NOOB...what pedals to get??

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applescruff

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OK...so I used to be a drummer who pretends to be a guitarist. Intermediate skills at best but looking to expand my sound possibilites. I just scored one of those Vox 4W head/cab units (my first tube amp) and looking for advise on what would be the top 3 pedals to get started with. My music taste range from 60's Beatles/Stones to Yo la Tenga and everything in between. My guitars are an Epi Casino and a Fender Tele.

Any thoughts/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
 
I don't know what pedals to suggest, but if you are serious about continuing to play guitar then I would suggest getting better pedals from the start instead of buying into the budget profit-margin oriented things like Boss and Ibanez have going. I have cycled thru dozens of pedals and have gradually drifted toward the better quality more expensive pedals, enough so that I look back and wish I woulda bought the good ones in the first place. On the other hand, if I hadn't cycled thru the budget stuff and doing my own mods, then I might not appreciate how good are the pedals I have now.

So with that in mind, I would suggest - for roughly the same money or just a bit more - looking at Barber and CMATMODS stuff rather than getting into Boss and the Guitar Center wheel of pedals. Rule of thumb, if Guitar Center sells it then you can probably count on getting rid of it and graduating to something better in the future. If you can solder then at least go for the mint used stuff and install Monte Allums or Pedalhackers kits on them, even that will create drastic improvements. Boss pedals are the easiest to work on, Ibanez is my second choice for mods but they are not as tinker-friendly as Boss. Older MXR's are usually easy to mod, also.

If I were going to suggest, and if I assume you are not doing heavy metal, then I would suggest a good compressor (modded CS3 or CMATMODS Signa), a good low to medium gain over drive (CMATMODS Butah or Signa, or a modded TubeScreamer), and a good flanger (modded BF2) or delay (DE7 or AD9) for starters. Hard to get much more versatility than that with a small watt amp.

If you get a working AD9 and you dont like it, I will buy it from you.
 
I think that with a tube amp, the most fun pedal you can get is a good overdrive. I use an Ibanez TS9, which is really a great pedal for me. There are more overdrive pedals out there than you can shake a stick at, but the TS9 is definitely in the upper echelon and well-priced at $100.

Other than that, it just depends on what kinds of sounds you want to get. It's better to have some sound in mind and then try to get the pedal that achieves it. It's a little tough to just buy a few pedals for the sake of buying them.

The OD is different though. It's such a fun effect for a tube amp, I just think that everybody needs one :)

And on the topic of pedal quality, I think that at your current level of experience, you're not going to find many problems with Boss or Ibanez pedals. Maybe those "sound tank" grey cheapo Ibanez pedals will be noticably lower quality than others, but really even cheapo pedals get the job done. Heck, even those terrible little Danelectro pedals get some pretty good reviews from people who know what to expect from them. The main thing you're buying with more expensive pedals is silence. Cheaper pedals tend to be a little noisier, and when you chain several of them together that noise can really stack up. The actual quality of the effect itself will improve with price as well (mostly) but really, if these are your first ever pedals, I don't really see the point in buying top-shelf effects boxes for $250 apiece when a good ol' $75 pedal from a major manufacturer will do the job.

Plus I'm kind of a Boss fanboy. I think they have a great bang-for-the-buck. Good effects for a good price. Great switches, reliable, and you can find them anywhere.
 
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Really great responses above.

I would add this...

Think about what kind of sounds you are looking for.

FX falls into categories i.e. overdrive/distortion/clean boosts/compressors are basically amplifiers.

Wah wahs, autowahs, eq's, phase-shifters, tremelos, etc. are filters of one sort or another.

Reverbs, flangers, choruses, and delays are time-based. The short delay times used in flangers and choruses creates comb-filtering. Add an LFO and you can modulate different aspects of the filtering.

There are lots of examples where these categories are combined in stomp boxes.

With Youtube and product demos readily available you can either hear how the manufacturer wants you to hear their product or how end users are getting on with them as well.

Harmony Central reviews are another good place to get ideas about FX.

