Guitar Effects Tech Tips

Tech Tip - Using Effects Effectively
By Gary Allen

So you went out and bought your favorite band's new CD. You were listening to it and enjoying it, when something on track 4 caught your attention. You ask yourself, "How did he/she get that sound out of that guitar?" Maybe it was a crystal clear clean riff or a down and dirty distortion that just screamed. Chances are that you just heard effects used in the studio. But what effects were used to get that great sound? In the next few weeks I am going to try to sort that out for you. This is part one of "Using Effects Effectively."

What are effects? Effects can be anything used to alter the pure sound of an instrument or voice. In early days outdoor theaters were designed in such a way that would give the voices or the music the most dynamic range of volume possible. This way a larger crowd could enjoy the music without amplification that did not exist back then. When musical recording was in its younger days studios would use the room environment to create effects as well as manually manipulating tape as it played. With the boom in digital technology today a small home studio can outfit itself with a mind-boggling amount of different effects for a small price compared to 10-20 years ago when only multimillion-dollar studios could afford them. One example of this would be an Aurial Exciter. Studios could rent this unit for about $10,000 a week. Now you can buy one for your home studio for about $200. You can buy a dedicated effects unit for one type of effect with multiple settings or a unit with multiple effects that can be chained together. And lets not forget about stomp boxes. They are small effect units themselves.

One quick note about effects before we get started. You cannot set up your effects in your practice area and expect them to sound the same in the club you will be playing at this weekend. Room environments change the dynamics of your effects. Allow yourself plenty of time to set up your equipment and tweak your effects at the club before you start playing. If you don't, you can have a disastrous show and may not be invited back to that club again. Remember that every club is a different room environment. It is best to keep a notebook on how you set up your effects at each club in case you play there again.

Now let's talk about specific effects.

Echo Effects:

Reverb:
I thought that "Reverb" would be a good place to start since it is built-in to most guitar amplifiers on the market today. Reverb is an echo effect reminiscent to sound you get when you are overlooking a canyon and can't resist the urge to shout "hello" and hear it echo back at you. This probably makes reverb one of the first sound-altering effects known to man. If you want an example of reverb, turn the reverb knob all the way up on your guitar and strum it. Immediately deaden the strings with your hand and you should hear the echo reverberate from the speaker.

In the early days of recording reverb was done in different ways. One way was to place a microphone at one end of the room and another close to the speaker cabinet. You would then record the guitar on two tracks and play them back together giving a sort of echo effect. If the effect needed to be tweaked or changed the engineer would move the microphones or speakers around the room until the desired effect was achieved. Another way of achieving reverb is to place the microphone and amp in a bathroom. We have all sung in the shower before and thought we sounded pretty good, right? Bathrooms are small rooms usually with hard walls that reflect sound instead of absorbing it. I have read articles on bands that still record their albums like this.

There are many units available today that re-create multiple environments for reverb. The Alesis MidiVerb4® is an example of one of these units. It lets you sound like you are playing anywhere from a stadium to a closet and anywhere in-between. I use this particular unit mostly for vocals and acoustic guitar. It can be used effectively on electric guitars, bass, drums, and keyboards also.

There are many types of reverbs that you may run across in your search for the best sound for you. Two of the most common are spring reverb and plate reverb. I am not going to go into the differences right now but if anyone wants to know more about them let me know.

Note:
As a general rule of thumb to little reverb is always better than too much. Too much reverb in the mix can make the sound muddy and drown out vocals and other instruments.

Delay:
Delay is probably one of the most valuable effects. It is the building block that many other effects such as reverb, flange and chorus are built from. A delay is basically what the name says. It is a delay of the original signal of the guitar that plays at a set time after the original notes or chord is sounded. It can range from milliseconds to several seconds depending on how you set the time parameters. When set at several seconds you can actually solo over yourself.

Slapback delay is probably the most commonly used and can range from 30 milliseconds to 100 milliseconds.

Chorus:
Chorus is a version of delay and is my favorite effect for clean sounds. Chorus gives the impression of multiple instruments playing the same part. The unit puts a very small delay in the signal and depending on the amount of delay it detunes the echo to give the effect that another guitar is playing with you. This effect adds a sparkle and clarity to your sound. There are chorus units that have multiple delays and detunes that can really get interesting.

