Since you play solo (mostly), you use jazz voicings, and you “don’t want to” reproduce the sound exactly, I would recommend the old faithfuls – reverb and phase shifter in that order. You might already have reverb on your amp, but you might like something that allows you to select between a spring, plate, or room reverb. Of course, the Holy Grail and pretty much any of its relatives are the go-tos for many top musicians, even if they can afford something much more expensive.

Of course the Small Stone phase shifter is legendary. EHX doesn’t make a stereo phase shifter, but they’re so cheap that you can buy two of them and split the signal into them, or you can just split the signal and run the dry to one channel and pure phase shifted signal into the other channel.

If you want a stronger modulation effect, you could go with an Electric Mistress flanger. They do make a stereo version of that that includes a stereo chorus circuit as well.

But, I think if you have the opportunity to audition them side by side you’ll probably find, like most other people, that phasing is more generally useful than flanging. Flanging is a “harder”, less subtle effect. Chorus is nice, but it does involve a pitch shift. Phasing creates no pitch shift.

If this is your introduction to guitar effects, I think you can’t go wrong with a good classic phase shifter, then start moving out from there.

Gentle, slow, “swirling” effects are generically referred to as “modulation”. This includes

tremolo – a cyclical change in volume.

vibrato – a cyclical change in pitch.

phase shifting – a cyclical change in the phase of the signal, like an ambulance approaching then leaving.

flanging – simulates pressing on the flange of one tape reel while playing back two unison tracks.

chorus – straight sound blended with a pitch shifted sound to make it sound like two instruments playing.

Usually, when you’re hearing a “swirling” sound, it’s either phase shifting, flanging, or chorus. The earliest and still most popular “swirling” sound is phase shifting because it’s more subtle and doesn’t involve any detuning. Flanging, especially after distortion which makes it even more pronounced, is very popular in hard rock and heavy metal. All of these effects can also be used with acoustic guitar, but none of them seem to be as useful, or at least as popular, with acoustic and hollowbody electrics as phase shifting. All can be used with vocals and other instruments, but again they seem to be a bit much, except for maybe a light chorus for other acoustic instruments like voice. So, again, I would say that a decent phase shifter is a good place to start experimenting.

Yes, that’s always the issue isn’t it?

You’ll need TWO EHX effects to do what you’re looking for, the first to create the swirling sound. We’ve already talked about that. The second, to “clamp/sustain” or hold the drone (that’s what a sustained chord is anyway right?) underneath your solo.

EHX has a couple of solutions for setting up a drone. The first, which is specifically designed for that is the Freeze. You press it and it holds that sound until you release it. You CAN set it to “Latch” so that it will hold the sound until you press it again. It’s basically taking a few milliseconds sample and “looping” it over and over again until you tell it to stop. To use it you would need to set up the swirling AFTER the Freeze because the Freeze captures the sound it hears when you step on it. If you set up your swirl before it, it will freeze the swirl when you step on it. In other words, it will stop swirling. Your solo guitar would still be swirling, but your frozen guitar would be “frozen” in mid swirl.

The other EHX solution for setting a drone is one of their loopers. The 360 is the least expensive. It’s the easiest to use, and it does what you need. With a “looper” you can set up drones like with the Freeze, but you can also loop entire chord changes – up to 6 minutes with the 360. Using a looper takes a few more clicks and it will take a bit of practice to set up, but it give you the option of capturing the swirl and things like gentle, slow, arpeggiation of the background chords. You would be able to set up the drone, then change effects for your lead. For instance, you could capture the swirling drone, then turn off the swirl and turn on a delay (echo) for the lead. Loopers have many other uses as well – rhythm machine, practice, effects testing, etc.

So, my amended recommendation is a Holy Grail (or related) reverb, a Small Stone (or related) phase shifter, and a Nano Looper 360. If you think you can get by with your existing spring reverb, the do the phase shifter and the looper.

That’s true. That’s why many people go with an all-in-one solution, but they do have their disadvantages. I won’t get into the disadvantages of AIO vs. individual pedals. That’s outside the scope of this discussion, but I’ll mention a couple of things.

First, many pros who have the finances to purchase a top of the line AIO solution, not to save money but for convenience, DON’T. You look at their pedal boards and most of them have multiple pedals whether they just have a few, or many. There are many reasons for this, but just consider that going with individual pedals is clearly not a BAD idea because many (most?) people end up doing it.

But, let’s address the price issue. One important advantage with individual pedals is that you can start off with a small set and add other things over time without giving up the quality and flexibility of the individual effects. As you already mentioned, you can probably get by with the spring reverb in your amp. Is it a real spring reverb? If so, that’s actually the holy grail of many digital reverbs, including the Holy Grail, hence the name. If you have a real analogue spring reverb tank, then you should be pretty happy with that. Even if it’s not, you can at least live with it until you can budget something else.

Still addressing price, the EHX Nano pedals, like the Small Stone (Nano Chassis) ( https://www.ehx.com/products/small-stone ) and the Nano Looper 360 ( https://www.ehx.com/products/nano-looper-360 ) are very affordable pedals that provide the most important core functionalities that you need. More deluxe versions give you more control and flexibility, but the Nano versions give you the ability to dial in the most popular and generally useful settings.

The Nano Small Stone is selling for $71.60 on Sweetwater.com and I’ve seen them gently used for around $50 with free shipping on Ebay. The Nano Looper 360 is selling new for $91 on Sweetwater.com and I just bought an open box demo for $75 with free shipping on Ebay. You can find deals on these if you’re a bit patient. So, really it comes down to spending maybe $150 or less for the initial setup which will give you what you want and you’ll be able to expand it after that.

