Skip to main content
Music Radar MusicRadar The No.1 website for musicians
  • Guitars
  • Amps
  • Pedals
  • Drums
  • Synths
  • Software
  • Pianos
  • Controllers
  • Recording
  • Buyer’s guides
  • Live
  • DJ
  • Advice
  • Acoustic
  • Bass
  • About Us
  • More
    • Reviews
Magazines
  • Computer Music
  • Electronic Musician
  • Future Music
  • Keyboard Magazine
  • Guitarist
  • Guitar Techniques
  • Total Guitar
  • Bass Player
More
  • How to make an AI cover song
  • 30 beautiful acoustic guitar chords
  • 86000+ free music samples

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

  1. News

The ultimate guide to guitar FX: volume

By Total Guitar
published 26 October 2012

Everything you ever needed to know about effects pedals

Volume Based Effects
These swells and great levellers are key to certain guitar styles

Volume Based Effects

SPARE a thought for the unsung heroes of the pedalboard. If a Whammy pedal is the good-time
girl down your local, then volume, EQ and compression are the three hapless dullards sat in the corner playing Scrabble and nursing a pint-and-a-half of shandy: they’re dependable, keep themselves busy, and they’ll lend you enough for the last bus home.

Page 1 of 5
Page 1 of 5
Compression
Want consistency? Then give your dynamics a squeeze

Compression

COMPRESSION is used on almost every piece of recorded music we listen to. The idea of compression in recorded music is to level out the dynamic range of a sound by removing loud jumps in level.

For guitar players, it can be used to boost your signal, increase sustain for soloing, create the snappy attack that you hear on country and funk guitar parts, or even bring out a fingerpicked part.

Imagine someone manually controlling your volume for you, so every time you hit a note above a set volume level (threshold), they turn it back down by a percentage. That’s essentially how a compressor works. Studio compressors usually feature more controls than their stompbox counterparts, which often only have a few knobs. Attack usually governs how quickly the signal is attenuated (the reduction of amplitude) after the volume reaches the threshold level, and sustain controls how much the signal is turned down by.

Once you’ve compressed your signal, you’ll need to turn the whole lot back up again, and that’s what your level/output control is for. The result is a much smoother signal with noticeably less dynamic range, and a greater consistency in volume.

Page 2 of 5
Page 2 of 5
EQ
Give it up for the Swiss Army knife of pedals

EQ

A GRAPHIC equaliser or EQ pedal is a pretty simple effect. Just like the bass, middle and treble controls on your amp, it offers you control over the overall shape of your sound.

Rather than giving you one control for each frequency range of your tone, though, a graphic EQ splits your sound into finer ‘bands’ for more specific fine tuning. Six- or 10-band EQs are most common in guitar pedals, enabling you to hone in on a particular area of your guitar’s frequency range.

It may look a bit daunting, but a graphic EQ works exactly the same as the one on your hi-fi. The bands to the left cover bass/low mid, and the bands to the right cover the treble frequencies. If we need to explain the middle ones, you should probably take up the drums...

Each of the sliders either boosts or cuts its respective frequency, and in most cases the middle of each slider’s range is your ‘flat’ or unaffected point.

A solid EQ pedal can be used for a number of tricks: you can scoop your mids for a thrash sound; create a ‘telephone’ effect by cutting the bass and treble and boosting the midrange; or even use it as a flat volume boost by pushing all of the frequency bands equally. It’s also handy for either killing or introducing feedback onstage, or levelling out any unwanted tonal variations when you’re switching guitars.

Page 3 of 5
Page 3 of 5
Volume
Yet another volume control? Here's why you might need one

Volume

YOU’VE already got one volume control on your guitar and one on your amp, so why do you want another pedal the size of your wah to turn your guitar up and down?

First, your hands should be busy playing the guitar. This leaves your feet to control impromptu volume boosts/ cuts. You can also use your volume pedal to ‘swell’ your notes, for manual tremolo, or gradually fade in the effects in your effects loop.

Granted, it’s not essential, nor is it for everyone, but try it on your ’board and you’ll be surprised at how creative a tool a volume control can be.

Page 4 of 5
Page 4 of 5
The Truth About Bypass
What really happens to your signal on the way to your amp

The Truth About Bypass

WHEN you’re buying effects, you’ll notice a lot of talk about bypass. The main two methods used by pedal builders for putting your pedals into bypass mode are buffered bypass and true bypass.

With buffered bypass, your guitar signal is routed through the pedal’s effect circuitry – even when it is in bypass mode. A ‘buffer’ is then used to push the signal on to the next pedal in the chain.

With true bypass, it routes your signal directly from the pedal’s input jack to its output jack when you switch the pedal off, giving you a technically ‘cleaner’ signal path.

With this in mind, surely true bypass is a better option? Not exactly. If you have a busy pedalboard with lots of patch leads adding up to a long cable run, your leads introduce capacitance, which results in a cut to your high-end.