Flange and Phase Shifters:
Flange, as I understand it, was created by accident in a studio. It was found that if you played back a reel-to-reel tape of the guitar track, held up the reel with your hand, and then let it go, it would catch up with the other tracks causing what would become known as flanging. The best way I can describe this effect is that it's like riding a roller coaster. You go up the hill slowly (the engineer holds the reel back with his hand) and when you hit the top you pause for a millisecond and then you rush to the bottom very quickly (the engineer lets go of the reel to let it catch up with where it should be). Then you start up the hill again slowly (the engineer holds it with his hand again) to do it all over again. The other instrument tracks would be played normally and the guitar track would be held up and let go to catch up at regular interverals throughout the track. This created a "whooshing sound" on the guitar track kind of like a jet engine.

Thanks to electronic and digital technology we can reproduce this effect with stomp boxes and multi effects called flangers. Flange moves in and out at a constant and steady predetermined speed that you set.

Phase shifters are like flangers except they have multiple flanges going on at the same time and sometimes with no predetermined speed. Both are great additions to any guitar player's setup.

A couple of things you need to remember about using effects in general. There are no set rules on how to use these effects. You can use just one or you can use a combination of all of them. While the echo effects are similar in ways they have their own distinct differences that can complement one another in a mix. Play around with them and have fun. You never know what you will come up with.

All the effects I have mentioned have their own parameters that can be adjusted giving you a full range of variations to play with. You can find your own signature sound by using what you like from each one.

Effects can improve the sound of your guitar and sometimes can make you think you are playing better. They can cover small mistakes, but I urge you not to use them for this. That is not the intended purpose of effects. You should be able to play a part cleanly with good technique before you start adding effects. I sometimes play my guitar parts without effects just to make sure I still have good playing techniques and proper positioning. If you can play it clean, it will sound even better with effects.

Note:
If you use compression and gates always put your reverb and delay behind the gates in the effects chain so they fade out naturally instead of being cut off by the gate.

Compressors:
What does a compressor do? Compression is arguably the effect most misused by guitarists. This misuse is probably because many players do not understand what compression is or what it does. When a new guitar player gets hold of a new effects unit they expect that it is going to alter the sound of the guitar in a very noticeable way. A compressor is not this kind of effect. Think of it as a ghost in the shadow of the effects chain. If you weren't looking very hard for it you would not even notice that it was there.

You may be asking yourself why you would want to spend money on an effect that was hard to even notice. Let's look at it another way. Imagine that you are making your favorite recipe. You add all your main ingredients but it still needs a pinch of salt to make it just right. You don't really taste the salt by itself but it makes all the difference in the world in the flavor. In the same way that the salt made the recipe, compression can make your guitar mix. Think of all the other effects like reverb, distortion, delay, etc.. as the main ingredients. Now add a pinch of compression and you have an award-winning recipe for sound.

So what exactly is a compressor? A compressor is a signal processor that is used to reduce the dynamic range between the softest and loudest parts of the audio signal. Think of the sound of your guitar as a wave. There is a peak where it is at its highest level and a trough where it is at its lowest. In the example below you will see a signal wave with two lines running through it. The upper line represents the highest peak you can go to before your signal distorts or clips. We'll call this the ceiling. The lower line represents the quieter or lower part of the signal that either is inaudible or gets drowned out by the rest of the band playing. We'll call this the floor.

Compression can be used on any single instrument or on the mix as a whole. Many bands and studios use compression on vocals because of the dynamic range of the human voice. Very high notes take more power to belt out and will sound louder than the low notes that sound softer because of the lack of power used to hit them. Using the compressor will make the singer have a more consistent range of volume. It also works great for live applications where the singer is constantly moving his head toward and away from the microphone. Bass players use compression to make a smoother-sounding transition between notes.

One of the benefits of compression on a guitar is the longer sustain of notes or chords. As the signal is starting to dip below the floor, the compressor will open up and let more signal through. This will allow the signal to be audible longer resulting in more sustain.

