Guitar effects pedals and me - a short history

For those that don't know what I'm writing about, here's a link to an explanation of effects pedals.

In my first incarnation as an electric guitarist, 1975-8, I had a commercially produced tremolo pedal and a home made volume pedal. A  tremolo pedal cuts the signal at a frequency determined by a knob on the pedal; despite this option of changing the tremolo speed, I found that it was useful either at a high (i.e. fast) frequency when playing lead guitar (the example that comes to mind is the lead guitar on the Tremeloes' "Silence is golden" [pun not intended]) or at a low (i.e. slow) frequency when playing chords. I don't remember what happened to that pedal. A friend made a volume pedal that I remember using at a performance in March 1977 (see this recollection); as I wrote then, "I remember feeling that I couldn't play as loud as I wanted (and we were very loud)". Again, I don't remember what happened to this pedal. 

Sometime in the early '80s, I saw an advert for a kit that would make a phaser pedal when put together. I prevailed on my parents who presumably were on a visit to Britain from Israel to bring this kit with them; they weren't very happy about this as the security staff on the airplane thought that the electronics might be the basis of a bomb. But I received the kit and I passed it on to the person who had built the volume pedal and was now living on the same kibbutz as I. I don't remember what happened, but my suspicion now is that the pedal didn't work, otherwise presumably I would have remembered it.

My brother in law, who was working in a music shop in the early '90s, gave me a chorus pedal. I remember using this when recording vocals onto the double tape deck that I bought second-hand in Britain in 1997. I still have this pedal although it doesn't work; I'm fairly sure that I tried it with a new battery at some stage.

Several years ago, I bought a peculiar device that is a multi-effects processor but can't be called a pedal as it is not foot operated. I have used this a few times when playing 'the Passover song', for a chorus effect. I brought this device with me when I started playing with the musical group but it too had stopped working even after I replaced its batteries. I bought a replacement (pictured left) but have yet to use it. This unit is cheap and cheerful, but awkward to use.

The Roland cube amplifier that I bought in 2011 sports a variety of effects, but these unfortunately are 'either/or': either I use chorus or phaser but not both. I normally have the amplifier set up with chorus and a short delay which is why I haven't bothered using the multi-effects processor mentioned in the previous paragraph.

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This day in history:

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449	06/02/2012	A day in the life	Trains
547	06/02/2013	Research Proposal exam results	DBA
805	06/02/2015	Sending emails automatically, continued	ERP, Email