The Steel Guitar Forum

I have been playing pedal steel a short while. I am wondering if the are any effects pedals that would be good to start out with. I have a goodrich voloume pedal and a peavy Nashville 400 amp. Do I need a delay pedal, compression or reverb pedal or something else or do I need nothing else? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Roger

In my opinion, and I feel this strongly, none. I have three pedalboards (for specific situations) and every pedal on every board is there because I chose it, I wanted it, I sought it out. Until there is the need or the desire, it has no place in your signal chain. Need & desire can be "I want delay" or it can be "what is that sound that guy is getting? -- I want to try what he is using".

Roger, just my opinion: forget compression on steel. Delay? You've got reverb in the amp. Delay for me artificializes the sound.

You've got what you need. Now go practice!

As Jon and Chris said, you don't "NEED" any effects pedals. All you need is a guitar, volume pedal, and good amp. It's like baking a cake. All you need are the cake and frosting. But certain needs do arrive, like a birthday. Then you need to embellish the cake with writing, maybe sprinkles or roses. Those are the "effect pedals" for the cake. They add a little something extra. If you don't specifically have a need for an effect, then you don't need it. I'm not advocating not using effects. Heck,I have a few myself. A distortion pedal, rotary speaker pedal, EQ (for dobro sounds), and a Zoom multi effects pedal I use in the effects loop in my Nashville 400 (reverb died).

You don't "Need" anything as others have stated.

I was never a fan of the Peavey reverb so I always used external reverb and a slight delay.

There are a lot of reverbs and delays around. My current unit is a Keeley "Caverns" combo delay and reverb.

Look to your hands and ears, you already have everything you need except more time in that seat, so save the toys until you know why you need them.

You don't "need" anything, except seat time, but >80% of players DO have at least a reverb pedal even though Peaveys come with one, folks prefer an outboard reverb. I would say that's pretty basic.

If you're using a volume pedal, you wont want a compressor.

My most used pedals / effects are overdrive and chorus. A chorus pedal with a mix control works best IMO.

One thing I'm interested in trying is the ElectoHarmonics organ simulator.

Well... it depends on what you want to do. I play out with mostly red dirt country bands. So they really are diverse in styles. I will use a distortion pedal, organ and leslie simulator, slapback delay, and even a phaser sometimes. I also use a reverb pedal so that I can adjust it on the fly and do more ambient swells too when the songs call for it. I do really like a compressor pedal to mimic that tube compression feel when I play solid state amps. It dulls the biting attack a little and feels more forgiving to me.

So- I guess - I'm saying, I do "need" my effects pedals because of the style of music that I'm playing. Of course, they are not any help if you don't learn to play the instrument! If you want to know more specifics of what brands or pedals I like, just message me and we don't have to bore the other folks on the thread here.