You will need to set up four main parameters on a compressor. These parameters are the compression ratio, threshold level, attack time, and the release time. The compression ratio sets the level of compression that will take place once the signal reaches the threshold. A 3:1 compression ratio would mean that for every 3dB of signal above the threshold there would only be a 1dB increase at the output. The threshold level is the level the signal needs to reach in order for the compressor to kick in and start working. The attack time is the amount of time it will take the compressor to react to the incoming signal. The release time is the amount of time it takes for the compressor to allow the signal to return to a normal level.

There are two main types of compression—hard knee and soft knee. The knee is the moment that the compressor starts to reduce the gain when the signal reaches the threshold. Hard-knee compression cuts the signal off abruptly when it reaches the threshold point. Soft knee is a smoother gain reduction that lets the sound taper off at the threshold point. Most good compressors on the market today let you switch between hard knee and soft knee.

It is very important to understand that compression can be overused and cause your signal to sound flat and weak. Just remember the analogy above. It is a seasoning, not a main ingredient.

Limiters:
Limiters are quite similar to compressors. As we talked about earlier, a compressor reduces louder signals of your instrument. Unlike a compressor, a limiter completely cuts the signal off at the threshold. It is a great device to save your sound system from hitting levels that can damage or destroy it. It will not let your signal go above the maximum level you set. So unlike a compressor, the limiter is only going to deal with the louder levels of your signal.

Expanders:
Expanders are completely the opposite of compressors. Whereas a compressor is going to reduce your signal into a set parameter, the expander is going to widen that signal within set parameters. Why would you want to do that? An example of the use of an expander would be finger-sliding sounds on an acoustic guitar. Let's say that you have the finger-sliding sound coming through your mix on the lower end of the audible signal. If you expand or exaggerate the signal dynamic width, it will push this sound further down into the mix so it will not be so pronounced. Another example would be breathing sounds from a singer at the microphone. Again if the signal is expanded it pushes unwanted sounds further down the audible signal. An expander is usually used to reduce unwanted background noise in the mix.

Gates:
A gate works like a limiter but at the other end of the signals dynamic range. A gate cuts the signal off below the set parameters level. Unlike the compressor which pulls the lower level sounds up, a gate chops it off completely. Like an expander it is used to keep unwanted background noise out of the mix. One very common use of gates is miked drums. When the drums are miked up individually, you do not want other drums sounds bleeding into the wrong microphones. The gates cut off the signals bleeding over from other drums and clean up the mix. This is effective in keeping the cymbal sounds from bleeding over onto the tom tracks. It is used most dynamically on the snare drum mic and hi-hat mic because of their close proximity. Gates work well with guitar for eliminating the hiss and unwanted noise heard when the instrument is not being played.

So where should these effects be put in the effects chain?
There are two schools of thought on where to put compression in the effects chain. The first is that it should be at the beginning, so a smooth clean signal hits all of the other effects. I do not buy into this method personally because I know that some effects are going to cause the signal to clip again. The method I like is to put it after all the effects except the echo effects like reverb, delay, chorus, and flange. I want to compress all the effects in the signal but let the reverb-type effects fade out naturally. Both methods work for different people so you will want to try them both and see which works best for you. These methods also apply to limiters and enhancers. As far as a noise gate goes, I like them at the end of the effect chain so they cancel out any residual noise caused by the effects unit, especially flange. Flange has a tendency to cause a lot of background noise when the guitar is not being played. Although these effects do not make drastic changes in the sound of the guitar I hope everyone grasped their importance.

Now let's talk about some of the fun stuff. The effects that make drastic changes to your sound. Let's start with Gain, Overdrive, and Distortion. First off, I would like to dispel the popular myth that gain, overdrive, and distortion are the same thing. This is for all the new players who are just getting familiar with effects terminology. You can search books and the Internet and probably find as many different definitions for these three terms as there are people writing about them. I want to be kind of generic here and leave my musical preference out of it because, after all, you need to find your own style for the music you play.

