Read Guitar Buying Guides & Reviews
Learn Guitar With Lessons And Tecniques
Listen To Guitar Effects






Introduction To Guitar Tone And Effects - 60 Pages Paperback With CD

Guitar tone and effects - if the amp is just as important
as the guitar in making up and determining the total sound output of an electric guitar, then surely the effects used in the sound chain are equally important. So there is this book on guitar tone and effects to educate us and inform us of our options concerning guitar effects. Did you ever wonder what a certain stomp box would make your guitar sound like? Or did you ever hear s cool song on the radio and ask how did they get the guitar part to sound exactly the way it did? This book will do just that. It'll explain what every popular guitar effect is, how it works, and what it sounds like. The CD included with the book allows you to hear examples of all the guitar effects. You'll have the opportunity to listen to what a guitar part sounds like with and without a certain effect.

Here is a list of the guitar effects that are described in this book:

  1. Chorus
  2. Phaser
  3. Flanger
  4. Tremolo
  5. Vibrato
  6. Digital Delay
  7. Reverb
  8. Octave
  9. Harmonizer
  10. Wah
  11. Envelope filter
  12. Talk box
  13. Pitch shifting
  14. Noise Reduction - Noise Gate
  15. Compressor - Sustainer - Limiter
  16. Equalizers
  17. Acoustic simulator



The effects are grouped in the book by the class of effect they fall into. There is a section on modulation effects, delay, octavers and harmonizing. They also talk about combining effects. How the order that the effects chain is assembled has a huge impact on the sound and tone you get. How to build your own pedalboard. How to connect the pedalboard into various amp and guitar setup combinations. There's a chapter on multi-effects units. They cover modeling amps, and pod boxes and getting the best sound from recording your electric guitar into your personal computer.



One part of the book goes through popular musical genres (metal, rock, blues, country, etc.) and describes in detail the typical electric guitar effects that are commonly used for this particular style of music. Of course, this is general and rule of thumb info but good to know, in any case. There's also a section at the end of the book that shows some well-known, popular songs and the famous artists who recorded them, and what effects they used on the recordings. This is a great way to learn about guitar effects and how they sound because you already know the pop song. This section allows you to connect the song with the sound of the effect - a great learning tool!


Guitar effects are cool. And they're fun to play around with as we play electric guitar. There are so many of them, and they all add a unique sound - sometimes when we're not extremely familiar with the sound of an effect, we don't recognize it being used in a song when we hear it. But this book can change all that. This book, along with the audio CD that comes with it, can get you familiar with the distinct sound of all the popular guitar effects. It will also explain all the effects to you, and even show you diagrams / pictures that describe the more common ways to set up the controls and knobs on the effects boxes.