Updated: Sep 30
The guitar pedals that earn a place on a record are rarely the most expensive ones. For most indie and alternative bands the useful set is one good overdrive (an Ibanez TS808 Tube Screamer, a Klon KTR, an Analogman King of Tone or a Fulltone OCD), one fuzz, one delay (an Electro-Harmonix Memory Man, a Boss DD-500 or an Eventide TimeFactor), one modulation pedal (a Uni-Vibe style, a Strymon Mobius or an Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress), one reverb (a Strymon BigSky or an EarthQuaker Devices Avalanche Run), and, if you like, one genuinely strange pedal such as a Meris Enzo, an Empress Zoia or an Electro-Harmonix POG2. This guide covers what each type does on a recording, what the well-known pedals in each group actually are, and why the decision to commit to a sound matters more than the pedal.
It is written for bands recording guitars, not for collectors. If you want the rare and vintage end, we cover that in rare guitar pedals you might be lucky to find.
Pedals for recording at a glance
Overdrive and distortion: Ibanez TS808 Tube Screamer, Klon KTR (and the original Klon Centaur), Analogman King of Tone, Fulltone OCD, Boss MT-2 Metal Zone.
Fuzz: an Electro-Harmonix Big Muff or any fuzz you love, used with restraint.
Delay: Electro-Harmonix Memory Man (analogue), Boss DD-500 (digital), Eventide TimeFactor (two delays in one), Catalinbread Echorec, and the Maestro Echoplex EP-3 tape echo they all imitate.
Modulation: Shin-ei Uni-Vibe and its descendants, Strymon Mobius, Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress, Walrus Audio Julia.
Reverb: Strymon BigSky, EarthQuaker Devices Avalanche Run.
Strange: Meris Enzo, Empress Zoia, Electro-Harmonix POG2, Hologram Microcosm, Chase Bliss Thermae, Red Panda Tensor, EarthQuaker Devices Rainbow Machine.
Overdrive: the pedal that matters most
On a record, overdrive is less about distortion than about how the amp responds to the player. A good overdrive pushes the amp harder, tightens the low end and makes the guitar feel more alive under the fingers.
Ibanez TS808 Tube Screamer. The mid-forward overdrive behind countless records. It cuts low end and pushes the middle, which is exactly what helps a guitar sit in a band mix.
Klon Centaur and Klon KTR. Bill Finnegan built the Centaur by hand from 1994 until he stopped in 2008, around 8,000 in total, and used ones now sell for silly money. He introduced the smaller KTR in 2012 as its successor, and it does the same job: a clean boost blended with a soft, transparent drive that makes an amp sound like a slightly better version of itself. Finnegan still builds the odd reissue Centaur, but those are sold one at a time at auction, not in shops.
Analogman King of Tone. Two overdrive channels in one box, famous for its long waiting list and for making amps sound like slightly louder versions of themselves.
Fulltone OCD. More gain and more attitude than the others, closer to a cranked amp.
Boss MT-2 Metal Zone: the pedal everyone argues about
Boss released the MT-2 in 1991 for heavy metal players, and it has sold more than a million units, more than any other Boss drive or distortion pedal except the DS-1. It is also one of the most mocked pedals ever made, mostly because of how people set it: middle scooped out, gain on full, and the guitar turned into fizz.
On a recording the trick is its semi-parametric middle control. Turn the mids up instead of down and the gain down from where it starts, and the MT-2 becomes a tight, aggressive distortion that sits in a band mix. Used the way most people first use it, it disappears behind the drums.
Fuzz: use it like salt
Fuzz is the most characterful pedal on a board and the easiest to overdo on a recording. A Big Muff-style fuzz can make a guitar huge on its own and tiny in a band, because it fills the same frequencies as everything else. On record, fuzz usually works best on one part, doubled by a cleaner guitar, or with the bass rolled back so it does not swallow the low end. The shoegaze and noise records people love are often less fuzzy than they sound, which we get into in how to mix shoegaze.
Delay: time as part of the part
A delay on a recording is not decoration if the player is playing with it. The repeats become part of the rhythm, and a part written around a dotted-eighth delay does not work without it. These are the delays worth knowing.
