About Us

Guitar FX Direct is an independant UK company ran by a small friendly team of dedicated guitar enthusiasts.

WE LOVE PEDALS...... In fact Guitar FX Direct was born out of a passion for music and tone. Our aim is to bring our fellow pedal heads a selection of some of the best boutique guitar pedals and effects available on the market today, hand picked and tested by us. We pride ourselves on our customer service and answer all emails within 24 hours, if you have any questions or comments we'd love to hear from you.

Guitar effects have been around almost as long as there have been guitars, with the slide bottle being one of the first. To say that guitar effects have come a long way since then is an understatement.

Guitar effects arrived on the scene just shortly after the invention of the electric guitar and have been popular since that time. Guitar effects used to fall into two basic categories, analogue and digital. These days we have a third category, the Hybrid.

The earliest effects pedals were analogue with no computer chips. Reverb, Tremolo, Echo and other simple effects were created using simple circuits. Analogue effects today are a bit more sophisticated. The circuitry is more complicated, but they do the same basic job. They modify the guitars signal as it goes to the amplifier to create a different sound.

Perhaps the most popular effect is a distortion or Fuzz pedal. Distortion pedals originally tried to emulate the high gain breakup of a tube amplifier with the volume turned up too loud and they still attempt to do that today. However, the distortion pedals of today can deliver extreme amounts of distortion and are adjustable for gain, tone and volume. The most popular distortion pedal ever made is the Tube Screamer by Ibanez. It is an industry standard and is highly recommended.

Compression pedals have become widely popular as well. A compressor serves to even out the amplitude of a guitar signal, making every note the same basic volume. This is extremely important in a setting where the high notes or low notes tend to get lost in the background of the rest of the music being played.

The Wah pedal is a must-have for any guitarist. The venerable Dunlop Wah has been used by so many artists it is almost uncountable. The pedal is named after the effect it has on a note. By moving the foot pedal on the unit, the note makes a wah-wah-wah sound.

Chorus pedals are another favourite. The concept is to make one guitar sound like several guitars playing at once. Using a chorus pedal will make your sound sonically full and rich.

There are pedals that can change the octave of a note, make it sustain forever and even pedals that can make your guitar sound like it is talking. The possibilities are almost endless for creating your unique sound using pedals.

When the digital revolution came about, microchips made their way into guitar effects. In the early days of digital, the biggest complaint was that the effects sounded flat and sterile. That complaint has been overcome and many digital effects sound as good as or better than analogue effects. Any effect that is available with analogue circuitry is available in a digital model.

With digital technology we have seen the rise of multi-effect units that take up less room than a pedal board. Companies such as Digitech, Boss, Line 6 and others are constantly creating units that combine hundreds of effects and digital amplifier modelling. These units normally have dozens of preset effects and combinations of effects. You can also program your own presets and create some extremely unusual sounds. Dawsons