The ESP Guitar Company

Probably the best way to shape your tone besides getting the right guitar and amp for your playing style is to get the right guitar effects pedals. There is nothing more expressive than laying different guitar effect textures on top of one another to get a thick, rich sound.

Two of the most influential pedals in all of music are the compressor and the delay pedals. These two pedals, used sparingly, can make your tone go from garage band to professional recording artist. And that’s what we all want, don't we?

Anyway, let’s look at how to shape your tone the right way.

#1 – Using a Delay Pedal

Delay pedals can be an awesome way to create more depth in your sound and an almost airy/eerie layer to your music. They can also be used to duplicate your playing to make it sound like multiple people are playing at once.

Guitarists like Yngwie Malmsteen are famous for using a tap delay to get a cascading effect from their guitar. Malmsteen also uses his delay in combination with his volume knob to create a more violin type sound.

I think delays are a great way to add interest to your music, but don’t go overboard or your risk sounding like Angels and Airways. There are many companies that make great delay pedals, but I think MXR has some of the best delay pedals out there.

#2 – Using a Compressor Pedal

A compressor pedal is used to kind of squash the signal coming from the guitar and level out the highs and lows. It also deadens the volume of the guitar after the strings are hit. Thus, making the guitar sound compressed. This gives your guitar a unique quality that can set your tone a part from other guitar players.

I like to use compressor pedals on the clean channel to give a little something extra to my sound. There are a few different pedal companies that make great compressor pedals, but I think TC Electronic has one of the best compressor effects pedals. I really like the Hyper Gravity pedal for a variety of reasons.

Well, that’s it. If you use both of these pedals, your tone will definitely sound unique to many other guitarists who aren’t using these on a regular basis. Don’t believe me?

Try them out for yourself. Go down to your local guitar shop and see which pedals they have in stock and test them out. There’s no better way to see what sound you like the most than by actually playing your guitar.

If your local shop doesn’t have anything worth playing, just ask around. I’m sure your guitarist friends have at least one of these types of pedals that you can borrow to see if it fits your playing style and if it fits the tone that you are chasing.

The best thing that you can do is to simply keep trying new things until you get that rich tone that you are looking for. All the greats have done the same thing. Every great guitarist constantly changes up their rig looking for new and better combinations of sounds. You should do the same thing.