I have a distortion pedal, now what?

Question

I have a simple distortion pedal from Danelectro, the coolcat series.
I don't think it's sucky or anything, it's actually quite decent.

Anyway so I play in a band, lead guitar. We play anything from Acoustic style to Pop, pop punk, rock and rock funk stuff and we also just jam out for the fun of it.
We can actually play metal too, this pedal can somewhat mimic the heaviness of Metal but anyway that's not the point.

What I'm saying is, after getting this pedal, I don't know how to continue adding pedals to improve my tone and quality for playing in those genres I mentioned.

Answer 1

Do some Google searches, or look through some guitar mags for effect/pedal setups of some of your favorite guitarists and/or specific songs. After reading through a few suggested pedal setups, you'll probably be left with an idea of pedals you might be interested in getting.



Me, personally? I'd go with a chorus next, a digital delay, and if your amp doesn't have it built-in, a reverb pedal. A lot of people also like playing with flanger/phase pedals.



Keep in mind that there are boxes/pedals that are capable of doing several effects at once, or can be re-programmed as needed for a particular effect...



- Chip

Answer 2

Everyone has their own taste, if Kevin likes digital multi-effects then more power to him. My personal opinion is that multi-effects are okay for time based effects but suck for any type of distortion, but that's just my opinion. I only use individual pedals, but again, everyone has their own taste. So here's my take on the situation. To me there are 2 or 3 effects that are "must haves" and everything else is optional. I must have distortion and reverb. I also prefer to have a good analog (not digital) delay for lead work. All of the other effects, phaser, chorus, tremolo, etc. are optional. You buy them if you are covering a song that requires them, but they aren't effects I would use all of the time like I would distortion, delay and reverb. For instance my band does about 3 songs that I really needed tremolo for, so I bought a tremolo pedal. Otherwise I would not have bought one. So I would get a good reverb or delay next and then add the other later. You may even find that you are happy just using one or the other. What I like to do is run reverb all of the time, it never gets turned off but it is set fairly subtle. Then on a lead I will kick in the analog delay to fatten it up more. My favorite delay is the MXR Carbon Copy. An analog delay will fatten your tone up, a digital delay is more of a special effects that will repeat the notes. This can be useful for some stuff, but an analog delay is far more useful in my opinion. You can set a digital delay so that the delay time is so short that it sounds kind of like an analog delay, but it doesn't sound nearly as good to me.

Answer 3

Pray you don't end up old and broke like me. LOL, j/k.



It really sounds to me like you need a mutti-effects pedal instead of "Just" distortion. That way you can simply work with each sound (Or sounds) you like the best for each genre, and they are all in the same unit. All you have to do then is remember a number...like #1 is a pop tone, #2 is a rock rhythm, #3 is a rock lead, etc...and they were all customized by you. Or presets that you liked. Too many pedals is nothing but a hassle.



My honest advice is to take that pedal back, or sell it, then look at an on-line music store like Musicians Friend, look up guitar multi-effects, and save up for the cheapest one, or the best one you can afford. It's like having a thousand pedals all in ONE unit. It will also be a cleaner sound from having less cables running from your guitar to your amp, (They may be "Shielded" but cords still think they are radio antennas) and have less frequency interference.



Hope that helped, rock on!



~Kev~

Answer 4

For acoustic stuff... a Reverb or EQ or Compression pedal

For Pop stuff .... a Chorus pedal

For Rockin stuff.... a tube screamer



Delay or Echo is also a really nice addition to all of those.