The Best Guitar Effect Pedals For Beginners

In today’s article, we will cover the best guitar effects pedals for Beginners. Effects pedals are the most important way to spice up your guitar tone. Its pedals offer you a wide tonal pool, and you can create characteristic tones by swimming in that tone pool. Let’s examine these pedals together.

15 Best Effect Pedals for Electric Guitar Beginners

1. Distortion Pedal

The distortion pedal is one of the most popular guitar footswitches for beginners or professional guitarists. If you’re at least a little bit interested in electric guitars, you’ve probably heard this and over a hundred songs. That heavy, aggressive sound defines alternative rock and heavy metal music. The only arguable drawback is that it hides the true tone of the guitar.

Why Distortion Pedal: Adds a pop of continuity to your guitar tones, giving your music an instant “rock” sound.

Compatible with: Chorus, Wah and Delay pedals

2. Overdrive Pedals

It’s often used for classic rock and blues, but it’s also good for pop, funk, and country music. Like the distortion pedal, the overdrive pedal is a favourite for its versatility. It is sometimes confused with distortion, but less dirty than that.

Why Overdrive Pedal: Providing a lighter distortion that’s especially great for light rock and solos.

Compatible with: Echo-y pedals like Reverb

3. Fuzz Pedal

Like the first two pedals, the fuzz pedal falls into the “dirty” category of guitar effects pedals. It provides the most extreme effects as it reproduces the signature heavy metal rock sound and creates discreet buzz sounds.

Why the Fuzz Pedal: If sounding like you’re messing up the amp is your thing (like the 1960s Jimi Hendrix), then this pedal is for you.

Compatible with: Swirl effects such as delay

4. Delay Pedal

The Delay Pedal literally delays your guitar’s audio signals. The pedal typically provides control over volume, the number of repeated sounds, and time intervals.

Why Delay Pedal:Great for creating experimental sounds and smoothing out your guitar solos.

Compatible with: Fuzz, Distortion and Phaser pedals

5. Reverb Pedal

The Reverb pedal creates a reverb effect, but the sound is more natural than the Delay pedal. Amplifiers normally have knobs to control this, but having a reverb pedal produces a more professional sound, especially for clean guitar tones.

Why Reverb Pedal: Whether you’re playing a note or a full rhythm, it effectively creates an atmosphere for your listeners.

Compatible with: Overdrive pedals

6. Wah Pedal

The wah pedal effect is one of the easiest to distinguish because of the “wah” sound it creates with each step of the pedal. Unlike other pedals, you manually press the wah pedal for a higher-pitched, obvious “wah” sound and release it for a “wu” sound.

Why Wah Pedal: It serves as an accentuating treble bass vibration to make your voice more “vocal”. Some say it’s made specifically for memorable rock solos, but they also add significant refinement and drama to rhythms.

Compatible with: Overdrive, Reverb and Delay pedals

7. Chrous Pedal

The chorus pedal is another complementary special effects device that gives your music a more dramatic effect. Simply put, it makes a beat of a string or a strumming of a chord, as if reproduced in the background by many other guitarists.

Why Chorus Pedal: Creates a thicker and richer 12-string guitar sound that’s perfect for rhythms.

Compatible with: Dirty-toned pedals

8. Phaser Pedal

The phaser pedal is quite similar to the chorus pedal, except that it produces distinct sweeping sounds, with changeable peaks and jabs in the guitar tone. The speed or rate of the sounds can also be adjusted with the button on the pedal surface. The phaser pedal effect is most noticeable when a single note or chord is played in succession.

Why the Phaser Pedal: It creates that spaceship sound that Eddie Van Halen made famous in the 1970s

Compatible with: Distortion and Delay pedals

9. Phaser Pedal

The sound is thicker and more pronounced compared to the Phaser pedal. The Flanger pedal sounds like an automatic Wah pedal, but the sound doesn’t get that far.

Why the Flanger Pedal: Perfect for modern metal, grunge and even funk.

Compatible with: Dirty-tone pedals

10. Octave Pedal

The octave pedal provides notes one octave higher or lower than what you are playing. This pedal alone can give you a fuller and thicker sound and is also good for creating exceptional guitar tones.

Why Octave Pedal: The sound provides an additional bass tone, so you can practically play two-person band music.

Compatible with: Overdrive, Reverb and Delay pedals

11. Tremolo Pedal

This pedal ripples the sound of your guitar very quickly for a kind of jarring, “rocking” sound.

Why the Tremolo Pedal: The tremolo pedal creates a unique sound that can define your next song and musical style. You can read our full guide for tremolo pedals here.

Compatible with: Dirty-tone pedals

12. Tuner Pedal

Tuner pedals do not actually create guitar sound effects. However, it improves your effects and overall sound by helping you perform one of the most important (and possibly most challenging) tasks for any guitarist, like tuning your guitar strings.

Why Tuner Pedal: Tuning your guitar can be tricky, especially in the middle of a show, and the tuner pedal lets you tune without having to ditch your guitar.

13. Noise Gate Pedal

The Noise Gate Pedal is particularly useful for hiding these buzzing and humming sounds when you are not playing.

Why Noise Gate Pedal: There’s nothing more annoying than the sound of bees inside your amp when you’re giving a speech. You may need to get this pedal for that.

14. Acoustic Pedal

If you’re always into full metal, this pedal might not be for you. However, for most electric guitarists there are times when they would like to play acoustically but cannot with their current equipment. Using this pedal, your electric guitar sound is modified to sound like an acoustic guitar, but still distinctly simulated compared to the real thing.

Why Acoustic Pedal: Gives you the sound of an acoustic guitar with a simple pedal pitch.

Compatible with: Synth pedals such as Chorus, Reverb, and Delay

15. Volume Pedal

The volume pedal also doesn’t actually create sound effects, but gives an alternative control over the volume of your guitar, especially when your hands are very busy.

Why the Volume Pedal: Sometimes it provides gradual or gradual transitions, as well as adjusting your volume for mid-songs and highlights.

Compatible with: All sound effects pedals