DISTORTION
Just like the name, distortion add your guitar sound more distorted and ‘right’ sound to play rock music. For a start, think it like a different between clean sound of guitar without any pedal and a sound of three chord riff played with a longer sound or ‘echo’. A good examples is any punk rock songs that we used to hear until today.
DELAY
An extension of distortion sound, particularly for any guitarist who want to learn a good solos skills.You can used this to adjust the longer vibratos or echo sound of your riff and solo like Guns N Roses – ‘November Rain’. A good settings can produced other effect style like flanger and chorus as well.
WAH PEDALS
Most commonly heard in many of Jimi Hendrix songs.Sounds like someone is chewing up something or may sound like some monster chewing your distortion effect with on and off sounds.Listen to solo part of Metallica – ‘Enter Sandman’.
CHORUS
This is the first of our time-based effects. When a slightly detuned and delayed "clone" of a guitar signal is played back with the original, it produces a subtle (or sometimes not-so-subtle) doubling effect, which produces a thicker, lusher tone. The original effect was produced by the Boss CE-1 Chorus Ensemble, though later effects would add multiple detunings and delays to produce a rich, glossy animation. Andy Summers of The Police was quick to use the chorus effect, and it has only gotten more popular over the years.
FLANGER
The earliest "flanger" effects were created playing back the same sound on multiple tape decks, while the engineer used a finger on the tape reel's edge (or flange) to speed up or slow down the duplicate signal. This produced a wild jet-like sweep of the material's harmonic structure. Eventually, the effect was duplicated using advanced digital delays set to extremely short delay times and inverting the signal's phase.
Ref: http://www.sweetwater.com/
