Acoustic guitarists are lucky.  Why? They don’t seem to suffer from gear envy like electric guitarists do.  The point is probably moot though because most guitarists have both an electric and acoustic guitar.  If you have an electric guitar it’s more than likely you have some sort of outboard effects.  By that, I mean effects that aren’t built in to your amp.  If that’s the case you’ve probably either got some guitar effects pedals or multi effects units.

There are people who debate which is better, some say the effects pedals have a more natural sound, some say the multi effects sound to “digital” whatever that means.  There’s no doubt that you have more flexibility with the multi effects, they’re usually not as easy to use, you can set up lot’s of different guitar sounds and have them ready to go at the push of a button, or by stepping on a switch.  I personally prefer pedals, they’re usually more rugged, and if you don’t have a lot of money you can get them one at a time.

The big three of guitar effect  pedals are distortion, chorus and delay.  Most all guitar sounds are based on those three pedals, or effects.  Distortion is the most common, it’s the “sound” of the electric guitar.  It’s why you play electric guitar in the first place, right?  If you have an amp that has distortion I’d suggest getting the distortion pedal last.  I know that the distortion built into little practice amps isn’t great, but at least you have it.  It will sound better with a pedal but I think getting another pedal first will be a more efficient use of money.  There’s plenty of different kinds so make sure you listen to different ones first to see what you like.  If you go to Musicians Friend, they’ll usually have mp3 samples so you can see what the effects sound like.  Plus you can hardly call yourself a guitarist if you haven’t bought at least one thing from there.

If you’ve already got some sort of distortion then a chorus effect pedal would be a good one to get first.  It thickens up your sound.  It’s best if used sparingly, if you lay it on too thick you’ll get that 80’s guitar sound, you’d hear it a lot on ballads with a clean guitar sound, but the shredders used it too.   The delay pedal was a really overused effect in the 80’s, all the guitar heros used it, you’d hear it on every solo.  That decade seemed to be about more is always better in everything.  Then when grunge came around everything started to get stripped down.  Still chorus and delay still get used, it’s just that it’s been toned down.  Actually delay is characteristic to the country “chicken picken’” sound.  If you want to know what pedal creates a repeating effect it’s delay.

So what are the best guitar effects pedals?  Well, Boss guitar effects pedals are probably the most used.  The Boss DS series is the core of a lot of electric guitarists sound.  Kurt Cobain used a probably the most popular distortion pedal ever.  For example, the  Ben Gibbard pedal board uses a , a and a , pretty simple.  Lots of companies make effects pedals for guitar so look around and listen to a lot.  It’s hard to say what’s best, that’s a matter of personal opinion of course.  The dinosaur jr effects pedals don’t include any Boss pedals.  J Mascis uses a lot of Electro Harmonix pedals, like the . If you’re going to be using a lot of pedals then a guitar effects pedal board can be useful.  It’s just a case that carries your pedals, you can put it on the floor and stomp your pedals from there.  It makes it easier to keep track of everything.  As time goes on I’ll add to the different list of different guitar effects, there’s hundreds of them out there, but you can consider distortion, delay, and chorus to be the big three of guitar effects.