Modifying Guitar Sound

There are many ways to modify guitar sound that have been talked about in this site, but most of these have been concerning custom guitar parts and other customizations that you can do to the actual guitar. Although these are great things to do, the most effective way to modify guitar sound is to use an effects pedal. One of the first types of these that everyone gets is a guitar distortion pedal. This pedal can change your whole tone and playing style by adding an overdriven distortion to your sound.

This is an important point because changing your guitar sound can actually change the way that you play. You react to the sounds you play on the instrument, so it follows that different sounds will force you to have different reactions. This can be valuable for exploring different playing methods and styles. The more you can go through different playing experiences the better, because you will be able to adapt to more situations. This will make you a more flexible player.

Along with the distortion pedals there are similar pedals that give you guitar overdrive effects. This is like distortion but a little more mellow and natural sounding. Guitar overdrive is simulated in pedals by making the same sound that a tube amp makes when the tubes are overdriven. Where distortion is traditionally used more in hard rock, guitar overdrive is used more in blues and any lighter styles. It also has a history in jazz guitar. These are both great ways to customize and modify your guitar sound however.

The great thing about using effects pedals to do the customizing is that pedals do not require any construction and work with whatever guitar setup that you have. However, you should keep in mind that pedals use your natural guitar tone and modify it to make the new tone, so if your guitar setup has poor natural tone you will not end up with the greatest distortion or overdrive.