Effect vs affect writing a product manual

Hi there.

First off wanted to let you know that this isn't a lazy post. I have read many explanations of this (this site, stack exchange, grammarly, grammar girl) and maybe its just my brain, but I still don't totally understand. To add to the confusion, my business is making what my customers call "music effects". If you are unfamiliar with this, a brief explanation would be: We make units that will cause an audio signal, could be a voice, guitar, keyboard, etc. to enhance the signal. An easy example is one of our products simply adds an echo to the sound. You can vary the amount of echo, how many repeats of the echo, etc.

I was hoping that by posting a few specific examples in the context I’m almost always using, someone could correct my usage in sentences to help my brain finally get over the hump of understanding this.

For the generic examples, I’m going to use “effect” for all of them, even though I do have an idea of when affect would be used (I think, haha). I realize some of these examples are a bit redundant, but I’m really trying to get past this reoccurring problem permanently. I’m sick of writing professional emails and user manuals, and constantly doubting my grammar with the two words. It actually never occurred to me to post about it on a forum until today!

*Note, some of the example sentences sound a bit goofy, but I’ve overused the word intentionally to help my understanding.

So here goes:

• Sometimes using too much echo can have the effect of washing out your guitar signal when playing live.
• Our units have a wonderful way of adding a natural echo effect to your voice during a recording session.
• Adding the echo effect can have very pleasant effects on the tone, but please understand that as you add it, the high frequencies can become attenuated.
• Using this switch, your unit can create the effect of yelling into a large tunnel.
• In almost all cases, using the echo effect in a subtle way will sound much better than being too heavy handed, which can effect the clarity of your signal, and have the effect of washing you out of the mix.

Thank you in advance for your help. It is greatly appreciated!

-C