What pedal/effect-type exerted the biggest change in your playing?

[Ge_Whiz]

Yes, I've got an Arion flanger too. Not much cop on it's own, but with a little distortion and filtering, it does a good Hammond B3 impersonation.

[jrem]

well, not sure if this really counts, but the device that changed my world was the in-line tuner.  I remember trying to tune a strat by ear between songs, yikes.  No wonder when I listen to my band tapes from the late seventies it sounded funky.  Enter mr. tuner in the early eighties and viola . . .   

[Floyd Pepper]

My old Boss tuner did it for me.  It must  be heading towards 20 years old now and still going strong.

I'd still be lost without it.

[aron]

Overdrive - fuzz for me. That darn ice-cube never did the job!

[brianwenz]

Hello Hello--
   The Tonebender MK I  [ 2 tranny  circuit].   Changed my ideas of sustain and tone dramatically.
Brian.

[DuncanM]

My original WEM Copycat tape echo...
Noisy, grungy, needed constant maintainence - move the first head to the other side of the loop for extra long echos...

How I wanted to be Dave Gilmore, Robert Fripp or Steve Hillage.....

<sigh> Happy days.

Then along came bloody U2.   

[brett]

Stratoblaster - my first booster.

[mac]

Like my first love, well... girl, my first distortion unit is the one I like the most. I was 12. Just a simple two ge transistor circuit that was inside my first guitar. As the body of the guitar is now broken I removed, and traced, the circuit recently and use it as a stomp box. It needs some mods because it was designed to be used with bad mics I guess so it saturates with better pickups, all electro caps went dry, etc. But the beauty of it is how it reacts to picking dynamics and the shades of soft distortion I can get rolling back the guitar knobs.
It is not the sound quality, not the fuzz, not the two toshibas 2SB56 what I like of it, but the way two pieces of crap pushed me to the limit in order to let my feelings out when I started playing many, many years ago.

mac

[fikri]

Suddenly, my guitar volume pot give me a new inspiration for playing a violin-like (getting nice with a delay and reverb ofcourse!) and to control the amount of gain from my pedal. And if you use tube amps, the crunchy and cranky feelin' is right there at the touch of your pinky ! Just turn it up or down.

[RDV]

Multi-Tap Delay. So I could play stuff from Joshua Tree. Very Gimmicky but I've been told I've got a knack for it.

Just call me Mr. Gimmick.

[Doug_H]

Electronic tuner.

[H S]

Recording equipment--there's nothing like hearing yourself to accelerate your evolution as a performer. 

Multitrack computer-based recording equipment--there's nothing like the ability to cut and paste to accelerate your devolution as a performer.

[Morocotopo]

My tube Fender hot rod Deluxe. I had a peavey bandit... suddenly, every note sounded GOOD,alive,  I didn´t feel like i was "forcing" the notes out of the amp anymore... Now I see FX as just added colors on top of a good base color.

[StephenGiles]

I think the Craig Anderton AMS100 flanger which I probably built in the early 80s and still play around with now and then. It was clean, quiet and using the deluxe Electric Mistress LFO + Eventide bounce circuits provided endless settings.