Electric guitar effects - just getting started

[TX3DFan]

Hello all,

I'm hoping this is the right place to ask this question. I have been playing acoustic guitar now for about 15 years. Have never really dabbled in the electric guitar world. My wife was kind enough to get me a Fender Deluxe Players Strat in the sunburst color this past Christmas and I've played with it some over the past several months, but I only have a small practice amp that I had purchased for my acoustic so I have absolutely zero in the way of pedal effects, etc for this guitar.

I'm looking for a cheap solution that I could use that would give me a good array of effects and I came across some information about the POD series of devices in a Music123 catalog. This appears to be my best bet at a fairly inexpensive soluiton that will give me the broadest spectrum of effects.

Am I right in assuming this? Does the POD require any special type of amp or can I just plug it into my practice amp?

Please let me know if I'm headed in the right direction or if I'm way off base.

Thanks.

Brian

[His servant]

I have a simliar background -I invested several years in the acoustic world and just got into the electric world this last year. What is the practice amp you are using?

There is a love hate relationship with line6 stuff that people have. As far as multi effect stuff goes Line6 is probably the best that there is. If you're just testing the waters it probably wouldn't be a bad route to take.

[Howlin' Wolf]

a good guitarist doesnt need effects. i'll take a fuzz pedal and and a tube amp.

[His servant]

a good guitarist doesnt need effects. i'll take a fuzz pedal and and a tube amp.

An even better guitarist doesn't need an amp to get his tone :P

[TX3DFan]

I have a simliar background -I invested several years in the acoustic world and just got into the electric world this last year. What is the practice amp you are using?

There is a love hate relationship with line6 stuff that people have. As far as multi effect stuff goes Line6 is probably the best that there is. If you're just testing the waters it probably wouldn't be a bad route to take.

My practice amp is a Randall RG15XM, the forerunner of their current RX15M. What else would you suggest instead of the POD?

[His servant]

for what you've described line6 would definitely be my suggestion. A pod would be fine for your needs and would give you alot of sounds to experiment with.

[MusiciansLikeMe]

I totally agree that a good guitarist can get his tone from nothing more than his guitar and amp. The hands are probably the biggest tone tool you have at your disposal - the angle of the pick, where and how you apply the pick to the strings, how much of your fingertips and fingernails touch the strings, etc. Some of these things you can only learn by hanging around someone who already knows how to do it.

Having said that, I have used lots of different effects pedals (and still use a few). Why?

1. I can't justify paying for a Marshall all-tube half-stack, since I'd never be able to play it loud enough to get the desired tone. Yeah, there are "power soaks" that you can buy that will attenuate the amp and still let you drive it at the proper distortion levels. But that won't help with the tones you get from overdriving a speaker, though, which is why you may still want an effects pedal.

2. Most tube amps (although not all) don't have a whole lot of effects on-board, other than drive level and maybe a spring reverb tank. If you want to use other effects (chorus, plate echo, delay, etc.), you'll need a good effects pedal.

I've used some of the Line 6 low-end amps (Spiders). They have some decent built-in effects, but don't allow enough control. If you want heavy tremelo, you have to crank the knob that also increases the speed. I'm sure their floor pods are more advanced, but the amps just turned me off of their products.

Last year I bought a DigiTech RP90 (I think that's the model). I was impressed at the array of amp tones and effects this $99.95 pedal had. It includes an expression pedal that can be assiged to specific effects so you can control volume, gain, depth, pitch, or speed. The Marshall amp tones are great! The first 50 effects can be customized by the user, the last 50 effects are always "factory default", so you never have to worry about messing them up. But the defaults make great staring points for you to customize. There are also buttons that call up a library of amp tones and effects you you can quickly access without having to drill too deep into obscure menus. And to top it off, it has drum loops that you can play along with. You can get at Musicians Friends at the $99.95 price, but I've seen them everywhere, including the local music store. Well worth the price, in my opinion.