Gain:
Gain by itself is technically not an effect but more a parameter used to describe the overall boost in your signal in decibels without changing your tonal qualities. Essentially it is a volume control. Sometimes you will see gain as a parameter on a stomp box. By playing with this parameter you will see that when the effect is engaged the signal will be boosted with the effect. Many lead players use this function so that when the effect is off and they are playing rhythm, the guitar blends with the other music. When they do their solo they will engage the effect and the gain will lift the guitar above the other music and let it stand out in the mix. You will want to be careful however if you have multiple stomp boxes with gain settings. If you add more gain to every effects box and use multiple boxes at once you can end up blowing your audience out the back wall of the room, as well as drowning out the rest of the band. You don't really want a battered and bruised crowd unless there is a mosh pit at the gig.

Overdrive:
Overdrive is also a parameter that you may see on some effect boxes. This is generally described as the warm distorted sound that you get from cranking a tube amp's volume up. You can change the dynamics of overdrive just by the way that you play. If you play softly on the strings the overdrive does not show up much but if you start to play harder the overdrive starts coming through. This makes overdrive a very dynamic effect. It is a slightly distorted sound that can really add to the overall tone you are looking for in your playing style. So you don't have a tube amp, and even if you did, you can't turn it up loud enough in your apartment complex to get the overdrive sound. What do you do? There are stomp boxes on the market today that allow you to get an overdrive sound at lower volumes. I have used the Tube Screamer stomp box and really enjoyed the sounds I got from it. It utilizes an actual tube in the stomp box to give you the tube overdrive sound. This is probably one of the most widely used overdrive effects units on the market today.

Distortion:
Distortion can be one of the most difficult effects to choose. There are hundreds of different distortion effects on the market today and a new guitar player looking for his new sound is going to have a brain aneurysm trying to decide which one to get. What makes distortion stand out from the other effects we have dealt with so far is the fact that there is no standard in distortion stomp boxes. For example, if you buy two different chorus stomp boxes and set the parameters the same, you are going to get almost the same sound with very little variance in effect. Sure, you may notice some subtle differences, but the standards for these types of effects are very close from manufacturer to manufacturer. This is not the case with distortion stomp boxes. Not all distortion pedals are created equally. Distortion can be hugely different from manufacturer to manufacturer, and even from model to model in the same manufacturer's line. Do not despair. There are some ways to sort through this crazy maze of sound. Let's break down how to select the right distortion for you.

The first thing you need to do is figure out what kind of distortion you are looking for. This is based on the kind of music you are going to play, whether it be grunge, classic rock, heavy metal, modern rock, country (yes even country has distortion), or any other of the many styles of guitar playing out there. Once you figure this out you are on your way to choosing the right distortion for you. The best way to find your dream distortion is to start weeding-out the ones that are not right for your style.

What is in a name? The best place to start your weeding-out process is by reading the descriptive name on the units you are looking at. For example, if you are a blues or country player you may want to avoid stomp boxes that have words in their description such as "Death," "Metal," "Grind," "Grunge," "Atomic," "Nuclear," and "Atom Splitter." These are definately not going to shape your sound to your taste and would more than likely be a waste of time to even check out. Check them off your list. If you are a metal or grunge player you will want to avoid units with descriptive words like "Blues," "Warm," "Fuzz," and even "Overdrive" unless it is preceded by a word like "Death," "Metal," "Grind," etc. Now keep in mind that all the different pedal manufacturers are trying to outdo each other in their descriptions so some pedals may not even give you a clue as to where they fall in this mix. Those you are not sure of, you should check out. By following this simple step of name analyzing you can probably cut your selection process in half or better.

Another way to help in your selection process is to remember that most tube distortions will have a warmer and smoother tone while solid state distortions have more edge to them. This does not mean to discount them for this property, but it is another reference you can use while weeding the less desirables out.

