Ultimate Guide to
Guitar Synth Pedals

These are the unsung heroes of the pedal world. Often overlooked for being too diverse for the bog-standard rock guitarist, synth pedals are used by many modern players that wish to expand their sonic horizons.

 

A synth pedal does what it says on the tin. It makes your guitar sound like a huge, engulfing synthesiser! Great examples available today can closely emulate the sounds of real synths, but when applied to guitars, some can sound almost like a hybrid - which is a totally unique and usable sound in itself.

 

Despite their wonderful weirdness, these effects pedals let guitarists transcend the gap between rock and electronic/pop genres, and have even more of a place in the music world than ever before. And here at Andertons Music Co. we have a great selection of these peculiar guitar pedals available. But first, we’re going to explain all of their details and functions. This is so that we can provide you with a better idea of how to get the most out of them, so you can integrate them successfully into your rig.

A synth pedal delivers an extremely broad range of sounds and features: from soft ambient pads of a sine wave floating underneath your clear guitar tone to the trebly lead line of a sawtooth or triangle wave; from cool filter sweeping to automatic arpeggios; and from the fat and bassy square wave to bit-crushed distortion.

 

Good synth pedals pack in a load of tonal flexibility with relatively streamlined controls like their traditional synthesiser counterparts. They utilise parameters in the form of pitch, filters, envelope, attack, decay and sustain, and give you presets like pad, lead, bass, string and bell that you would be able to shape with a conventional synth. Synths often have the ability to expand on the harmonic content of notes. Guitar synth pedals emulate this by featuring octave up/down functionality, and sometimes further intervals to give you the fullest sounds possible.

More and more brands have taken to making synth guitar pedals, putting their own spin on them and packing in unique and diverse effects. Whether you’re looking for a soft pad or a gritty lead synth, you'll find one here you'll listening to.

 

Here are some guitarist favourites and industry-leading pedals, featuring easy plug-and-play stompboxes to the ultra detailed, all-encompassing workstations across a range of affordable and premium prices.

 

Electro Harmonix

 

The SuperEgo+ is the flagship synth pedal from Electro Harmonix. EHX take a vast in scope, but easy to use design philosophy – what you see is what you get, as all the sounds are adjustable with the turn of a knob or slider and there are no hidden controls. On the SuperEgo+ you've got phase, delay, flange, filters and various modulations and timbres to explore. With this feature-packed pedal, you can create not just pumping synth waves but also immersive pads with infinite sustain, letting you achieve engulfing soundscapes and textures. Meanwhile, the Micro Synth is a fine detail type of synth pedal, allowing extreme adjustment with a set of voices and filters across 10 sliders. This is more of a hybrid synth/guitar experience fpr old-school Moog-esque tones, best used for creating lead lines.

 

For those of you who like simpler, more affordable pedals, the Mono Synth may be your best option. Select from 11 synth sounds for vintage, semi-modular tones to fat voicings and soaring leads. If you're after a very specific sound, then the String9 will do it for string sounds like that of a violin... or a synth emulating a violin. The Bass9 covers all the low frequencies that you'd find from a Taurus synth, Roland TB-303 or a fretless bass. Finally, the Organ Machine recreates cathedral and bell organs, gospel, classic rock and jazz organs from the '60s to now.

 

Boss synth pedals

 

Boss were the trailblazers in the all-in-one synth pedal design. For the sheer amount of synth sounds, very few come close to what Boss has to offer. The SY-1 remains an incredible pedal, packing an insane amount of bass, pad, lead, strings, bell, organ and more sounds with 11 variations each into its every reliable stompbox casing.

 

The polyphonic SY-200 is the step up from here, with a total of 171 sounds with the ability to save and recall presets. It's got a nice little screen to keep track of everything you're making.

 

Boss’ GM-800 unit is an even greater spec’d out machine and is essentially a synth in its own right, as its sound engines are derived from the flagship Roland Jupiter-X and Fantom keyboards. You're getting a vast 1200 tones and 70 rhythm sounds and deep editing tools for each tone. There's more to access from Sound Packs and Wave Expansions on the Roland Cloud. Plus the GM-800 boasts outstanding build quality with luxurious dials and a large, clear interface.

 

Meris pedals

 

Meris are some of the most creative boutique guitar pedal designers in this scene, crafting new and creative sounds for players after something that truly stands out in their music.

