Topic: Electric Guitar Effects
A while back I wrote a piece for one of the guitar wikis on effects and I reeled them off in chronological order; reverb, tape echo etc.
All very sound but I've come to thinking now that there is basically one big effect; compression. Bear with me. There are obviously all sorts of effects and some of the freakier ones clearly don't add compression but an awful lot of things do. I read a fascinating discussion of the Dallas Rangemaster treble booster pedal (as used by Eric Clapton in the sixties), the conclusion was that whatever treble effect it had this pedal introduced a very subtle and musical sort of compression. I've heard the same said of Fender amps. Same goes for echo; pitch it at the right level and it is very similar to a good workable level of compression.
Clearly not all effects are the same, but there's a human factor at work. Whatever pedal we plug in guitarists tweak it till it sounds right, anything that doesn't cut it goes in up on eBay. Also today's effects pedals are refinements of previous decades classics. So most decent effects are already thoroughbred with circuits that push sound in a way that gets our attention; which usually equates to compression by some route or other.
This isn't to say that you should march out and buy one compression pedal. There's good and bad within that category. It's just that when someone tells you are pedal is adding 'tube tone' or boosting mids you should nod, not get too caught up in the technicals, plug it in and see what it sounds like. Does it bring the sound forward? does it tighten and focus? If yes, then ignore the gurus and have fun with it.