Can you select a stomp box based on the name alone? The answer to that question is yes, but I do not recommend it. Not all distortion pedals are created equal. You may find two pedals from two different manufacturers with similar names. This does not mean that they will sound similar in any way, shape, or form. You need to try them out before you buy. You can check with friends about borrowing pedals they may own to try them out or you can go to the music store and try them. When going to a music store to try out pedals, you will want to play through a setup as close as possible to what you have at home. You cannot go to the music store and pick out a premium $5000 guitar and play it through a $3000 amp and then take the pedal home and play through your $200 guitar with the $300 amp and expect to get the same results. By the same token, you can not play through a guitar with humbucker pickups at the music store and expect the same results with your single-coil pickups at home. One good way to get around this is to take your guitar to the music store and select an amp close to what you have at home to play through. Better yet, take your amp too. Call the store and tell them what you are doing and ask if they mind if you bring your own gear in. Most stores will be willing to do this.

When you get around to trying a different pedal always start with the unity gain control at "0." This will allow you to hear what the pedal does to your sound without an increase in volume. This is important because you want to hear the pedal's nuances before you crank it up. This is what will set the bar. Now start playing with the controls and see what you can come up with. Do not change your amp settings for different pedals. Set it up once to get your favorite tone before you start and then don't touch it. If you do, you will be skewing the results of your testing. The distortion unit should sound good with your clean tone. If it does not sound good, you will have to sacrifice your favorite clean tone for the distorted tone. You need to find something that will work with the clean tone you like to use so that everything sounds good when you are switching between the stomp box in the on position and off position.

Now at this point you have probably weeded out the units that you did not like. I suggest that you make a list of two or three that you really like and one or two probables. If you're impatient and need a pedal to take home right now, select the one you like best and buy it. If you have a little more patience, I suggest that you take a break for at least an hour or so and go do something else that is away from a lot of noise. I suggest this simply because your hearing degrades over time when being assaulted with sound. If you take a break for awhile you can come back with fresh ears to try your favorites again. This will help you to select the one that sounds best to you.

Wait, what about those of us who play many different styles of music? There are two choices here. You can select a couple of different pedals for the different styles or you can go with a multieffect unit that has a couple of distortion choices. I use a rack-mounted Digitech 2120 unit that has seven or eight different distortions to choose from. It gives me all the possibilities that I need at this point in my playing journey.

Can you use two distortion stomp boxes together? If you get the tone you want by doing this, go for it. In music, the end always justifies the means when it comes to the tone you like and want to play.

In the prior section of this document, I made mention of a stomp box with a tube in it. I called it as the "Tube Screamer." A few people pointed out to me that the "Tube Screamer" does not have a tube in it. I believe the pedal I was referring to was actually called the "Blues Tube." I do not remember the name for sure. It was many years ago that I had it. I do remember that it was a dark blue pedal with yellow writing on it. Sorry for any confusion I may have caused.

Aphex Systems was the pioneer of aural excitement when they came out with the first Aural Exciters in 1975. These units rented to studios for $30.00(USD) per minute of finished recording time. If you figure that the average record back then was approximately 40 minutes it would have cost the studio $1,200.00 to use the Aural Exciter in the production of just one album. Obviously not too many home studios were using these units. Aphex decided that there was a greater market out there than just rentals to major studios and so they came out with two rackmount versions of the Aural Exciter that were affordable for people just like you and me.

Aphex Systems has recently introduced the Xciter stomp boxes for bass guitar, acoustic instruments, and electric guitars. Wayne La Farr and Linda Frank at Aphex Systems were good enough to send me the acoustic and the guitar versions of these pedals to try out and tell you about.

The 1401 Acoustic Xciter and the 1403 Guitar Xciter

So just what does an Aural Exciter do and what is the Xciter series all about? First, you need to understand that when you record a sound or amplify it you lose some of the high and low harmonics. One example of this would be to take a tape and make a copy of it. Now take the copy you just made and make a copy of that. You will notice that the sound of each copy gets worse and worse. This is because part of what you are losing with every copy is harmonics. This is also true when you reproduce a sound through an amplifier or sound system. It happens with any instrument as well as with the human voice.

