Effects are what can change your sound from average to spectacular. Improperly used, they can also muddy everything up and make your finished product sound amateurish (don't ask me about the first song I mixed after I got my effects box :-).

If you're clever enough, you might not need any electronic effects whatsoever. Led Zeppelin got their famous drum sound by recording in a house with hardwood floors and careful micing. More than one top production was made by putting the vocalist in a bathroom (yes, singing in the shower really does sound better; it's the reverb!) or down a hall.

But for sheer convenience as well as getting the exact sound you want, nothing beats modern digital effects boxes. They include everything from simulations of different size rooms to automatic wah-wah pedals.

Here's a basic list of the effects many people want to have in their racks:

• compression (technically, this is "dynamics processing")
• equalization
• reverb/delay
• flanger/phaser
• chorus
• Leslie (rotating organ speaker)
• pitch shifting

Some Handy Links

• Hear what some effects sound like (from Musician's Friend site) (RealAudio)
• Hear what some effects sound like (WAV files, big downloads)
• A basic look at compression (by Alesis)
• Our Alesis Quadraverb 2 page.