The electric guitar is one of the very best instruments to use for creating different sounds. Since it uses electrical waveforms you can manipulate that waveform to create new and uniques sounds. I'm going to talk about the top three guitar effects you should have in your effect collection.

The first type of pedal Id like to discuss is essential to almost every guitar style. That is the Distortion or Overdrive pedal. The distortion pedal takes your guitar signal and compresses or clips the sound wave produced by your electric guitar.

You can choose from hundreds of different distortion pedals. Everything from heavy 60's fuzz to light distorted overdrive is available in a distortion pedal. So it goes without saying the you must have a Distortion in your effect collection whether you're playing Metal, Country or Rock-N-Roll.

The second type of pedal you should have is a delay pedal. The delay pedal takes your guitar signal and replicates it slightly behind the original signal. The signal can be repeated as many times as you want to create your desired echo effect.

You will use your delay effect primarily for increasing the depth of your guitar sound as well as layering the repeats to create complex harmonies. Using shorter delay times to thicken your sound and longer delays to create rhythmic harmonies are essential functions of the delay effect. Delay effects are used in every musical genre there is.

To round out the top 3 effect pedals you should own for your guitar, you must have a Chorus pedal. The way a Chorus pedal works is by putting a slight delay with added modulation to your guitar's original signal and then combining that signal with the original one. This creates a lush, full sound as if two guitars were playing simultaneously.

Chorusing is primarily used to thicken the sound of the electric guitar. Chorus effects are often run in stereo and mixed in the stereo spectrum to create a wide, full guitar sound. You can hear chorus effects in all types of music recorded today.

If you're an electric guitarist, eventually you will want to create more sounds from your instrument. That's why effects are so popular for electric guitar players. As you start building your guitar effect collection begin with the big 3 Delay, Distortion and Chorus.