| I'd also appreciate a beginners guide to effects boxes. For instance,
what they can do, what a basic one is, what part do pedals play etc etc
etc.
Buying an electric guitar last year seems to have opened up a new range
of possibilities for me to spend money on (much to my wife's concern!).
Richard
Basingstoke, UK
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At the official TONE note in this notesfile. A number of us have
been thru pedals, multi-FX units, midi control, 10 kinds of
guitars, 80 flavors of pickups, a dozen brands of strings, amps,
speakers... only to return to running a Les Paul thru a Marshall
with nothing but raw amp & guitar.
Please keep us posted. I've been getting my equipment trills
vicariously in these notes....
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| Yep, like Mr Bennett, I've gone off and bought loads of effects processors.
Less is definately more....
Althought I still have a little "more" than a Gibson and a Marshall...
I basically have a preamp and poweramp and a noise reducer (Hush)...
Sometimes I use a DSP128... Even that is a little overkill since
I use one algorhytym only and one patch on top of that.
Never again will I got the route of "Hey my box can do 666 FX at once!"
The K*I*S*S principle definately applies here...
jc
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I thought that there was already a note in here that described what
the common effects are and what they are used for, but a dir/tit
didn't dredge it up, oh well.
There are a couple of basic effects groups:
1. Distortion
I think everyone knows what this is and what it's for. Only about a
zillion boxes out there to do this.
2. Time Delay
Lotsa stuff here. Reverb and echo, of course, based on simple delaying
of signals. If you then *modulate* the delay time (i.e. the delay
time is constantly changing over a fixed range) you get phasing,
flanging, chorus, vibrato, etc. type effects. At short delay times,
the effect creates a "shimmer" or "Whoosh" type of sound which is
caused by various harmonics in the input signal being accentuated over
time. Also most harmonizers and pitch shifters are actually based on
time delays; these allow you to input a signal at one pitch and have
different pitches come out. Most of these effects are now done
digitally for better fidelity and greater versatility, but the analog
versions tend to sound "warmer" and can be better in certain
applications.
3. Amplitude Correction
Compression, which makes quiet signals louder and loud signals quieter,
is the best known of these. Also, expansion, which is the *opposite*
of compression. Limiting is basically compression where you *don't*
boost quiet signals but severely clamp the level of loud signals. Also
included here would be noise gates and noise reduction devices, which
as their names suggest are used to remove noise (primarily hiss) from
your signal.
4. Equalizers
Fancy word for tone controls. Parametric EQs let you adjust at what
frequency adjustments are made. True parametrics also offer control
over how *wide* a range of frequencies the adjustment will be made, so
called "pseudo-parametric" EQs often omit this. Graphic EQs have three
or more fixed bands of EQ. They are not as versatile as parametrics,
but if they have lots of bands can come quite close.
5. Miscellaneous
Wah wah pedals, which are actually a sweepable tone control; envelope
followers, which allow you to control tone by the attack of your notes
(sort of like an automatic wah pedal, listen to mid-70s soul and disco
records for this effect); aural enhancers/exciters add additional
harmonic content (read: more treble and presence) to your signal to
make it sound punchier; octave dividers regenerate your signal one
octave below where you are playing.
Brian
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