Types of guitar effects

There are some basic types of guitar effects and everyone has a different use.
Below we will discuss each of them individually to help clarify the situation and help you understand how it works and for what is using.

Distortion/overdrive.

Distortion causes that the guitar signal undergo a large gain and then cut, resulting in a characteristic sound that is most often associated with rock music.
In general, we called distortion everything from a light tube overdrive to a dirty hi-gain sound known from death metal music. The earliest example of the distortion used in popular music was the riff in the song The Satisfaction of The Rolling Stones.

Wah

Effect popular called ,,duck" due to sound that is similar to sound that these animals give.Eric Clapton used the
duck for the first time in the recording with group Cream among others in White Room or Tales of Brave Ulysses
while Jimi Hendrix used the wah for practically every one of his recordings.

Reverb
His principle of action is closely resembling an echo with a very short time of multiple reflections.Thanks to that reverb can place the sound of our guitar into acoustic space.
In effects of this type, we can usually choose from among a number of reverb types including: hall, room, spring, plate, etc.

Delay

This is simply an echo effect. At first, rock musicians used effects based on tape recorders. Later, in the 1970s, analogue delays began to appear on the market. Analogue dealys could produce reflections delayed by up to 2 seconds, but were devoid of the upper frequencies.
Finally in 1980s digital delays start appeared on market. Barring traditional delay, they could produce other effects based on time like flanger or chorus.

Chorus/flanger

When we slightly delay and change the height of the guitar signal and then apply it to the original signal, we get a subtle (or more pronounced in the case of flangers) doubling or bolding the sound.
The first effect that simulated it was the BOSS CE-1 Chorus Ensemble.Later effects of this type offered the ability to apply multiple deformed signals at one time. One of the first guitarists to use chorus was Andy Summers of The Police.

Sustainer

This is a classic studio effect that deals with signal dynamics control.It works by limiting the signal above a given level.
The compressor came in the form of guitar stompboxes mainly to increase the sustain of the instrument, by raising the signal and then aligning it.
Early compressors generated a lot of noise, but today's designs have built-in noise gates that effectively reduce them.

Multieffects.

Multieffects are specific devices, which in the form of one device can contain all the aforementioned effects and much, much more.
They are found in different varieties, from very simple construction to very complex. For very complex we mean multi-effects, which allow us to use so many effects at once that our guitar will not sound like a guitar at all ...
The main advantage of multi-effects is the amount and type of effects we can use at the same time. Many of them give you almost unlimited possibilities of combining them, then save as a preset
Of course, quality and quantity of effects, additional function and ability to control a given multiefekt depends on his price. The market offers us a very rich offer in this topic and certainly everyone will find the equipment that meets his requirements.

True bypass or bufor?
Debates on true bypass and buffered output are often encountered among guitarists building their pedalboard. In general, everything breaks down about the resistance and the degradation of the guitar signal in the effects chain.
The signal coming out of the guitar usually has high resistance, and effects with built-in buffer convert it into a low-resistance signal.This type of signal allows to be transmitted over long cables without losing quality.
However, many of the cheaper effects have poor quality buffering, so the signal still loses quality and the buffering process becomes disruptive.
On the other hand, true bypass allows you to send the signal directly from the input of the effect to his output without the unwanted coloring of the sound.
This solution will be good during using only a few effects and short cables, as the effective high signal resistance distance is short.
So when we add more true bypass effects, we will also increase the number and length of cables. As a result, the signal from our guitar will be devoid of high frequencies and clarity.
There is no ideal solution to this problem. Usually, however, the principle is to use one or two buffering effects at the beginning and end of the chain, while the effects with the true bypass are placed between them.
This is not just a good rule and we recommend you do some experiments in this topic to see what works best for us.

Summary
We hope that after reading this you understand the possibilities of guitar effects. The next step will be to define the sound that we are looking for and the effects or combinations of effects that will allow us to achieve them.