GUITAR
HOW MANY PEDALS / EFFECTS DO I REALLY NEED ? | Chris Rocha photo : Frankie Lopez via Unsplash
I get asked a lot , how many pedals / effects do I need to have a great sound ? I typically respond with , “ What type of sound are you going for ?” Every genre has its own must have tone . I ’ ve been through all different kinds of rigs . I ’ ve had the super small basic pedal board to the ginormous spaceship pedalboard with all different types of effects and pedals .
One time in Argentina on a tour I had my pedalboard stolen right before the concert started . I walked up to start the concert , and everything was gone . Once I realized someone stole it , I had to get deal with the l loss right away and find a solution cause there was a few thousand people staring at us waiting for us to start the concert . I quickly put together two of my signature overdrive pedals ( El Valiente ) because that ’ s what I had on me , ran them into an amp and got cracking .
Needless to say I was extremely frustrated with my sound because it was dry and raw … but I made due . Without the proper pedals / effects it ’ s almost impossible for us to be happy with our tone . Let ’ s dive into the essentials that I recommend . In my particular world I play a lot of worship music so in this article I want to explain how many different pedals / effects I recommend to achieve my sound . The pedals I recommend are … tuner , compressor , overdrive , distortion , amp simulation and IRs if you ’ re running direct , delay and reverb .
I think the first pedal that we all need is a tuner . Without that we ’ re pretty much in limbo . I ’ ve actually played a concert without a tuner , and it was very uncomfortable . My tuner went out right before the concert , so I didn ’ t have a choice but to play without it . I kept tuning by ear , but my ear isn ’ t that great so as the concert went on I kept sounding more and more off .
Don ’ t ever skip out on that . You ’ ll definitely regret it . As far as which tuner I recommend , I ’ m not too picky with that . As long as it mutes your signal it should do a solid job . I also always put it in the beginning of my chain .
After that I run my signal to a compressor . Now I don ’ t think the compressor is necessary but it ’ s nice to have . I currently have two different rigs . A small pedalboard and a bigger one . On the small one I don ’ t use a compressor , but I do like to have that option . On the bigger board I use the Bloom by Jackson Audio . I don ’ t go too aggressive with it though . One thing I learned in the studio is never get too drastic and aggressive with EQ and compression because you can degrade your sound very fast . The consistency and sustain the compressor gives you can be a nice upgrade , so I do recommend that .