The clueless owner of a new... distortion pedal
On my way back today, at Spadina, the driver helpfully announced that there’s no service on Line 1 between St. George and St. Andrew. Since there’s no point for me to go all the way to McCaul, I stepped out.
I figured, since I’m at Spadina and Queen, I might as well go to Lush or Steve’s — but Steve’s closes at 5, no? I quickly checked my phone. No, 5:30. That changed things.
So I went in, looked around at their selection of electric guitars, then asked for “a basic distortion pedal”.[Note 1]
I don’t even have a proper electric guitar; I have an acoustic with a pickup.
I plugged it in, then realized I needed an instrument cable.
After a few minutes of fumbling, I grabbed one from my dismantled WhatsApp setup in the living room.
So I plugged the second cable in, and started plucking some strings. I could only hear the high E and B strings.
Apparently, soundhole pickups for acoustic guitars are “balanced” so that they would pick up more signal from the other four strings.[Note 2] A few days ago I reinstalled my pickup the other way. I obviously installed it backwards.
So I’m now the clueless owner of a new distortion pedal. Other than now knowing I can’t install my pickup backwards, this whole experience has also taught me two other things I didn’t know before:
First, distortion pedals are actual pedals: you press the on-off switch with your foot. I never knew this.
And second, distortion pedals boost the signal. (On my pedal the knob says “level” but it’s really a gain knob.) Before I had the pedal I couldn’t tell if what I heard was from the pickup or from the guitar itself; now, with the distortion and the extra gain, I can clearly tell when I installed my pickup backwards. Haha....
The pedal also has a Tone knob.
But what does it actually do?
I have no idea.
It does change the tone,
but if I plug the output to my guitar tuner,
it doesn’t seem to detect any changes in pitch. Notes