For the modern guitarist, altering the sound and tone of your guitar has never been easier. Guitar pedals are cheaper than ever and innovators continue to break the mould when it comes to what can be done with stompbox effects. For anyone looking to craft a sound with pedals, the breadth of options out there is discombobulating.

But for the guitarist or producer fifty years ago, adding effects to the guitar was far more complicated. It required expensive analog gear, creative techniques and a hell of a lot of patience. In this article, we look at some of the studio secrets producers and musicians used to create alternate tones and effects, and the modern pedals that attempt to re-create these effects.

Fuzz/Distortion

Before the days of the distortion pedals and fuzz boxes, obtaining abrasive tones for the guitar required a bit of self-modification. Early examples of fuzz guitar stemmed from people using mutilated amplifiers. By using equipment that was damaged, many found that it gave guitars a much harsher tone.

Once guitarist caught on to this, artists such as like Link Wray would intentionally poke holes into their amp’s speaker cone to create a crude fuzz tone. Famously, The Kinks’ Dave Davies used a razor blade to slice into the speaker cone of his Elpico amp, which resulted in the iconic distorted sound on their 1964 classic You Really Got Me.

— paragraph on the first fuzz pedals.

Another way artists would distort their guitar tone was by directly injecting their guitar signal into a mixing console and ‘overdriving’ it. In other words, increasing the level of gain pushing the equipment to its limits until the signal is clipped.

This was a popular technique for many artists at the time. Neil Young used this method to achieve a variety of fuzz tones in his songs. The Beatles also relished this method, perhaps most memorably on Revolution 9.

These days, achieving a fuzz tone on your guitar is a lot less laborious.  — line on fuzz pedals. However, there are still  stompboxes being made that replicate the sound of an overdriven console. An example of this is the JHS Colour Box. The Colour Box  allows you to accurately emulate the sound of a Neve console and has a broad range of fuzz tones, perfect for those looking for that classic ‘direct injection’ sound.

Double-Tracking

Popularised within the walls of Abbey Road Studios, double-tracking is a technique that is common amongst both guitarists and vocalists. As the name of the effect suggests, double-tracking involves a performer playing along with another pre-recorded take, producing a much fuller and richer sound than can be achieved with a single track.

In an attempt to find a way to double the track without doing multiple takes, something that John Lennon loathed when recording, engineer Ken Townsend came up with the concept of automatic double tracking, or ADT for short. With ADT, it would take the signal, send it to a second tape recorder which was slightly delayed and mix it with the original signal.

He realised that if you were to put two takes of the same recording and perfectly sync them up, the double-tracking effect would not work. Townsend discovered that by altering the speed of the second tape, it would provide more or less delay. This allowed him to finely-tune the double-tracked instrument’s decay and tone, forever revolutionising the realm of overdubbing.

Not only did ADT completely change the recording process, it also went on to influence live performances. If a guitarist wanted a richer sound while playing live, they could play with an additional guitarist or play over a pre-recorded guitar track. But with the invention of ADT, many corporations produced guitar pedals that could re-create the same multi-track effect in real time.

Our personal favourite is the Mimiq Doubler by TC Electronics. This pedal instills the same magic of studio ADT into a tiny stomp-box. With the ability to add on three guitar tracks on top of your original signal, it’ll turn any pub band dreamers into stadium rock legends.

Flanging

Stemming from the creation of ADT, the flange effect was also stumbled upon by Ken Townsend and first used by The Beatles during the recording process of Revolver. The flange effect used the same technology as ADT and required two tapes of the same track, with one tape slightly delayed. Townsend took this one step further and realised that if you gradually change the speed of the second tape, you could create a sweeping comb filter, similar to the sound of a jet plane.
The first song by The Beatles to use the tape flanging technique was the trippy ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ and is applied to John Lennon’s vocals throughout the song. Another early pioneer of flanging was Jimi Hendrix, who first used the effect on his song ‘Bold As Love’. By applying the effect to the master track during the coda, it applied the ‘whooshing’ filter on top of all the instruments, creating a futuristic tone and feel.
Although digital flanging in now the norm in recording and producing music, there are still certain pedals that emulate the effect of tape flanging. The Deco by Strymon is as close as you can get to actual tape flanging. This simple effects pedal allows you to apply an array of sweeping comb filters, as well as echo and double-tracking abilities. If you’re a diehard of old-school tape effects, you can’t go past the Deco.