Electro-Harmonix Memory Man
Electro-Harmonix founder Mike Matthews introduced the Memory Man in 1976, built on a then-new bucket brigade chip, and it became one of the first analogue delays aimed at gigging guitarists. The Deluxe Memory Man followed in 1980 with a dedicated chorus and vibrato control and up to 550 milliseconds of delay. Later versions add tap tempo and longer times, but the original had neither.
Its repeats get darker and blurrier as they fade, so they sit behind the guitar instead of competing with it. That is why it suits dream pop and indie so well.
Boss DD-500
Boss announced the DD-500 in July 2015: twelve delay modes, from clean digital to analogue and tape types and pattern-based effects, with patch memories, MIDI and a display for editing. It is the pedal for when you need a delay to do exactly the same thing on every take.
Eventide TimeFactor
The TimeFactor gives you two independent delays of up to three seconds each, nine delay types from vintage digital and tape to reverse and ducked delay, and a looper. Two delays in one box means you can set a short slap and a long, rhythmic echo at once, which is a common studio trick.
Maestro Echoplex EP-3
The Echoplex EP-3 is not a pedal. It is a tabletop tape echo unit, the solid-state version of Mike Battle's earlier tube Echoplex, sold by Maestro from 1970. A cartridge holds a loop of tape, and sliding a head along it changes the delay time. Eddie Van Halen, Jimmy Page and Brian May all used one, and many players left it in the chain just for the colour of its preamp.
Every "tape" setting on a digital delay is chasing this sound. For more of the originals, see rare tape echo units for studio recordings.
Also worth a look: the Catalinbread Echorec, inspired by the Binson Echorec magnetic drum echo heard on early Pink Floyd records, whose multiple playback heads make rhythmic, swirling patterns.
Modulation: movement you can feel
Shin-ei Uni-Vibe
The Uni-Vibe circuit was designed by the Japanese engineer Fumio Mieda in the mid-1960s, first sold in Japan around 1967 as the Honey Vibra Chorus, then made by Shin-ei from 1968 and sold in the United States by Univox as the Uni-Vibe. It was meant to imitate a rotating speaker for organ players. Inside, a light bulb pulses in front of several photocells, each tuned slightly differently, which gives it that throbbing, liquid sound. Jimi Hendrix used one at Woodstock in 1969, and it has been part of the guitar vocabulary ever since.
Originals are expensive now, but plenty of modern pedals keep the circuit and the throb.
Strymon Mobius
Strymon released the Mobius in December 2012. It has twelve modulation "machines": chorus, flanger, rotary, vibe, phaser, filter, formant, vintage tremolo, pattern tremolo, autoswell, destroyer and quadrature, with space for 200 presets and MIDI control. It runs one machine at a time, so it replaces a row of single pedals rather than stacking them.
Good when you need range across a record. Less inspiring than a single-purpose pedal you know by heart.
Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress
Designed by David Cockerell at Electro-Harmonix and first sold in early 1976, the Electric Mistress is a flanger with a trick: the Filter Matrix switch stops the sweep, so you can park the flange at one point and play through a fixed, metallic colour. David Gilmour used one on Pink Floyd records from 1977 into the early 1980s, and Andy Summers used one with the Police. It is still in production.
Also worth a look: the Walrus Audio Julia, an analogue chorus and vibrato with a warm, slightly seasick character that suits dream pop and indie.
Reverb: less on the way in than you think
A reverb pedal can be part of a guitar's sound, especially in shoegaze and dream pop where the wash is the part. But reverb printed on the way in cannot be taken out later, and a huge wash that sounds magical alone can turn into fog in the full band. If the reverb is part of the performance, print it. If it is decoration, add it in the mix.
Strymon BigSky
Announced in October 2013, the BigSky is a studio reverb in a pedal: twelve reverb machines, from room, hall, plate and spring to shimmer, cloud, bloom and a Magneto mode that mixes reverb with multi-head echo. Strymon has since added the BigSky MX, but the original is still a common sight on pedalboards.
EarthQuaker Devices Avalanche Run
The Avalanche Run is a stereo delay and reverb in one pedal, with up to two seconds of delay, reverse and swell modes, tap tempo and a sound-on-sound looper. The V2, announced for NAMM 2018, made the reverb truly stereo. It is at its best when the delay and reverb blur into one another, which is exactly the sound many shoegaze parts are built on.
