Guitar Pedals vs Multi-Effects Units: 3 Things to Think About Before Buying!

If you’ve been playing guitar for a while, sooner or later it is almost inevitable that you will become curious about the wonderful world of guitar effects! Now personally, I’ve been an advocate for using stomp boxes for many years. I have certainly had a lot of experience with guitar pedals and they are predominately the type of effects I’ve been using. Admittedly, I moved away from digital multi-effects units fairly early on in my playing but having said that, I came across a unit by T.C. Electronics called the ‘Nova System’ which made me re-think my position on the matter. Specifically, I was really interested in the unique claims that this unit appeared to be a bit of a hybrid system combining ‘digital’ effects with ‘analog’ drive and distortion.

Having got my hands on one of theses units to test out in the studio, it got me thinking about the topic of ‘individual guitar pedals vs multi-effects’ units like this. Is one type of effect better than the other? What are the Pro’s and Con’s? And where should you be spending your money?!

For me there are 3 main things to consider in a discussion on stomp boxes vs multi-effects and they are price, versatility and tone. 

• Firstly, price is understandably a really big factor for a lot of people. Obviously, this will vary greatly depending on the particular pieces of gear you are interested in, but generally if you compare what you are getting in a multi-effects unit with how much it would cost to buy all of those effects separately, stomp boxes will usually represent a much more significant investment. This is especially true when you take into account the cost of quality patch cables, making sure everything is powered correctly and having some kind of pedalboard to actually house everything.

• Secondly, we need to think about versatility. Both options are actually quite versatile but in very different ways. With individual pedals you are basically starting with a blank slate in terms of designing your pedalboard. You’re not limited to a particular type of sound or brand and there are a huge amount of options out there for you to choose from. On the other hand with multi-effects units (as I’ve have already mentioned) you would usually expect to have a lot more effects to work with for the price and you’ll also have the huge bonus of being able to save different presets to use with different songs. The other thing to consider when talking about versatility is of course the actual size and weight of the units in question. Pedalboards can get big and heavy and take up a lot of room (just ask some of the bandmates I’ve toured with!) and this is usually not such an issue with compact multi-effects units.

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• Lastly, and most importantly, we come to tone. Again, it all completely depends on the pieces of gear you are looking at but (at least in theory) individual pedals are generally designed to do just one main thing and so hopefully they are able to do that one thing well. Once you find a pedal that you like the sound of you will often find it is reasonably straight forward to dial in the tone you want. You can specifically put together the exact effects you’re actually wanting and you also have complete control over the order of those effects in your signal chain. Digital effects units on the other hand, can sound more processed and less ‘organic’ than analogue effects (this is especially true with overdrives and distortions). They can also involve a greater learning curve to operate because you are dealing with different menus and presets to find the guitar tones you’re looking for. The payoff however, is that multi-effects units often can give you more control over the exact parameters you’re tweaking and this can make it easier to set up more elaborate and interesting effect combinations.

So what’s the verdict? Well, I’m not really trying to push one type of effect over the other. I definitely think there is room for both. The way you intend to use your effects however, will really determine which type will be most beneficial for you. If in all honestly you are only really looking for a few key elements in your signal path, then stomp boxes will give you huge amount of options to choose from in terms of tone and there’s no real point spending money on features you won’t use. On the other hand, if you’re needing to access a wide rage of tones quickly and easily and don’t mind searching through menus and tweaking presets to get the tones you’re looking for, then a good quality multi-effects unit will give you a lot more options to work with.

Although we could certainly go into more detail, there are just some of the main elements to think about. Remember, tone: what are the sounds you’re looking for? Versatility: how are you intending to use them in your playing? And price: realistically what is the budget you are working with? Hopefully the answers to those questions will point you in the right direction. ​

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