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is there a pedal that makes your strumming more percussive?

there are pedals that turn your guitar into a synth. strings.all sorts of shit but what about drums. something that makes your guitar more "thunk"

More percussive? Like... less sustain, more staccato?

Noise gate?

I imagine you can use an EQ pedal for that.

I don't see how a treble booster could make a sound more "percussive"?

VAGUE QUESTION IS VAGUE, ROB. A noise gate (or other kind of "gate" effect) would definitely make the guitar more staccato, gated fuzzes can be fun.. pretty much turns the guitar into a square wave generator so it's only ON or OFF, no real decay or anything.

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Boss Power Stack, makes some claims about percussiveness. Just so happens I was reading a review or it in an old Guitarist earlier today.


Personally I'm sceptical that is is anything other than another distortion pedal.

there's a way you can do this with a compressor; I've never been very good at it though, or had any kind of very good compressor to play around with.

Turn the treble up all the way on your amp -- it makes the tone more clicky and percussive. Muted strumming has a much sharper tone.

I usually do that with an echo pedal (very short delay) or spring reverb, it adds a that 'plump-bunk' (dont know how to call it) to Your strum, pizzicato.
But I dont know if thats what Your talking about..

Mages wrote:there's a way you can do this with a compressor; I've never been very good at it though, or had any kind of very good compressor to play around with.

I've never played around with a compressor but I have a friend who uses one in his bass rig, and the way he explained it to me it just makes the pick attack line up better with the note, so I don't know if that would make it more "percussive" or what that means.

Also, I don't think cranking the treble would do anything to make it more percussive. I kind of associate percussiveness with bass response. Cranking the treble always just makes it sound very brittle to me and it just causes pain to my ear drums. I have one student that always cranks the treble on his amp and he's been wanting to do a lot of songs with up strummed syncopated barre chords like bob marley and stuff like that. Every week I have to go over to his amp and turn the treble down because it just hurts my ears.

....hard to explain.

you know how there is a difference between rumbling thunder and cracking thunder?


say your guitar tone is 50/50 rumble/crack.

im looking for something that increases the point of impact to say 80% crack and follows with 20% rumble.

in effect actually decreasing sustain....putting more energy in the initial pluck and less into the string vibrating.

then turning it up really fucking loud so your balls rattle.


i want more "thunk" and less guitar mojo bullshit like "shimmering high's" and "bell like tones", and "fuck i don't know what to write about this guitar so ill just use some shit some other guy said about a gutiar back in an 80's magazine since they are all the fucking same"

just "turn the bass up" and "turn the trebble up" isn't what im talking about at all

i guess im talking about a compressor, but i want it to sound like a fucking bass drum when i hit an E, like BOOM

i need to talk to mike or aen about this.

preferably with a drumset and guitar in front of me to describe what the fuck im rambling on about

robroe wrote:just "turn the bass up" and "turn the trebble up" isn't what im talking about at all

i guess im talking about a compressor, but i want it to sound like a fucking bass drum when i hit an E, like BOOM

Still sounds like a good combo of beater click and massive kick thumporz, definitely a "smiley EQ" in my book. And either a JC-120 or a Twin Reverb blowing everyone's ears out.




That being said, You might actually like the Janglebox for the convenient edge of more edgier edglings, if you can bear to have less bass doing bassey things:

Poasted by me ad nauseum (plus one), double tracked Jazzmaster into teh Janglebach, it drowns out everything else in the mix:

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I immediately thought of the Janglebox too. The thing is it's basically just a combined compressor and treble booster, so you could easily save yourself a packet by buying a compressor and graphic pedal or treble booster seperately.

The key thing is taking the time to learn how to use the compressor to do what you want it to do - few first-time compressor users do.

There is a little crazy pedal called ibanez lo-fi LF7. I think, this could produce some sounds you want...

It sounds like a compressor with an attack and release control may be what you're after but how about an EHX Knockout? It's an eq but different to others i've had.

you know the shitty bassline to runnin with the devil ?

i want that but not shitty.


i want runnin with the devil bassline coming out of my amp really fucking loud and hard.


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Slapback delay does this for me.