One strange pedal
Every band benefits from one pedal that makes something no one expects.
Meris Enzo
Meris launched the Enzo in 2018. It turns a guitar into a synthesizer by tracking what you play, with four modes: mono for single lines, poly for chords, arp for arpeggios from a strummed chord, and dry, which turns it into a pitch shifter. Dual oscillators, a filter, a ring modulator and a two-tap delay shape the sound. On a record it is best for a part that should not sound like a guitar at all.
Empress Zoia
Empress Effects released the Zoia in 2019. It is a modular effects and synth environment in a pedal: a grid of buttons where you connect more than 80 building-block modules into your own effects and instruments. It rewards people who like to build things and frustrates people who want to plug in and play.
Electro-Harmonix POG2
The POG2 arrived in 2009 as the successor to the 2005 POG. It adds octaves above and below what you play and tracks chords, not just single notes, with a second sub-octave, an attack control and presets. Useful for organ-like parts, a fake twelve-string, or a guitar that has to cover a missing bass player.
Other strange pedals we like:
Hologram Microcosm: a granular looper and sampler that turns what you play into clouds and stutters.
Chase Bliss Thermae: an analogue delay that shifts the pitch of its repeats in musical intervals.
Red Panda Tensor: reverse, pitch and time-stretch effects that play with time itself.
EarthQuaker Devices Rainbow Machine: a polyphonic pitch-shifting modulator that sounds like a warped record.
Our take: commit to the sound while you play
The most important thing about pedals on a recording is not which ones you own. It is that the guitarist plays through the sound. A player reacts to the sustain of a fuzz, the rhythm of a delay and the throb of a vibe, and those reactions are part of the performance. Record a clean guitar and add the effects later, and you get a performance played for a different sound.
So we record the pedal sound as the take. If it makes you nervous, take a clean DI at the same time, and re-amping gives you a way back. But decide on the sound in the room, the way the records you love were made.
The other half of the argument is fewer pedals. The guitar sounds on most great indie records come from a guitar, an amp, a player and two or three pedals they know inside out. Choosing the right microphone for the amp will change your recorded tone more than a fourth modulation pedal.
What earlier versions of this page got wrong
This page replaces five older posts on this blog promising "must-have", "boutique", "unique" and "vintage-inspired" guitar pedals, and fourteen shorter posts about single pedals. They named real pedals but said almost nothing useful about them, and several details were wrong:
The Echoplex EP-3 was called a pedal that emulates tape echo. It is a tabletop unit that is tape echo.
The Uni-Vibe, the Electric Mistress and the Echoplex were described as rare pieces made in limited quantities. All three were ordinary production items in their day, and the Electric Mistress is still made.
The Strymon Mobius was said to combine several effects at once. It runs one modulation machine at a time.
The Memory Man was credited with tap tempo and an expression input. Those came with later versions, not the 1970s original.
The Klon Centaur was described as simply discontinued. The main run did end in 2008, but Bill Finnegan still builds occasional reissues.
Guitar pedals for recording FAQ
Which guitar pedals are most useful for recording?
An overdrive, a delay and one modulation pedal cover most recording situations. A fuzz, a reverb and one strange pedal add character, but they are easier to overuse.
Should I record guitars with pedals or add effects later?
Record the pedal sound when it is part of the performance, because the player reacts to it. Take a clean DI at the same time if you want the option of re-amping later.
What is the difference between the Klon Centaur and the Klon KTR?
The Centaur is Bill Finnegan's original overdrive, hand-built from 1994 to 2008, about 8,000 made. The KTR is his smaller successor from 2012 and does the same job at a far more sensible price than a used Centaur.
Is the Boss Metal Zone a good pedal for recording?
It can be, if you turn the middle up instead of scooping it and use less gain than it invites. It has sold over a million units, but most of its bad reputation comes from that scooped, full-gain setting.
Should reverb be recorded with the guitar?
Only if it is part of the sound the player is responding to, as it often is in shoegaze and dream pop. Otherwise add it in the mix, where it can be adjusted to fit the band.
Keep reading
Ready for a mix that keeps the guitar sound you played through? We mix indie rock, post-punk and shoegaze for artists everywhere, and we would rather protect a committed guitar tone than replace it. Send us the rough mix.
