I have accumulated a bunch of stomp boxes over the years and want to build a pedal board. My biggest question is about sequence. I’m aware that both the Octave Box and the Wah go ahead of the distortion, but are there any other rules past that?
Here’s what I have and the order I think they should go:
[ul]
[li]Boss Octave Box[/li][li]Wah – either an EH Queen Wah or a Crybaby (I have both)[/li][li]Distortion – either Boss DS-1 or EH Big Muff Pi (I have both)[/li][li]EH Small Stone Phaser[/li][li]DOD Ice Box Chorus – stereo, if that makes a difference[/li][li]EH Pulsar Tremolo – stereo, if that makes a difference[/li][li]Fender Digital Delay – stereo, if that makes a difference[/li][li]Ernie Ball Volume Pedal[/li][/ul]
I disagree that you should put wah and octave before distortion, putting either of them after the distortion will give a different sound and if you like it then you should do it. Wah after distortion gives a much tighter piercing sound with a stronger “wah”. Any pitch duplicating effects like octave placed after the distortion will basically sound like two guitars playing together while placing it before the distortion will make it sound like one guitar playing octaves.
For the other pedals, I’ve always preferred delay effects including chorus, phasing, and flanging after the distortion but again it’s a matter of preference. Delay placed after the distortion will give clear repeats but if you put it before the distortion then the repeats will distort with the straight sound and each other and the sound will be much less clear.
The volume pedal depends on what you want to use it for. If you are using it to modulate volume only then put it at the end of the chain, or possibly before the delay depending on whether you want to swell the echoes, or echo the swells! On the other hand, you can use the volume pedal to control how clean your sound is by placing it in front of the distortion. It works best with a tube style overdrive. The more volume you put in the front of the overdrive the dirtier the sound will be and vice versa. You can use this type of set up to change between varying levels of overdrive without having to tweak the knobs on the distortion box mid song. You can achieve the same effect by using the volume control on your guitar but that can have an effect on tone that you might not want.
In general I would put my effects in much the same order as you except I’d experiment with placement of the octave and sometimes I’d want the volume before the delay. When I was playing I had about three distortion pedals chained and often I’d use all three together.
The stereo does make a difference because you can take one side of the signal and do different things with it. For example you could put your stereo delay first in the chain, have it set to the shortest delay available with a single repeat. Then run each side through different effects.
Ultimately there aren’t really any rules for this sort of thing, you’ve got the accepted setup in your post but you should always try different things and see if you like them. Try plugging the wah in backward (guitar into the output and the wah input to the amp). Put some delay and chorus between the wah and amp for ambiance and fiddle with the guitar’s tone controls. This only seems to work with single coil pickups by the way.
Google “signal chain order guitar effects” and other variants on Google. I have seen good articles on this on Gibson.com and at the Roland/Boss website. Also, check out Dave Hunter’s Guitar Effects Handbook - it’s the bible.
Bottom line:
if your amp has an effects loop, then ALL level-modifying effects go in that loop, unless you are looking for the effect to increase the gain / signal going into the pre-amp. If you want a clean boost and you put it directly into your chain, all you are really doing is pushing your pre-amp further. Putting the boost in the loop gets it between the pre-amp and the power amp so you are only boosting loudness, not modifying tone.
Time effects - e.g., reverb, chorus, flange and echo/delay - can be fine directly in the signal chain and should come before distortion effects, to my knowledge
Tone modifiers - e.g., wahs, envelope filters, even octavers - I think those come last
But I only have a fuzzbox and a noise-gate, so what do I know?
I’m going to move this from IMHO to Cafe Society – even though you’re asking for opinions, threads for discussions amongst musicians are usually there.
The classic chain order has it the other way. You want to reverb your distortion not distort your reverb, same with echo and so on. Like anything it’s open to preference and you can get some interesting sounds by going against the grain but distortion -> time based effects sounds a lot nicer than the other way around.
I used to put all my distortion in front of the amp and then have chorus and delay in the amps effects loop. Wah was a novelty item that I’d insert in different places for different effects and I’ve never played with an octave effect.
Putting a phaser before dist/overdrive pedals is pretty common (great choice on that small stone btw). Eddie Van Halen does it, and I’m sure I’ve heard of other players doing it as well. As with other effects, the character of the sound changes quite a bit depending where you put it, but if I were going to experiment with your perfectly fine chain, that’s the one I would be moving around first.
Chuck 'em! I don’t use any stomp boxes except the Reverb/Tremolo thingy that came with my amp, and that’s just on one song. I’m a huge klutz, so the fewer things I have to screw up on stage, the better. :o
This outlier post is brought to you by the Minimalist Society.