Once you understand how all the different types of effects work then it's about trying to figure out which ones have the features you'll find most useful and sound the best. I especially like MoogerFoogers because of the high-quality signal path and build combined with the abilty to use expression pedals and control voltages between the pedals to make them VERY interactive.
 
Tadpui said:
And on the topic of pedal quality, I think that at your current level of experience, you're not going to find many problems with Boss or Ibanez pedals. Maybe those "sound tank" grey cheapo Ibanez pedals will be noticably lower quality than others, but really even cheapo pedals get the job done. Heck, even those terrible little Danelectro pedals get some pretty good reviews from people who know what to expect from them. The main thing you're buying with more expensive pedals is silence. Cheaper pedals tend to be a little noisier, and when you chain several of them together that noise can really stack up. The actual quality of the effect itself will improve with price as well (mostly) but really, if these are your first ever pedals, I don't really see the point in buying top-shelf effects boxes for $250 apiece when a good ol' $75 pedal from a major manufacturer will do the job.

Plus I'm kind of a Boss fanboy. I think they have a great bang-for-the-buck. Good effects for a good price. Great switches, reliable, and you can find them anywhere.
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Great advice,expensive stuff should sound better,but doesn't always.I've heard lots and lots of great recordings on this board made with what some people call "cheap" equipment.If you can't get good tones from a Boss pedal,chances are a $200 pedal isn't going to help much.

When your tastes are refined AND you have the money,that's the time to go boutique.

Guitar tone is strictly opinion,there is no right or wrong.
 
Guys...awesome feedback...thanks!! I never even thought of YouTube as a reference...great idea. My past experience with most things is to try and get the best quality I can afford but there seems to be a pretty good consensus for some of the "cheapo" stuff...I do know that any unwanted noise/buzzing will annoy the crap out of me so we'll see...
Appears that an overdrive may be in my immediate future and I'm a big fan of delay/flanger type stuff so I'll look into one of those as well.

Cheers.
 
i second the TS9 suggestion.. its quiet.. straight forward but a good range of overdrive to mediocre distortions.. (and future room for mod!).. if ur into more a distortion sound u CANT go wrong with a DS1.... cheap and very natural

for delay/flanger i personally would stay away from boss pedals (esp the newer releases) as they sound very digital and not natural at all.. i have a carl martin red repeat (or seomthing along those lines).. and i love it.. sound very natrual, cheap, and many settings to play with..

a nice reverb goes a long way as well.. the wet sound just lets u indulge in it a lot more than dry... i suggest one of the electro harmonix ranges

or maybe a wah! they are just endless fun.. i personally have a ibanez WD7 but i've found it only sounds good on heavier stuff.. for cleaner stuff i prefer the VOX (forgot their basic model number).. they new ones are made in china but u can hunt around for the made in england 2nd hand for about the same price.. i have a made in england one but i havnt had a chance to try the Made in china one yet so cant compare (but i doubt there would be much diff)..

have fun!
 
applescruff said:
OK...so I used to be a drummer who pretends to be a guitarist. Intermediate skills at best but looking to expand my sound possibilites. I just scored one of those Vox 4W head/cab units (my first tube amp) and looking for advise on what would be the top 3 pedals to get started with. My music taste range from 60's Beatles/Stones to Yo la Tenga and everything in between. My guitars are an Epi Casino and a Fender Tele.

Any thoughts/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...

delay, distortion, tremolo.

s
 
My opinion is that you should work for a while without pedals and see what kind of sound you can build with just the guitar and amp, and get some technique happening. Pedals are great for building on a sound, but IMO you should establish a foundation without them first; otherwise they are a crutch.
 
haymedic said:
delay, distortion, tremolo.
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Yeah, you can't really go wrong there. You can get a brand new Electro Harmonix Memory Boy for $100 if you know where to look (hint: Amazon.) It's (as I understand it) 100% analog and the demos I've seen/heard sound great. Mine is on it's way. A good trem can give you some really great sounds. Your cheap ones will only allow you to control the rate and depth but the higher end ones will allow you to control the wave as well (ie square wave or sine) (I think it's sine, not sure though.) With the AC4 (depending on the type of music you want to play) I don't know that you need a disortion pedal. Just learn to use your volume pot on the guitar. Set your volume on the guitar back to about 8 or so. Then set your amp to the point where it is almost breaking up or starts to break up if you really dig in. Then if/when you want to overdrive/distort your sound bumpr your volume up to ten. This wont give a terribly noticeable boost in volume, but will give you some drive. (Experiment with the volume levels, don't rely on my numbers. But you get the point.)

