pedals

Hiya,

Start with Distortion - Danelectro produce lots of inexpensive pedals. Try some out at your local shop. Boss are better, but cost a lot more.

Then get a wah pedal - the Dunlop crybaby retails for £140 in the UK but you can get good deals second hand.

Then try out flangers, phasers, chorus and delay.

Have fun, and be prepared for a large bill for batteries (or buy the PSU's)

Best,

A :-)

IMO, it all relies on what kind of Amp you have. I wouldnt waist any money on pedals if your not running them through a decent amp. But... i am running a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe and this what I use.

Dunlop 535Q Multi-Wah -- Good for a range of things and is useful for just about everything.
Ibanez TS9 Tubescreamer -- A really great overdrive pedal. I can get it to coax anything from old shool blues to screaming metal. So definitly a good first buy.
Electro-Harmonix USA Big Muff Pi -- Scary little bugger here. basically it can provide screaming treble or thundering bass and manage to pound thousands of sustain into your sound.
Electro-Harmonix Small Clone Analog Chorus -- MY FAVORITE CHORUS PEDAL! simple controls and very diverse sounds. Anything from water sounding chorus to a shimmering effect. Think Nirvana and such.
MXR Dyna Comp -- A compressor/sustainer it cleans up your signal and helps make notes more clear. I use mine with my big muff to make really clear and pronounced distortion.
MXR Smart Gate -- Its a noise gate it keeps everything quiet. Nuff said.

Basically here is what I recommend for first pedals.

BOSS DS-1 - Distortion
Dunlop Classic Cry Baby - Its a wah pedal... duh.
Danelelectro Fish n Chips EQ -- such a great pedal its not even funny, well it is funny looking but it works well.
Danelelectro Fab Tone Distortion -- sorta like the DS-1 if not a little stronger, really versatile.

Mainly I wouldnt buy any really OFF the wall effects until you have built up the skill to utilize them. So stick to simple distortion and work your way up.

Hope this helps.

The previous posts mention specific effects. If you want something to experiment with, a multi-effects pedal is a good option. I guess they don't do each of the effects as well as a good single effects pedal, but you get to play around and see what kind of stuff you like (especially if your amp does not have modeling or strong distortion.) Digitech makes some (like the RP-50) that starts around US $50. If you get one of the digitechs, I would recommend one which has a pedal on it to control the depth of the effect. There are similar pedals from Boss, Zoom etc. I think you could get a used Zoom 505 for 30-40 bucks on ebay.

Caveat: all the pre-programmed "patches" in an MFX pedal will need some tweaking. They seem to throw a whole bunch of different effects and crank them all way too much in the patches. But this is a matter of taste.

I agree with vink. Get a cheap multi fx pedal and play around with what it offers. You'll probably find that you only "need" 2 or 3 effects to get a "sound", that's yours and yours alone. Anything over and above that is "nice to have", but no more.