Walk into Someplace Else on a Tuesday night and you will be awestruck by the incredible solos belted out by Krosswindz axe-man Vikramjit “Tuki” Banerjee. A noticeable feature is how he changes the sound of his guitar in context to the song or how he applies different “tones”. A U2 cover has the wider display of “delay” than a Creed song, which has a heavier dose of “distortion” than a Rod Stewart number that has a “cleaner” sound with a whisper of the “chorus” and hint of “tube overdrive”.

Vikramjit "Tuki" Banerjee (far left) in action; (Below) a few effects pedals from Boss Corporation

What are we talking about? Effects processors; essentially guitar effects.

An effects processor is a device that changes the signal of an electric guitar to add special effects. It is usually used as a preamplifier device that sends the processed signal to the guitar’s amplifier or other receiving ends. Though some amplifiers can create effects like overdrive, distortion, echo, tremolo and reverb, in most cases the effect must be operated manually. It typically contains circuitry for processing audio signals, similar to that found in music synthesizers, for example active and passive filters, envelope followers, voltage-controlled oscillators, or digital delays.

Some include amp and cabinet modelling to emulate the sound of various famous amplifiers and cabinet combinations. Some even create acoustic environments like “Concert Hall”, “Club” or “Arena”.

These are widely classified according to area of sound they change: a) Dynamics (e.g. compressor) b) Tone (e.g. equaliser, wah-wah, distortion) c) Time based (e.g. delay, phaser, flanger, reverb) or that affects frequency like Pitch-shifter .

Some of the noticeable manufacturers are Behringer, Boss Corporation, DOD, JimDunlop Electro Harmonix, Korg, Lexicon, Line6, Roland, TC Electronic, Vox and Zoom.

There are also “boutique pedals”, typically handmade and designed by smaller, independent companies that manufacture effects processors that are advertised by word of mouth or distributed online, like AnalogMan, Pete Cornish, Ellis Guitars, GoudieFX, Metasonix and Moog Music.

What do these effects generally do?

A distortion pedal takes a normal electric guitar signal and distorts the signal’s waveform by “clipping” the signal. There are several different types of distortion effects like overdrive/distortion (or vacuum tube-style distortion) and overdrive/crunch or fuzz.

An equaliser adjusts the frequency response in a number of different frequency bands. A wah-wah pedal is a foot-operated pedal. Technically, it’s a band-pass filter, which allows only small sections of the incoming signal’s frequencies to pass. Pushing the pedal up and down allows, alternatively, lower and higher frequencies to pass through. A delay creates a copy of an incoming signal and time-delays it, creating either a single or multiple repetitions’ effect.

Now, it is completely up to one’s imagination to create the dream tones to express a melody or a bit of one’s soul at a given point in time. So, let’s play our hearts out!