whats the rule of thumb for pedal order and using FX loop

[dassy]

im havin a bit of trouble understanding how the order of efx affects your tone and what to put in my efx loop and what to put in my main input, i know it depends on the player but, whats the rule of thumb.

[TexRoadkill]

What pedals do you have? It's common to put distortion, compression and wah inline with the guitar. Put the chorus, delay etc in the effects loop.

There is no hard rules though so do what you want. It also depends on if you want the preamp on your amp to be the first thing in your signal path. If that was the case then you put everything in the effects loop.

[dassy]

what would be the pros and cons to having the preamp be the first thing in my signal path?

my effects are

EQ - distortion - wah - chorus - flanger - pitchshifter/delay - octave - tremolo - 2 voume pedals - noise reduction -

i have to volumes because i want one to effect overall volume and the other to effect delay trails and the gain on distortion,

____________________________________________________

i dont really understand the concept of signal paths and order of effects, so thank you for giving me sum tips, because it is clearing things up for me,

[videodrone]

can anyone help me out?

[M.Brane]

I run all my gain and envelope effects before the pre, and my time domain stuff after.

If you want to run your volumes the way you stated, try this:

wah-distortion-EQ-octave-noise reduction-volume-flanger-chorus-pitchshifter/delay-tremolo-volume

This is pretty close to the same setup I use live. If I had the same pedals I would run the output from the first volume into my amps input, and the rest in the effects loop between the preamp and power amp.

If your preamp is noisey you could move the noise reduction to the first position in the loop.

If you use the pitchshifter for harmonies you need to move that in front of the flanger & chorus so it will track the notes correctly.

[meriphew]

I think the best thing to do is to experiment with the order. If you want to just go with a semi standard/traditional order it would be something like this:
Guitar > Compression (or you could put it after distortion) > Distortion > Chorus/Flanger > Delay > Reverb > Amp. You could also put your reverb or delay in your fx loop.

________________
Post indie electronic
Meriphew
www.meriphew.com

[TexRoadkill]

I would try it this way -

Guitar - volume pedal - octave - wah - distortion - EQ - noise reduction - amp

In the effects loop-

pitchshifter/delay - chorus - flanger - tremelo - volume pedal

I would also get rid of the EQ and Noise Reduction unless they are really necessary. It's nice to have Noise Reduction after the flanger and chorus but you don't want it after a delay (cuts off the tails) and I usually prefer delay before flange and chorus.