A short history of effects pedals

In the early days of rock, B.P. (Before Pedals)

In the 1950's, none of these pedals existed. Electric guitars and basses were fairly new to the popular consciousness. They had come about by necessity from frustrated Big Band Swing Era guitarists who were frustrated by their inability to be heard over a screaming horn section.

Eleven against one: notice frustrated guitarist in upper left

Their solution was to place a magnetic pickup down by the soundhole and plug into the primitive amplifiers available at the time. By the mid-1950's, the electric guitar had taken on a new prominence thanks to innovators like Les Paul (1915 - 2009).

Les Paul

Electric guitarists quickly realized that using this instrument's electronic components gave them an opportunity for different sounds than had ever been heard before. By overdriving the vacuum tubes in the amplifiers and creating distortion, the instrument attained a sustaining, singing tone that defied the natural decay of the sound an acoustic instrument has.

At first this effect was created by playing LOUD. Studio musicians like Link Wray and the Who found other ways around the puzzled and angered sound technicians who, trained under the old ways, forced them to turn down: they found ways to damage the amplifiers and slice the speaker cones with razor blades to attain this distortion at "acceptable" volume levels in the studio. But imagine the repercussions after they left the studios and the technicians found out what they had done! A better solution had to be created somehow.

Early pedals

So, in the 1960's, as rock became more popular and an economic base big enough to support research and innovation developed, musicians began to use small, independent effect pedals connected in a chain between the guitar and the amp.  Most of these were distortion pedals that emulated the amplifier distortion or tried for new types of overdrive, but other experiments led to the wah-wah pedal. Jimi Hendrix's favorite setup included an Electro-Harmonix Big Muff distortion pedal and a Duncan Cry Baby wah pedal.

Through the 1970's, the sonic possibilities of effects pedals were explored and expanded upon. In addition to volume-based effects like distortion, and frequency-based effects like the wah pedal, a lot of development went into time-based effects that make a copy of a sound and shift it in time, like the chorus, phaser, flanger, delay, and reverb. 

By the mid-decade, organizing cases began to appear in an attempt to simplify guitarists' increasingly complicated setups. These cases provided for an easy plug-and-play setup with a preset configuration of favorite pedals, and had electrical extensions to power each pedal in the rack to save on battery costs.

Modern pedal setups

As digital technology increased in quality in the late 1990's the concept of effects pedals was rethought. Each circuit you add to the chain increases background noise from the electronic components, and digital recording was changing the acceptance level for this noise and demanding a higher standard. The new kind of pedal was an all-in-one software based effect setup, configurable in any way and recallable at the touch of a button/ footswitch. Now you could instantly change the order of the pedals, instantly recall multiple knob moves, and not add to the noise floor with additional pedals. 

A new kind of device also automated the amplifier part of the chain at the dawn of the century. Line 6 led the charge with their Pods and amplifiers, containing an effect that emulated the acoustic characteristics of any amplifier head and cabinet configuration you chose to make it. 

Vintage analog pedals have been making a serious comeback in recent years due to their reputation for an indefinable quality of warmth attributed to them. Whether this is due to our analog ears responding against the digital nature of modern technology or not, high-quality analog effects have popped up from companies like Moogmusic and Metasonix.