guitar pedals and effects?

Question

i have a boss DS-1 and i am looking for more pedals. what is a Phase Shifter? What is a Compression Sustainer?

Answer 1

Phase shifter is kinda hard to describe. It's kind of like having someone mess with your EQ while you play. It always sounds futuristic to me, like some rocket blasting off. I think one of the guitarists from the Eagles uses one in the solo to Hotel California.
Compression Sustainer- Say you hooked your guitar up to a life monitor (EKG) and played some notes. The levels would spike up and down. They would go up at first, then go down as the string stopped spinning. A compressor will stop the levels from going past a certain point, and make them more stable, thus making the notes last longer. Basically, it will stop one or two chords from being louder than the rest and make a individual note last longer.

I would look at a multi-effect rack mounted device. I have a Peavy Pro-Fex II, that I bought over ten years ago. It has compression, Phase shifter and a whole bunch of other stuff on it. Distortion, chorus, delay, EQ, reverb, you name it, this thing can do it. It was only about $150, and that was ten years ago. You can probably get a lot nicer one for the same price.
Put your local music store through the ringer. Take your guitar there and try every pedal they have. You should be bugging the crap out of these people, hanging out in their store everyday, anyways. Don't worry, that's why they're there!

Answer 2

Compression/Sustain - signal-limiting processor that varies its gain so that the output signal stays constant. It keeps the sound level, well ... level. I use a MXR Dyna-Comp

Phase Shifter - tough to describe. Have you ever heard a Leslie Organ from the 60's? Same type of effect.

Check my links for a couple of choices and scroll down to the soundbytes to hear what they do.

I am "old-school" and prefer individual stomp boxes to the "prepackaged" multi-FX. If all you have is a DS-1 distortion, I'd think about picking up a stereo-chorus next.

Links 1 and 3 are ones I use and recommend (and use)

Answer 3

I've not used nor heard (that I know of) a compression sustainer.

I have a phase shifter and it gives a simulated shift from left to right channels.
My shifter actually has a second audio out plug so that I can connect between two amps.
The sound is sort of a swirling effect, sort of like a Leslie Speaker effect on an organ.

Answer 4

From personal experience, go with a Behringer V-Ampire. They are incredibly versatile, and fun as hell to tweak with. What the amp does is basically re-create the sounds of 32 amps, 16 effects, and has a footswitch and 5 channels. They are a relatively well-known company out of Germany. This amp will pretty much make distortion pedals obsolete, because it has so many amp models.

Answer 5

A 'google' search on those terms would be far more educational than a simple forum response could ever be.

However, for your wallets sake, I suggest you try a multi-effect pedal such as http://www.digitech.com/products/rp50.htm

I have one (a higher version), and it kicks butt! I have the full array of pedals, but I don't use them anymore since I got that. It's a well spent $60, really!