Gear Garage: Three Guitar Effects that Defined 80s Rock and Metal

By Leila Abdul-Rauf

Times and tastes may change, but the big, rich guitar sound of the 1980s never really went away. Cough it up to 30 years of never-ending nostalgia, but three of the most popular 80s guitar effects never left the collective consciousness. As a result, they've become basic building blocks of modern guitar tone.



The Rockman Guitar Ace – brainchild of Boston's Tom Shcolz

Every conversation about 80s guitar effects should begin with the importance and influence of the Rockman headphone guitar amplifier, which was widely used by players of the day. Developed by Boston guitarist Tom Scholz, the Rockman offered four effects ¬– compression, distortion, stereo chorus, and echo – in a simple and portable format. It's not a coincidence that this amp contained the four sound effects that defined the 1980s guitar-rock sound. For now, let's focus on the latter three: chorus, distortion, and echo (delay).



Chorus adds a "shimmery" sound by duplicating and slightly altering your guitar's signal.

Chorus

Ever wonder what makes that rich, shimmering sound of the guitar intro in The Pretenders' "Back on the Chain Gang," the guitar solo at the end of Rick Springfield's "Jessie's Girl"? Chorus is essentially a doubling effect: it creates a copy of a sound and makes it slightly out of tune with the original, to produce a richer, more textured sound. Most chorus pedals feature a Depth knob, controls the amount or intensity of pitch modulation produced by the chorus, and a Rate or Speed knob, indicates how fast the modulation happens. Cranking those knobs can create some "seasick" effects if you want to get experimental.



The Guv'nor Plus updates (and shrinks) Marshall's large-and-lovely Guv'nor pedal from the 1980s.

Distortion

Blues guitarists from the 1940s accidentally discovered distortion by maximizing their amps' volume knobs or playing through damaged speakers. Distortion is that aggressive, crunchy, buzzy sound you get when the gain knob is maximized on an amp. Check out Judas Priest's "Living After Midnight" – the guitar intro combines a healthy amount of both distortion and chorus:

At minimum, most distortion pedals allow you to control the amount of distortion (also called "gain") as well as a filter or tone knob to dial in how many high frequencies you want to accentuate.



Modern delay pedals can become quite complex, but the vintage styles keep their controls simple.

Echo/Delay

True to its name, a delay effect repeats your sound back to you, as if you were playing into a canyon and hearing the echo repeating (in fact, some engineers call this effect "echo"). Delays can make a guitar solo sound bigger and fuller, or make a single note last forever. Most delay pedals let you choose how many repetitions you hear (the knob might say "decay," "feedback," "rate," "regen," or "repeats"), the amount of time between repetitions ("time"), and the level (or "mix" or "intensity") of the effect overall. Edge makes great use of delay on the rhythm part of U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name."

As you search for your unique guitar sound, these three tested-and-true 80s effects aren't a bad place to start – they will serve you well on your journey!

Leila Abdul-Rauf is a multi-instrumentalist and composer based in Oakland, CA. Leila is guitarist and vocalist for metal bands Vastum, Hammers of Misfortune, and ethereal post-punk band Terebellum. She also composes and produces ambient music under her own name, with electronic trio Ionophore, and with synth-folk duo Fyrhtu. She has toured internationally and is a private guitar and voice teacher in her spare time.

SR&D Rockman Guitar Ace photo by is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.