Liko
New member
Re: PEDAL ORDER?
This all depends, really, on what kind of sound you're after, and on how each of your pedals behave inline versus looped.
The biggest problem I see between going back and forth between these chains is that the chains are very different in terms of what's feeding what on your board. With a loop in place, your ODs come before your synth effects (chorus/delay/verb), while in your all-inline configuration the OD pedals are last. An inline chain with the same pedal order as your looped chain (except the amp head is now last) would have the following order:
Wah->OD->OD->NG->Tuner->EQ->Chorus->Delay->Delay->Verb
Basically, in your all-inline chain, you're putting everything that's normally looped in front of everything that would normally be inline, when the loop always comes after the inline effects in the signal chain. If that's what you want, more power to you, you won't set your rig on fire doing it that way, but it's not what I'd do especially given the pedal order of your looped chain.
Here are the things I prefer to do when setting up a pedal chain, loop or no loop:
* Tuner first. This gives the tuner the cleanest, most direct signal from my axe, allowing it to best determine the actual pitch of my strings.
* Noise Gate next. Similarly to the tuner (and theoretically the tuner's output should be exactly what goes in, with or without an impedance buffer), the NG should get the most dynamic signal you have so that it can easily tell the difference between the noise floor and desirable signal. You can put it downstream of pedals that add their own noise to the noise floor, but I'd keep it in front of any extreme gain boost like a distortion pedal, as well as any compression (otherwise the difference in signal levels between noise and notes will be very narrow making the NG's job very difficult).
* Wah and EQ next, not necessarily in that order. IMO most wahs should go as early as possible, first because of what they do as an effect (they're a notch filter, the internal workings are not unlike a parametric EQ with a narrow Q, the gain pegged high and the frequency control hooked to the pedal), and second because many really good and popular wahs have a bad reputation as tone-suckers when off (bad buffers).
* Compressor and gain-boost effects next, again not necessarily in order. Typically I put the compressor first because that more accurately mimics the behavior of a natural acoustic feedback loop, and also minimizes any amplification of the OD's own noise floor. However, some people prefer a subtle compression after an OD set right on the edge, to better simulate "tube squish" producing a tone that starts crunched and then cleans up as it sustains with less volume drop. I do usually put OD before distortion, allowing the milder gain boost to feed the harder crunch similar to doing much the same with a boost pedal on a dirty amp.
* Synth effects last. chorus, phaser, flanger, delay, reverb, looper is my general preference for order of basic synth pedals. If you're trying to emulate an overdriven power amp stage, you could mix this set of pedals into your gain boosts or put them before all of them.
So, here's how I'd set your board up for my own use:
Tuner->EQ->NG->Wah->OD->OD->(Chorus->Delay->Delay->Verb)
The pedals in parentheses would be the ones I'd put in the loop if it existed and I wanted to.
This all depends, really, on what kind of sound you're after, and on how each of your pedals behave inline versus looped.
The biggest problem I see between going back and forth between these chains is that the chains are very different in terms of what's feeding what on your board. With a loop in place, your ODs come before your synth effects (chorus/delay/verb), while in your all-inline configuration the OD pedals are last. An inline chain with the same pedal order as your looped chain (except the amp head is now last) would have the following order:
Wah->OD->OD->NG->Tuner->EQ->Chorus->Delay->Delay->Verb
Basically, in your all-inline chain, you're putting everything that's normally looped in front of everything that would normally be inline, when the loop always comes after the inline effects in the signal chain. If that's what you want, more power to you, you won't set your rig on fire doing it that way, but it's not what I'd do especially given the pedal order of your looped chain.
Here are the things I prefer to do when setting up a pedal chain, loop or no loop:
* Tuner first. This gives the tuner the cleanest, most direct signal from my axe, allowing it to best determine the actual pitch of my strings.
* Noise Gate next. Similarly to the tuner (and theoretically the tuner's output should be exactly what goes in, with or without an impedance buffer), the NG should get the most dynamic signal you have so that it can easily tell the difference between the noise floor and desirable signal. You can put it downstream of pedals that add their own noise to the noise floor, but I'd keep it in front of any extreme gain boost like a distortion pedal, as well as any compression (otherwise the difference in signal levels between noise and notes will be very narrow making the NG's job very difficult).
* Wah and EQ next, not necessarily in that order. IMO most wahs should go as early as possible, first because of what they do as an effect (they're a notch filter, the internal workings are not unlike a parametric EQ with a narrow Q, the gain pegged high and the frequency control hooked to the pedal), and second because many really good and popular wahs have a bad reputation as tone-suckers when off (bad buffers).
* Compressor and gain-boost effects next, again not necessarily in order. Typically I put the compressor first because that more accurately mimics the behavior of a natural acoustic feedback loop, and also minimizes any amplification of the OD's own noise floor. However, some people prefer a subtle compression after an OD set right on the edge, to better simulate "tube squish" producing a tone that starts crunched and then cleans up as it sustains with less volume drop. I do usually put OD before distortion, allowing the milder gain boost to feed the harder crunch similar to doing much the same with a boost pedal on a dirty amp.
* Synth effects last. chorus, phaser, flanger, delay, reverb, looper is my general preference for order of basic synth pedals. If you're trying to emulate an overdriven power amp stage, you could mix this set of pedals into your gain boosts or put them before all of them.
So, here's how I'd set your board up for my own use:
Tuner->EQ->NG->Wah->OD->OD->(Chorus->Delay->Delay->Verb)
The pedals in parentheses would be the ones I'd put in the loop if it existed and I wanted to.
