terms for the sounds electric guitars and amps make including “gain, reverb, delay, distortion, tone, etc”
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Gain is how much something gets amplified.
Reverb is like an echo. It’s an additional copy bounced off of something.
Delay is exactly what it sounds like. It’s the same signal, but later.
Distortion means the output waveform is a different shape than the input. There are many different kinds of distortion.
On an amplifier, tone control lets you make different frequencies louder or quieter.
Most of these terms were developed when guitar amps used vacuum tubes. These days a lot of guitar amps (and almost all of the cheap ones) use solid state amps which digitally replicate the sound of a tube amp. It’s almost like the difference between a piano and a keyboard.
The strength, and consequently the volume, of the signal going into the vacuum tube (and then the speaker) is determined by the amp’s gain knob, and usually by a knob on the guitar as well. When a vacuum tube is overdriven by a strong signal it starts to distort. Some amps have a second volume knob which (theoretically) controls the volume without affecting distortion, but they don’t work very well with tube amps. The labeling of gain and volume knobs is in no way standardized and every amp is different. Some amps only have a volume knob, in which case it’s really just a gain knob.
Tone can mean different things depending on how it’s used. Tone can refer to the finished sound of a guitar at its current settings. As an example, the tone of a guitar gets duller and quieter as the strings wear out. Almost all electric guitars have tone knobs which control the treble overtones. Dialing the tone knob back to zero makes a guitar sound very dark and muddy. At ten the guitar can sound bright or even shrill. Most amps have multiple tone knobs that let you control the bass, middle, and treble overtones independently.
Reverb and delay are effects that are typically produced by effect pedals, but a lot of amps have reverb or delay knobs built into them. Effect pedals are plugged in between your guitar and the amp, and as the name implies they’re toggled on and off by a foot pedal. Reverb sounds like an echo, it’s kind of like playing in a stairwell or a tunnel. Delay just records for a given chunk of time and plays it back again some time after. There are hundreds of other effects that have been developed over the years. Wah wah pedals are particularly interesting. Look it up, I’m sure you’ve heard one before.
You didn’t mention it, but sustain refers to the length of time a note plays on a guitar. A guitar that has good sustain holds a note at an audible volume for a long time. If there are any other terms you want clarified let me know, I’ve been playing guitar for 14 years and I’ve owned everything from a classical Alhambra to a Gibson SG.
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