How to Use Effects With an Electric Guitar

For musicians who want to produce cutting-edge sounds, effects pedals are a critical part of the setup. A wide range of effects pedals let guitarists pound out distorted power chords and make ethereal sounds with echoing single notes. The process is fairly simple; hook up your effects to an amp for more diverse guitar music.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

1. Learn about the range of available effects for your guitar. Common effects range from crunchy sounds like distortion and gain to echoing effects like reverb, chorus, flange and delay.
2. Get an effect pedal. Choose the effect or effects you want and get add-on technology you can plug into your amplifier. Lots of guitar amps include gain as a setting, so you wouldn't need a gain or distortion pedal for those, and some include reverb, but for most effects, you'll need to purchase a pedal.
3. Hook up the effects pedal to your guitar using additional cords. Then hook the pedal up to the amp.
4. Turn everything on. Turn on the amplifier, then the pedal, and make sure your guitar's volume knob is turned up.
5. Stomp on the pedal and go to work. Most pedals allow for a musician to stomp on a piece that toggles the effect on and off during play. If the effect is off, just stomp once on the pedal to turn it on and play the guitar to utilize the effect.