I personally have noticed this on acoustic guitars because I have heard how they sound played unplugged and then heard the same instruments played through a sound system or amplifier. I always felt there was something missing when they were reproduced through an amplification system. They always seemed to lack life. The electric guitar is a different story. Because you hear an electric guitar plugged in, you get used to that sound and accept that that is what an electric guitar sounds like. Where you will notice a difference on the electric guitar is when you are trying to copy the sound of your favorite guitar player who was recorded through an Aural Exciter in a studio. You may feel that you just can not get the tone he did no matter what you do with your gear. You may chalk it up to the fact they had better gear than you, but I would not bank on it until you try the Xciter in your effects chain.

Now that you understand that sound degrades when it is reproduced, I will talk about what the Xciters do to help out your sound. The Aural Exciter in tandem with the Big Bottom that makes up the Xciter pedal will analyze the sound and re-create harmonics that are missing, blending them back into your original sound. What's great about the Exciter is that it is essentially two units in one stomp box. The Aural Exciter makes up one half of the unit while the Big Bottom makes up the other half. The Aural Exciter adds the harmonics on the high end while the Big Bottom does its magic on the low end of the spectrum. I really like the fact that you can adjust these separately and you won't have to settle for a sound somewhere in the middle of the two. The controls for each are completely separate from one another allowing you to dial in as much low end and high end as you prefer.

The controls on these units are set up for ease of use. The Aural Exciter section has two controls. The Hi Tune sets the lower frequency limit for enhancement on the high end. The unit will enhance any frequency above this setting. The Hi Blend lets you mix in the amount of aural excitement you want from zero up to the maximum available. You also have two controls for the Big Bottom section. These are the "Lo Tune" and "Lo Blend." The Lo Tune sets the high frequency limit for bass. Anything lower than this setting will be enhanced. The Lo Blend allows you to control the amount of enhancement to the lower frequencies from zero to the maximum available. The effect of these units is a broader, fuller sound that projects itself through the mix. It is really quit incredible when you hear the difference for yourself.

What sets these units apart from the compressors and expanders that I talked about in Part 2 is the fact that they don't squash your sound or boost it. Compressors, limiters, gates, and expanders do little to change the original sound of the instrument's harmonic details. They work with whatever harmonics you already have and create a reduction in the dynamic range of the sound wave to keep it within the set parameters. The Xciter actually adds harmonic detail to the sound giving you a wider tonal response without boosting the signal. This allows you to hear all the details of the sound without boosting the volume and adding stress to your amplifier or speakers. It also allows you to hear a quality signal at a lower volume setting.

One of the huge benefits of these units is the way they cut back on the need to use equalization. I have probably read a hundred articles in my lifetime about equalization, all of which stressed that when using EQ, less is better. When you EQ, you are really selecting specific frequency ranges and trying to balance the sound of these ranges. Because the Xciter adds back in harmonic frequencies, you will find that you will not need to balance those frequency ranges as much. That is a huge plus for people who have a difficult time with EQs. We will talk about equalizers in Part 5 of this series and I will expand on this issue.

Now that you know what and how these units work, let's talk about some of the great features that Aphex added to these awesome little boxes that you won't find on most other stomp boxes. These units have a selector button on the back panel for active or passive pickups. You will want to set this to match your instrument's pickup type so that you get the best level and impedance for your rig.

They also feature a high quality D.I. output with a ground lift switch. A D.I. output is a balanced signal that you can connect to the microphone input of any preamp or mixing board. It gives your guitar a more natural and fuller signal than an unbalanced line will. These units also have a ground lift button. Neither I nor Aphex recommend lifting the ground unless it does make a noticeable difference by eliminating hums or buzz from your system. I personally prefer not to lift the ground on any musical equipment. I recommend using a power conditioner. I use the PL-Plus from Furman Sound for this purpose and it has worked beyond my expectations in eliminating hum and buzz from the unwanted RF signals that cause them. This does not mean that you should never use the ground lift option. That is why it is there for you. If you need to eliminate hum or buzz then go ahead. Just don't use it unecessarily.

The Xciters also have external power capability. Almost any stompbox power supply with a matching plug will work. Aphex does make a power adapter for these units. They also run on a 9V battery. Aphex says that you can get 100-150 hours of continuous use from a fresh alkaline battery. Just make sure that you unplug the input from the instrument when you are not playing. If you leave the instrument plugged in when not playing the battery will continue to drain.