A pedalboard that has one or more pedals with buffered bypass helps to solve this, because the extra ‘push’ from the buffers keeps your signal’s impedance sturdy. Yet if you’re using a small number of pedals with a limited cable run (less than about 20ft), true bypass pedals offer a ‘cleaner’ route to your amp while the pedals are switched off.

The answer, then, is subjective and depends on your setup, but a pedalboard comprising true bypass pedals with a buffered pedal at the start or end of your chain offers a good trade-off between integrity and a robust signal.

Page 5 of 5
Page 5 of 5
Total Guitar
Total Guitar
Social Links Navigation

Total Guitar is Europe's best-selling guitar magazine.

Every month we feature interviews with the biggest names and hottest new acts in guitar land, plus Guest Lessons from the stars.

Finally, our Rocked & Rated section is the place to go for reviews, round-ups and help setting up your guitars and gear.

Subscribe: http://bit.ly/totalguitar

More about guitars
Guitarist Andy Wood

Has guitarist Andy Wood just made the ultimate Eddie Van Halen pedalboard?

Taylor Swift Eras Tour guitar

“This is the proudest and happiest I’ve ever felt”: Taylor Swift is named Time’s Person of the Year

Latest
Ubisoft Rocksmith+

Ubisoft’s Rocksmith+ can now teach you to play piano as well as guitar: use the 'falling notes' method or the sheet music view

See more latest ►
Most Popular
4 of the best new drum machines and grooveboxes in 2023

By Si Truss6 December 2023

"He was an outstanding vocalist and guitar player" – Paul McCartney leads tributes to Denny Laine as the Wings and Moody Blues founder passes away aged 89

By Rob Laing5 December 2023

Love Floyd Rose vibratos, hate Allen keys? The Graph Tech Un-Lock Nut could be the electric guitar mod for you

By Jonathan Horsley5 December 2023

Japanese ambient musician Michiru Aoyama has woken at 5am to record a new album every day since 2021 – he's now earning $3,000 a month from his music on Spotify and Bandcamp

By Rob Laing5 December 2023

“If you want authentic Soldano tube tone with the modern flexibility of digital control, the Soldano Astro-20 is the amp for you”: Mike Soldano’s latest tube amp is a versatile 20-watter with IRs and MIDI

By Jonathan Horsley5 December 2023

Max Richter unveils new piano plugin based on the renowned composer's Steinway D SPIRIO | r: "If you want to evoke the intimate stories we all carry inside us, then you will be well served by this instrument"

By Matt Mullen5 December 2023

Meet XLN Audio's AI-powered "happy accident machine": Life is a potentially highly addictive field recorder and plugin that makes instant beats from found sounds

By Will Groves5 December 2023

Fender marks 70 years of the Stratocaster with new colour options, and limited edition American Professional II and Player Series Anniversary editions

By Jonathan Horsley5 December 2023

Moog takes a deep dive into the world of bass sounds with the new Mariana soft synth, and the good news is that it runs on iOS, Mac and Windows

By Ben Rogerson5 December 2023

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called soundcheck”: Watch Prince shred on his Yellow Cloud guitar as the NPG warm up for their Special Olympics 1991 set

By Jonathan Horsley5 December 2023

7 free plugins you need to know about this month

By Matt Mullen5 December 2023

  1. Playpm reminds us that we might not actually need a shiny new beatmaking calculator in the latest edition of his GAS Therapy series
    1
    "It's just a good-looking toy": Is it worth buying a Teenage Engineering EP-133 KO II when you can do everything that it does (and more) on a free app?
  2. 2
    Learn four guitar chords from Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits songs
  3. 3
    The 7 ways I learned to improve my guitar tone – that won't cost you money
  4. 4
    7 of the best new hardware synths in 2023
  5. 5
    “I don’t want to generalise and say that he made everything sound good, but he did”: Joe Satriani reveals his strategy for replicating Eddie Van Halen’s tone on upcoming Sammy Hagar tour
  1. Find out why this Oberheim OB-Xa clone is being sold for “way below the actual value”
    1
    Believe it or not, the Behringer UB-Xa synth is now on sale - and it’s even cheaper than we thought it was going to be
  2. 2
    7 of the best new hardware synths in 2023
  3. 3
    “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called soundcheck”: Watch Prince shred on his Yellow Cloud guitar as the NPG warm up for their Special Olympics 1991 set
  4. 4
    Japanese ambient musician Michiru Aoyama has woken at 5am to record a new album every day since 2021 – he's now earning $3,000 a month from his music on Spotify and Bandcamp
  5. 5
    “The union passed a motion to ban the use of synths, drum machines and any electronic devices”: the day the 'Loony' Musician's Union tried to kill the synthesizer (which also happened to be Bob Moog’s birthday)

MusicRadar is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site.

  • About Us
  • Contact Future's experts
  • Terms and conditions
  • Privacy policy
  • Cookies policy
  • Accessibility Statement
  • Careers

© Future Publishing Limited Quay House, The Ambury, Bath BA1 1UA. All rights reserved. England and Wales company registration number 2008885.