If you think about your guitar signal path, you spend time dialing in specific settings on everything but the actual starting point, which is the guitar. Let's unlock your inner tone geek and begin to look at the subtle nuances of your sound.

I’ll give you a wide scope of some different types of pedals that you can use for reference in your own quest for gear, while also relating key differences between these particular effects of overdrive, distortion, and fuzz. When do you use which? When do you use them together? How do you set the...

Delay is a time-based effect that replicates your guitar signal and plays it back one or multiple times after a period of time. That period of time (often labeled as Time) and the number of times it’s played back (often labeled Repeats) depends on the delay pedal itself.

Reverb was actually the first effect in the guitar landscape, as it occurs naturally in the world. Eventually, guitar nerds decided to put this effect into a what would become a reverb tank that you’ll find in most Fender amps for example. This type of reverb is called Spring reverb, and unlike d...

Modulation is an umbrella term that refers to effects that modulate your guitar signal in various ways, and these effects include Tremolo, Phasers, Flangers, and Chorus/Vibrato. It’s important to note that modulation itself is not an effect, but rather the process by which an effect is produced. ...

Just like EQ does, filters change your guitar's frequency and result in squeezed or expanded effects based on your manipulation of the tool you're using, be it a wah pedal, envelope filter, or something else.

Effects aren't meant to cover up mistakes, but sometimes covering up your guitar signal with wild and wacky sounds can be just what you're looking for in your music.

All things rock, metal and beyond, with underrated cleans–you may go with a high-gain amp. Blues, funk, and jazz? You'll go towards a tube amp. But what are the pros and cons of tube amps versus solid-state amps, and which amps work best in different genres? The answer is less complicated than yo...

The methods of equalization you'll see will work for clean or gain channels, and as you’ve now realized, there is a lot of adjustments to be made just between your guitar and amp, and they’re worth exploring to the end and back. When you’re ready, we'll talk about the nerdy stuff. I’m talking EQ ...

To err is to be human, and luckily for you, I've already made all the mistakes. In this lesson you'll learn "correct" and "incorrect" pedal order, how that really doesn't matter, as well as how different gear can drastically impact your guitar tone. You may already have the gear you need and you ...

In the final video of our gear nerd section, I’ll show you best practices for building a pedalboard, as well as pedals that work particularly well paired together, and the best order for your pedals and the types of amps that you should consider when using pedals.