[Musicdude]

Hello all,

I'm hoping this is the right place to ask this question. I have been playing acoustic guitar now for about 15 years. Have never really dabbled in the electric guitar world. My wife was kind enough to get me a Fender Deluxe Players Strat in the sunburst color this past Christmas and I've played with it some over the past several months, but I only have a small practice amp that I had purchased for my acoustic so I have absolutely zero in the way of pedal effects, etc for this guitar.

I'm looking for a cheap solution that I could use that would give me a good array of effects and I came across some information about the POD series of devices in a Music123 catalog. This appears to be my best bet at a fairly inexpensive soluiton that will give me the broadest spectrum of effects.

Am I right in assuming this? Does the POD require any special type of amp or can I just plug it into my practice amp?

Please let me know if I'm headed in the right direction or if I'm way off base.

Thanks.

Brian

Line6 Stuff ROCKS!!!

I use an Ibanez RG though a PODxt directly into my church's PA system. Sounds amazing!

I'm sorry, but I can get sounds with my PODxt that you can't get with just an amp and a guitar, period. No matter how good you are.


If you spend some time getting to know the PODxt (or X3) you will be able to get just about any sound you could ever want. Plus you can just plug in headphones if you want to practice quietly. Plus it will sound just as good plugged into an amp as it does into a PA system. Very versatile, very portable.
I've heard Boss, Digitech and the like. They don't make the cut as far as I'm concerned.

Now I don't care for the Spider amps either, like someone mentioned. Because it severely limits you. But with a PODxt and an amp or PA, your options are pretty much limitless.

FWIW, you can usually pick up a used PODxt on ebay for about $200.

[gasmanguitarist]

When I first started playing at church, I used a Digitech RP300A through my little Peavey Rage 108 practice amp and the church's direct input to the PA system. Worked just fine. The Digitechs are pretty good pedals all-around. I then "graduated" to the Boss GT-8, and have used that up until pretty recently when I put my analogs on a board and now use my amps' tones as well as the analog FX. I have a pic of my current setup on the "effects chanins" thread.

I recommend a cheap Digitech pedal to start with, like the RP series. You can get one with a lot of stuff for about $100 or so. Great to cut your teeth on.

And these guys are right -- a good guitarist doesn't need effects. But since I'm not that good. . . ;-)

[Musicdude]

And these guys are right -- a good guitarist doesn't need effects. But since I'm not that good. . . ;-)

Not trying to be argumentative, but I completely disagree with that statement.
That is like saying a good cook doesn't need any spices.

You can't make a guitar make a wah wah sound with out a wah pedal. You can't make it echo without a delay pedal, etc. etc. There are some styles of music where you can get by without any effects, but even then it is just more interesting when you use different guitar sounds, and you can have so many unique sounds when using a multi-fx box like the ones we are talking about on this thread.

FX has got nothing to do with how well you play. The most awesome guitarists in the world use FX, (or at least most of them do). It's like if you are a painter, the more colors you have on your palette the more detailed picture you can make. The more sounds you have on your guitar the more details you can add to a song.

Even with just playing praise and worship at my church, some tones I have on my PODxt just fit perfectly with some of the songs we play. And it adds so much to the song when that happens. It helps create the feel of the song.

And for what it's worth I've been playing guitar for about 12 years and I do consider myself a good guitarist. And I would never play my electric without my PODxt unless I didn't have a choice.

[sAved444]

Hello all,

I'm hoping this is the right place to ask this question. I have been playing acoustic guitar now for about 15 years. Have never really dabbled in the electric guitar world. My wife was kind enough to get me a Fender Deluxe Players Strat in the sunburst color this past Christmas and I've played with it some over the past several months, but I only have a small practice amp that I had purchased for my acoustic so I have absolutely zero in the way of pedal effects, etc for this guitar.

I'm looking for a cheap solution that I could use that would give me a good array of effects and I came across some information about the POD series of devices in a Music123 catalog. This appears to be my best bet at a fairly inexpensive soluiton that will give me the broadest spectrum of effects.