 

The Enzo was a game-changing synth pedal, delivering on driving mono leads, complex poly chords, arpeggiators and pitch shifting to a special quality – you name it, Meris made it happen. You get freeze controls to keep a layer playing under your guitar tone, and the ability to control sustain, modulation and filtering.

 

Enzo X is a huge expansion on the original pedal. It's got amazing presets, but where it shines is in building sounds from the ground up, making it far easier to navigate and customise. It's got a gorgeous screen to cycle through pitch, volumes, waveforms, filters, drive, time-based effects like reverb and delay, and modulation. Like any modern pedal, it's fully controlable via MIDI and features stereo ins and outs for your big setup. If you love getting into the nitty gritty of crafting soundscapes, then a Meris pedal is the best pick for you.

 

Honourable mentions

 

Plenty of popular brands just have the one synth pedal in their line-up and that's what I'll highlight in this section.

 

The Keeley Synth-1 is a straight up good time, adding warm vintage analogue synth to your guitar, a bit like a fuzz pedal. You get to select between square, triangle and saw waveforms, and you can control the pedal's intensity with an external expressional pedal.

 

Way Huge's Dune-inspired Atreides is a weird pedal, in a great way. It's a combination of a synth, fuzz, sub, octave, envelope filter and phase shifter – all in all, a heavy nod towards the EHX Mini Synthesiser keyboard that was most notably used by Van Halen. Loads of wild fuzz on tap here and brilliant space-y noises.

 

The Poly Effects Digit and Beebo is an intrepid synth pedal workstation that utilises impulse responses (IRs) to bring its sound to your ears. These are sophisticated reverb, delays and modulation effects in the style of a synth with beautiful interactive touchscreens and almost endless patches. The effects are Eurorack-inspired, meaning they're fully customisable in how you order and combine the factors that go into producing your sound.

 

You may have noticed a lot of synth pedals are at the pricier end of things, just like most traditional, polyphonic analogue synths. Well, the Mooer E7 gives you an unmistakeable synth sound on a budget and is a small-form mini pedal case. It contains seven different custom synth tones, each with an arpeggiator, frequency filters and a save function.

 

There's a lot of variety in how synth pedals sound and what they can achieve: some are relatively simple, providing a handful of tweakable tones, while others are extremely complex and offer a lot of fine-tuning.

 

First off I recommend buying a synth pedal that you love to hear, even set to its preset sounds. Secondly, I'd consider a pedal based on how much time you're willing to dedicate to getting a great sound – you might find some pedals are overkill for what you want to make. The Boss SY-1 and Keeley Synth-1 are straightforward and everything you can change you can make happen with the press of a button or turn of a dial. The Meris Enzo and Boss GM-800 require the deep-diving to get the most out of all their settings. It may take some time – days, weeks – to learn how to use them to their fullest potential.

How does a synth pedal work?

 

Most synth pedals work by detecting the pitch of your guitar's signal and using that to tune and engage an oscillator. Whereas something like a modulation pedal modifies and processes your signal, the synth pedal generates its sound through a functioning synthesiser circuit within the pedal.

 

What are waveforms?

 

A waveform is a graphical representation of a signal's frequency and amplitude. We use waveforms to recognise and adjust the characteristics of sounds, which is especially prevalent in synth soundcraft. Synth pedals often borrow the term 'waveform' to distinguish sounds. Square, sine, triangle and sawtooth are all common waveforms generated by a synth.

 

Where does a synth pedal go in my signal chain?

 

Just like filter pedals, you will get the most out of a synth pedal when it’s placed early in your signal chain. This is to ensure that the rawest amount of signal is being fed into the pedal’s input, giving it the best chance to process that signal for ultimately the best and most genuine tone it can achieve.

 

What is 'tracking'?

 

'Tracking' is a term used to denote how well a pedal identifies a signal and how quickly it imparts with its effect. If a pedal tracks well, that means that it will pick up notes and idiosyncrasies with great detail, with little to no audible latency. Something that tracks badly will have noticeable latency, making it difficult to use successfully. Placing your synth pedal in the signal chain as early as possible ensures the best possible tracking.

 

For more information about similar pedal types, check out our guides below:

 

•        Ultimate Guide to Filter Pedals

•        Ultimate Guide to Ring Modulator Pedals

•        Five ways to make your guitar sounds like a synth