Putting a volume pedal in front of your delay unit (or learning to really work your volume knob) can be really cool. Back when I had a digital delay I stuck a volume pedal in front, tapped in my tempo and swept from 0-100% volume. I was expecting the swell to repeat, but I hit so that it sounded like an organ instead. The delay just repeated the chord, with no attack, and as the sound died out, I pushed out another chord. Very cool (at least I thought it was.)

So yeah, experiment.






















ps lets hear it for my 600th "non-cave" post!!!! w00t!!!
 
kwokwok said:
i second the TS9 suggestion.. its quiet.. straight forward but a good range of overdrive to mediocre distortions.. (and future room for mod!).. if ur into more a distortion sound u CANT go wrong with a DS1.... cheap and very natural

for delay/flanger i personally would stay away from boss pedals (esp the newer releases) as they sound very digital and not natural at all.. i have a carl martin red repeat (or seomthing along those lines).. and i love it.. sound very natrual, cheap, and many settings to play with..

a nice reverb goes a long way as well.. the wet sound just lets u indulge in it a lot more than dry... i suggest one of the electro harmonix ranges

or maybe a wah! they are just endless fun.. i personally have a ibanez WD7 but i've found it only sounds good on heavier stuff.. for cleaner stuff i prefer the VOX (forgot their basic model number).. they new ones are made in china but u can hunt around for the made in england 2nd hand for about the same price.. i have a made in england one but i havnt had a chance to try the Made in china one yet so cant compare (but i doubt there would be much diff)..

have fun!
Click to expand...

Actually yeah, I agree with pretty much all of that. I LOVE my TS9, I just love the textures I can get with it at its different settings. I recently got an MXR 10-band EQ, stuck it right after the TS9 and now I have a very specifically tailored distortion sound that I truly love.

And as much as I love Boss pedals, you're right, I have the BF3 Flanger and it really doesn't sound like what I consider a flanger should. It's stereo capability is cool, as is the gate/pan, and even the "super flanger" setting is OK for the occasional freakout, but as a basic flanger, it was a disappointment.

If the amp doesn't have a reverb, then yeah a reverb pedal is almost a requirement. I only refrained from recommending it because I didn't consider that his amp might not have an integrated reverb. Dry guitar is great for recording, but if I'm jamming or playing live, I gotta have some reverb!

And ever since I got my Crybaby Wah a few months ago, I've fallen in love all over again with the effect. I had one in high school that fried within a year, and I've gone all these years without one. I never really got to know it in our short time together. I found one used a few months ago and I tell you what, I'm having the time of my life coaxing all sorts of different effects out of this thing. Doing the Mick Ronson "pick a position and leave it", the "attack every note with a wah swell", the "whacka-whacka-whacka" funky thing, or just adding some subtle expression to a solo, it's all so much fun.

So yeah, the reverb and wah are a couple of other really useful and/or fun effects to have in your pedalboard. I'd put a reverb slightly higher in priority than a delay at first just because it's one of those things that I tend to use all the time (either subtly or for a conspicuous effect).

But as much fun as these stomp boxes are, it probably is still a good idea to develop your technique, your tone, and your expectations with your first tube amp for a whie. THEN dive into the thousands of stomp boxes on Musician's Friend and drool over a few dozen boxes that you'll never be able to afford. I do it all the time :-D

Good luck, and have fun!
 
I'd go with:

Ibanez or Maxon Tubescreamer (light crunch)
ProCo Rat (heavier distortion)
Boss DD-5 with external tap tempo

later on, you can add

Line6 DL4 delay/looper
Volume pedal
 
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