All Aboard The Pedal Train!


                                                         The Magical Joys of Effect Pedals
       
            Guitar players truly have an obsession with a term known as "tone." (Strong emphasis on those quotation marks there) Check out any other blog, guitar archive website, or music store provider, and you will see a discussion about tone in almost every single one of them. Tone is like the flavor of your guitar's sound, and how you mold that flavor is derived from many MANY factors such as: your pick-ups, your strings, your amplifier, playing a stratocaster, using a rosewood or maple neck, is your guitar's body solid or hollow, do you have a bolt-on neck or set-through? (This could be an entirely different blog on its own) The gear we use is important, but above all; practice! practice practice!
            Anyhow, one device that will change our guitar's tone considerably is the pedal, and boy do they come in all shapes, sizes, and colors! We have the basics like our overdrives and distortions, to the incredibly bizarre Earthquaker Rainbow Machine! When put to good use, these various pedals can generate the sounds that define a genre or create entirely new astonishing sounds that will surely captivate the audience's ears. Blues players love their reverbs, giving them that soulful "full of life" feel that their music is famous for. Speedy guitar shredders adore their flangers and phasers, giving their solos an up and down motion that takes our ears on a wild roller coaster ride. Then there are those "mad scientists" out there messing with modulation tempos, reverse delays, rotary vibes, and multiple loopers which lay down their endless onslaught of musical layers!
           Me personally, and as a simple minded guitarist, I love my basics such as distortion and overdrive. I do own a delay pedal when I'm feeling on the creative side. However, my love will always rest in the ever popular cry baby wah pedal! The ultimate expression tool used by all the legends from Hendrix and Clapton to the formidable Buckethead and Ron Bumblefoot! (Future post about him soon!)
               
            As en end to today's post, I leave with Mr.Bumblefoot's solo from the song Turn Around off his amazing album Normal. This solo kicks off with the roller coaster feel incorporating his signature tone and yes it has a wah pedal, and boy is this such an exhilarating one minute and twenty-three seconds of my life!
I am a simple minded guitarist, and I love guitar pedals like I love a day off from work!

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