Am I right in assuming this? Does the POD require any special type of amp or can I just plug it into my practice amp?

Please let me know if I'm headed in the right direction or if I'm way off base.

Thanks.

Brian

I have a Boss me-30 processor for some effects. It has way more than I care to use and you can pick up a used one pretty cheap nowadays. I use a Crate 30 for practice which is fine unless you have an aggressive drummer then you need to mic it through the pa and it works fine. My Laney 120 watt head and 2x12 and 4x12 cabs are very loud. The neighbors will complain with this one. It just sits there these days looking good.

[gasmanguitarist]

Not trying to be argumentative, but I completely disagree with that statement.
That is like saying a good cook doesn't need any spices.

You can't make a guitar make a wah wah sound with out a wah pedal. You can't make it echo without a delay pedal, etc. etc. There are some styles of music where you can get by without any effects, but even then it is just more interesting when you use different guitar sounds, and you can have so many unique sounds when using a multi-fx box like the ones we are talking about on this thread.

FX has got nothing to do with how well you play. The most awesome guitarists in the world use FX, (or at least most of them do). It's like if you are a painter, the more colors you have on your palette the more detailed picture you can make. The more sounds you have on your guitar the more details you can add to a song.

Even with just playing praise and worship at my church, some tones I have on my PODxt just fit perfectly with some of the songs we play. And it adds so much to the song when that happens. It helps create the feel of the song.

And for what it's worth I've been playing guitar for about 12 years and I do consider myself a good guitarist. And I would never play my electric without my PODxt unless I didn't have a choice.

Seriously, I agree with you. I was just taking a pot-shot at myself. But I use quite a few "effects" myself. I don't know if you would consider it an effect, but I like my compressor, and I use an acoustic simulator quite often. Although it doesn't exactly emulate an acoustic as well as it should, it does add another dimension to my sound. And of course there's the tremolo, chorus and delay. I like my amps' distortion, so I don't use a distortion pedal, but I do have an overdrive that I'll kick on sometimes. I don't actually use a wah, although I have one, but I just didn't find myself using it much, so I took it off my board.

But, yeah, I get what you are saying and totally agree.

[Martyred]

I use a Spider III 75w solid state amp with the following:

Dunlop Cry Baby Wah
Boss DS-1

Line 6 Footswitch.


as far as that goes, I have a pretty decent array of sounds for what I play. If I'm playing worship, I'll use everything except for the DS-1.
But When I play with my school's Blues Band, I use everything, to get all the different sounds out of my guitar as possible.


But it does help also that my LP has the split pickups on it, so I can pull out my tone knobs and be playing on single-coils, and push them back down and be playing on humbuckers.

[gasmanguitarist]

But it does help also that my LP has the split pickups on it, so I can pull out my tone knobs and be playing on single-coils, and push them back down and be playing on humbuckers.

Sorry to get off the subject, but which LP model is it? Did it come that way or did you have it set up that way? I saw that Gibson has a LP Traditional Pro or something like that which has the push-pull option to split the coils, and I've considered it. When you split the coils, do you get a hum like you would with a strat? Switching from single coils to humbuckers can definitely have an effect on your tone.

[Martyred]

Sorry to get off the subject, but which LP model is it? Did it come that way or did you have it set up that way? I saw that Gibson has a LP Traditional Pro or something like that which has the push-pull option to split the coils, and I've considered it. When you split the coils, do you get a hum like you would with a strat? Switching from single coils to humbuckers can definitely have an effect on your tone.

I have a custom GT edition- only 400 of the ones just like it were made.

When I split the coils, I don't get the hum like I do on a strat. ( I have a strat also, but I prefer my LP to it for most things)

The only thing I didn't like about my LP was the locking tuning heads. Mostly because I didn't know how to use them, and I broke one the first time I changed strings on it by myself.
So I replaced those with regular tuning heads.


Here's the info for it right here:
http://les-paul-guitar.blogspot.com/2007/07/gibson-les-paul-gt-no-flames-fire.html