If you have a real spring reverb that you’re happy with and you still have money left in your budget, then you can consider getting a Memory Toy delay instead of a reverb. That would be the next pedal I would recommend – a simple analogue delay.

As for trying them out, that’s always the best way, but Electro-Harmonix has lots of videos on their pages demonstrating their products, and you can also see many third party videos on YouTube comparing their products to each other and to other manufacturers products.

I don’t think there’s much advantage to the Bad Stone in your situation. The Bad Stone gives you more control over the “Color” or “Depth” or “Tone” of the phasing effect by giving you a dial for the feedback rather than just a switch like you get on the Small Stone (Nano Chassis). The Small Stone has a switch labeled “Color”. This essentially lets you select between two feedback levels. The Bad Stone gives you a knob labeled “Feedback” so that you can dial in other feedback levels. The two “Colors” you get on the Small Stone are essentially the two most popular settings for “Feedback” on the Bad Stone.

The other thing that the Bad Stone gives you is the ability to “freeze” the sweep and then control it manually. Freezing the sweep on a phase shifter gives you sounds from “throaty” to “nazaly”, kind of like a vocal synthesizer, but not as intense. Some modulation pedals (phase shifter, flanger, filter, tremolo, vibrato) that allow you to freeze the sweep and manually control it also have a pedal input so that you can control the sweep with an expression pedal. The Bad Stone does NOT have this feature.

Well, that is a very good question. This depends entirely on the design of the pedal. In a purely digital pedal, the answer should be, again according to the design of the internal circuitry, that there will be NO degradation of signal through multiple effects. All of the effects and interconnections are “virtual”. Adding another effect is just a tweak of the software algorithm generating the sounds.

With an all analogue multi-effects pedal, every internal effect has to be connected just as if they were on a board. The connections are shorter, and they are more shielded, but all of the wiring inside each effect and the connections between them still add up, so they are subject to the same issues as separate pedals. A lot of the degradation of signal from an effects chain comes from the wiring and connections INSIDE the pedals rather than between them. That’s why buffers can make a difference to the sound even if you only have a few pedals and very short cables.

Sorry to possibly add to the confusion, but I forgot to mention the Superego, and as of today the Superego+. ( !! ) They are based on the Freeze, but include an effects loop just for the frozen sound so that you can keep the swirls going on the frozen sound and glissando. The Superego+ ( just announced today ) adds layering ( ! ), an effects section ( ! ), an expression pedal ( ! ), and the ability to morph between two presets with an expression pedal. ( ! ). Both of those are great machines, but they are significantly more expensive. The price of the Superego+ hasn’t even been announced yet. The plus is not really a multi-effects pedal even though it has multiple effects in it. You can only choose one effect at a time in addition to or separate from the Superego freeze section. But it is very powerful and gives you almost exactly what you want right out of the box. Given your setup, I think I’d stick with my recommendation, but you should at least have a look at the Superego and the Superego+ so that you can be aware of the almost all-in-one solutions that EHX offers for exactly what you’re trying to achieve.

Here’s the just-released official video for the Superego+.

Yes. That’s correct, because as you saw in the video, you can only have one effect going at a time in addition to the freeze “effect”.

I’m 57 years young. I graduated H.S. in 1977. I started working at a local music store. We carried everything that EHX was producing at the time. We also carried a lot of MXR, DOD, and Ibanez. Not everything because they were much more costly, but a lot. So, I had a chance to try out everything there at the store for the three or four years that I worked there from about 1978 to 1981. I also went to NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) twice.

I started as a music major and later changed to Computer Science, so it’s just been a hobby since then. I’ve sold all of my EHX, DOD, and Ibanez pedals. I didn’t have LOTS of them because I wasn’t wealthy, but I did get to play through MANY pedals, certainly everything EHX made at the time, and helped lots of people set up their pedalboards and amps.

Now, I’m starting to focus a bit more on my music, so I’ve gone through two digital all-in-one multi-effect systems ( Line 6 and Fender ) that included everything but the kitchen sink. They were fun and definitely had their advantages, many advantages, but they always sounded a bit “cold”, and “harsh”, and it was always a bit of a hassle to navigate the menus to dial in the parameters I wanted.

I’m a bit of a counter personality. I still like shooting film. Not because I don’t understand digital. I get it. I love the convenience, but EVERYONE is shooting digital…boooorrrrring. So, now I’m ( recently ) working on building up my ANALOGUE pedal board again. It’s still a hobby for me, so I can’t justify spending a lot of money. My wife and I have to clear large expenditures with each other. So, I’m back at the beginning comparing overdrives, distortions, phasers, flangers, delays, reverbs, wah wah pedals, from all the major manufacturers, but focusing on analogue whenever possible, and of course price. I keep coming back to Electro-Harmonix giving me the most bang for my buck, and the newest stuff that they’ve come out with is genuinely innovative. I don’t have many of their pedals yet. I have a Germanium 4 Overdrive, a Nano 360 Looper, a Small Stone ( Nano ) phase shifter, a Memory Toy, and a Canyon Delay (not analogue). I have other analogue pedals from other manufacturers like a Cry Baby Wah, a couple of other distortions, and some “utility” pedals – booster, buffer, filter, noise gate. But, I will slowly be replacing as many of those as makes sense with EHX solutions. I just like their stuff. I thought I would never replace my Cry Baby, but the new(ish) Cock Fight Plus is awesome. It does everything I want a Wah Wah to do and more, and it sounds great.

When I first started buying Electro-Harmonix pedals, it was because they were the cheapest and my employee discount let me get a good deal, but I was concerned that they wouldn’t retain their value. There was a while there when old EHX pedals could be had for pretty cheap, but now, some original circuit EHX stuff is getting crazy prices! Ya never know.