Pitch Shift

With today’s music production software, altering the pitch of an instrument is quite simple. You can raise the notes of a particular MIDI plug-in with a few clicks, or you can transpose the entire song into a different key in a matter of seconds. With analog technology, pitch shifting could be achieved by speeding up or slowing down a tape recording. By slowing down the tape you could lower the pitch, and by making it faster you could raise the pitch.

This technique first became popular amongst voice-over artists. With the popular TV series Alvin and the Chipmunks, the voice artists recorded their lines onto a tape spinning at half the regular speed. Once recorded, the tape would be sped up to its normal speed and the results were unusually high voices, rendering the recording technique as the ‘Chipmunk Effect’.

One of the earliest example of this technique being used in music production is on Frank Zappa’s 1969 album, Hot Rats. During the recording for this instrumental fusion masterpiece, Zappa would often record his bass guitar and play it back at double the speed, nicknaming it the ‘octave bass’. The result was something that was similar to a guitar, but had more body and energy to its tone. This technique was used with many other instruments during recording, including organs, woodwinds and percussion.

For the modern guitarist looking to broaden the pitch range of their axe, you can’t beat the Digitech Whammy. This guitar pedal has been a favourite amongst professionals for decades and was the first foot pedal that could alter an instrument’s pitch. You can add on octave notes, 5th and 3rd notes, detune your guitar or slide the pitch of your guitar up two octaves with the expression pedal. No wonder it’s a favourite with Tom Morello, Matt Bellamy and Dave Gilmour.

Reverb

One of the most commonly used effects in recording, reverb is essentially the persistence of a sound. When a sound is reflected and builds up reflections to create decay, this is what is known as reverberation. It’s the same echo-y effect you find in caves and other confined places. Because the sound has nowhere to go but to constantly bounce off the walls, this creates a more sustained note and vastly increases its decay time — re-work

As such, the first examples of reverb in music were created naturally in halls and echo chambers. This involved playing the signal through a speaker in a large space with a microphone to pick up the original signal as well as the naturally-occurring reverb.

The lack of control over the reverb time with this method proved to be somewhat problematic for musicians, so producers invented new ways of generating reverb in a controlled manner. One such method was with plate reverb devices. These used transducers to generate vibrations within a plate of sheet metal. These vibrations were then picked up by microphones and could be added to the original ‘dry’ signal, or left on its own.

The first commercial plate reverb system, the EMT 140, weighed nearly 300 kilograms and was a staple of many Abbey Road recordings including Pink Floyd and The Beatles.

Perhaps the most well-known method of creating reverb is with a spring tank. These consist of a pick-up and a transducer at opposite ends of a spring. This would cause the coil spring to vibrate and result in a new way to generate natural decay. The famous Hammond Organ was one of the first examples of an instrument with a built-in spring reverb system. Many guitar amps would come with the system built-in, as they were compact, easy to construct and relatively cheap to manufacture.

If you’re looking to re-create the plate reverb of the EMT 140, but want something just a bit more portable, we suggest the Talisman guitar pedal by Catalinbread. Of the few guitar pedals that seek to attain the classic plate reverb effect, the Talisman is an excellent choice. Or if you’re looking for a pedal that can achieve the classic spring reverb effect, we suggest staying within the Catalinbread family and going for the Topanga. There may be some people who will never be satisfied with a spring reverb pedal that doesn’t feature any springs at all, but this is a versatile and easy-to use stomp-box, and a must-have for any pedal-board.

Interested in vintage tone? Come by Noise Machines and experience it firsthand. Email radi@noisemachines.studio or call 0405 709 131.