [Music] the other type of boost to look at is more of a sort of colored boost something like this tysco boost this gives you more options than a typical clean boost will this particular one has three eq options a flat eq boost a treble boost and a fat boost and this also has a gain knob here so this is not really adding any hard or soft clipping to your signal it's more so adding just some saturation but you can dial that gain back and just use it as a clean volume boost [Applause] [Music] [Music] ah [Music] [Applause] now the next petal that i would recommend for beginners is actually not a specific petal or petal type it's an effect type and it's modulation now modulation is a really big tint that houses a lot of different types of effects and pedals at its most basic modulation is a type of effect that is changing your guitar's sound in some way it can be modulating the amplitude like in a tremolo or it can be modulating the pitch like a chorus or vibrato or flanger and this is something that is up to you you may be pretty straight ahead and just like a little tremolo like a fender amp would have for example or you might like to get super 80s think andy summers and the police with great chorus sounds this is something that will take time in emulating your favorite players and experimentation to find out what you like but i'm going to quickly take you through the different types of modulation pedals starting with the most basic one which would be tremolo [Music] tremolo is a type of effect that is modulating the amplitude or volume of your guitar signal and this comes from like your classic fender amps from the 50s and 60s for example tremolo is one of my favorite effects i use it all the time and it's a great way to add some vibe and some character to your guitar sound there's plenty of great tremolo pedals this is the parabola from caroline guitar company and this one can do some pretty funky things it's not in your typical tremolo pedal but this is something that your amp might already have built into it the next type of modulation that i would look at would be a phaser [Music] so phaser is another classic type of guitar effect everyone from eddie van halen to david gilmour have all been famous phaser users and it's a really cool type of modulation that is changing the phase of the guitar signal basically putting the guitar in and out of phase with itself giving you that really unique sound this is the zelza from strymon this just came out and it's a pretty full feature at phaser other good ones that i would look at would be the small stone from electro harmonix or the classic phase 90. now you absolutely cannot talk about modulation in a guitar video without covering chorus [Music] if you know anything about 80s music or anything about 80s guitar you know about chorus this is the jhs 3 series chorus this is actually one of my favorite ones of course is another classic effect and if you're into that 80s sort of guitar sound you can't go without it and the last basic sort of classic modulation that we're going to talk about is flange [Music] now flanging is based off of an effect that was done way back in the day with tape machines by actually putting your hand and slowing down the reel of tape by pushing down on the flange of the tape reel you can get this really interesting modulation effect nowadays pedal manufacturers have taken that effect and put it into boxes like the oblivion from solid gold effects flange is another really cool pitch modulation effect like chorus and if you want that sort of vibey 70s 80s 90s guitar sound flange is really cool i think it's actually a little bit more versatile than chorus but nowadays pedal manufacturers are starting to get a little bit more experimental this is the nu33 from solid gold effects and this modulation is meant to emulate the type of pitch modulation and warble that you'd get from vinyl records if you're into that lo-fi sort of guitar sound this is a really cool pedal to check out it will even do the hiss and crackle of a dirty record which is really nice [Music] now the fourth and fifth effect types that we're going to talk about in this video we're going to talk about together because they both fall under the umbrella of time-based effects and that is delay and reverb so starting with delay delay is one of the first effects that you probably encounter aside from distortion or overdrive it's ubiquitous it's used across all different types of music on different instruments but if you're a complete beginner put simply delay just repeats the input signal at a specific interval think of an echo in fact the first delay effects were called tape echoes back in the old days the only way you could get a delay or echo effect was to utilize tape machines which were later miniaturized into smaller tape echoes but they were still big bulky complicated machines but nowadays we have access to delay pedals now there's a few different types of delay pedals that you're going to encounter in the real world this one the oracle from mythos effects is what's called an analog delay pedal there is a chip in here that is responsible for repeating your guitar's signal analog delays usually have very warm repeats the repeats tend to degrade the longer they go on and they have a really unique character about them i love analog delays each one is a little bit different depending on which type of chip they use and the circuitry built into the pedal but aside from the unique tone they can also do things like self oscillate which is really cool [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] but like plenty of other things in the guitar world we have lots of options when it comes to delay pedals now this is the nemesis from source audio and this is a digital delay meaning that it's taking your analog guitar signal and converting it into a digital signal where it's being processed by a dsp chip inside the pedal you don't need to worry about that all you need to know is this delay pedal and pedals like it from strymon or electro harmonix are capable of emulating lots of different types of delays everything from your classic analog delays to your tape echoes or vintage rack unit delays from the 80s these modern multi-effects are really versatile and really useful and i would recommend starting with something like this if you know you're going to be a delay user [Music] [Music] so [Music] and last but not least reverb now reverb is one of those effects that we deal with and we hear on a day-to-day basis you actually probably hear some room reverb coming through my microphone right now put simply reverberation is the effect of sound waves bouncing off of surfaces and then coming back to you at different time intervals and reverb has been used as an effect in music production for six decades plus from actual reverb chambers that are built underground it is part of studios to metal plate reverbs to digital reverbs nowadays we have pedals like the golden from universal audio that emulates in a digital form all of the different types of reverbs that you might encounter in a studio or recording setting now reverb is a little bit of a contentious effect and a lot of people wouldn't agree with me that a beginner guitar player should buy a reverb pedal but i think you should there's so much that you can do with reverb and with delay they're more than just sort of ambient spacey effects with reverbs like this you can make your guitar sound like it's in a space a small room for example or it's floating through the galaxy and outer space and everything in between it can help change the feel of the instrument under your fingers and it can help change what you play i love reverb i use it all the time in fact i've been accused of using too much reverb but that's just me [Music] hmm [Music] [Applause] [Music] so those are five petals for every beginner i hope you enjoyed today's video if you did let me know by leaving a like and a comment down below if you haven't done so already click that little subscribe button down in the corner it really helps me and the channel out also don't forget you can get 40 off of the tone course and the fretboard fundamentals course via the link in the description box down below as well as links to all the petals we talked about in today's video thank you guys so much for watching my name is rhett shull and remember there is no plan b you

Channel: Rhett Shull

Views: 70,793

Rating: 4.9049377 out of 5

Keywords: Rhett Shull, Guitar Pedals, Guitar, Electric Guitar, Pedal Board, beginner, essential guitar pedals, guitar pedals for beginners, pedal essentials, guitar pedals you need, guitar effects, best distortion pedal, guitar pedals setup, guitar tone, overdrive pedal, reverb pedal, delay pedal, chorus pedal, flange pedal, guides, tutorial, guitar pedals 2021, new to pedals, pedal demo, pedals for beginners, new pedals, guitar gear, beginner guitar pedal, beginner guitar pedals

Id: PI4Syx97GdY

Length: 19min 38sec (1178 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 04 2021