Glossary Of Terms
The world of guitar electronics can be a confusing one. With various words meaning the same thing and some words being so ambiguous to the point they are almost irrelevant, how do you know what is what? This glossary of terms is an ever-expanding list of commonly occurring words and phrases that get thrown around the guitar community a lot and their meanings. Hopefully we can debunk the myths and marketing gimmicks and shed some light on those ambiguities.
Analogue - Analogue (or ‘analog’ in American-English) is the word given to a circuit that has no digital processing and no ADC (analogue-to-digital-conversion) taking place. ‘Real’ audio comes in and ‘real’ audio comes out.
Boutique – Can of worms! Boutique is supposed to mean a product that is handcrafted in small numbers or something that is specialised or served to specialised clientele. The word has been thrown about so often in terms of guitar pedals that it often puts potential buyers off. There are still several REAL boutique companies at work however.
Buffer - A buffer is basically an amplifier which acts at (or close to) unity gain to give an otherwise weak signal apparent strength, life and clarity. They also often take a high impedance input and convert it to a low impedance output to better drive long lengths of cables (or pedalboards) and help retain signal strength throughout.
Digital – A digital circuit is one which makes use of digital processing in some way or another. ADC (analogue-to-digital-conversion) must take place. ‘Real’ audio comes in and a digital ‘replica’ of itself comes out. The quality of the replica is down to several factors including bit rate and sample rate. Some sample rates are so high that any apparent differences between the analogue and digital versions of the signal are said to be impossible to detect.
Modulation – Modulation is the transformation of an audio signal. Whenever an audio signal’s speed/time, pitch or volume is tampered with the signal has been modulated. More often than not people refer to modulation as a purely pitch based affair (chorusing, phasing etc).
Signal Chain / Signal Path – Everything that your sound passes through (pedals, amp components etc) between the speaker and the pickups and the order in which they occur. Pickups > Cable > Pedalboard > Amp > Speakers etc…
Transparent – Transparent is a word you come across a lot with overdrive and boost pedals. It IS a marketing gimmick but there is also often truth in the description. To be transparent is to allow the original tone / timbre / voice of your instrument to pass through the effect without too much of a dramatic change. An overdrive that is said to be transparent should add smooth gain to your tone without altering the original ‘EQ’ of the instrument too wildly.
True Bypass – True Bypass is a switching method that means when your effects pedal is ‘off’ your signal remains unaltered. It travels through the input and output jacks and stompswitch only, without passing through a series of resistors or other components that could alter or degrade your tone.
Further reading: http://www.dirtbox.net/diy/articles/true-bypass-or-not-true-bypass/
Vibrato – Vibrato is an effect consisting of a regular pulsating change of pitch. It is used to add expression to vocal and instrumental musical. Vibrato is typically characterised in terms of two factors, the amount of pitch variation (“extent of vibrato”) and speed with which the speed is varied (“rate of vibrato”).
Contributors: Adji, SwampAshSpecial, Woody77
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