Guitar Pedal Order....

[kjmcpo]

I was looking for some advice on putting my guitar pedals in order to acheive the best result... I have followed advice from previous posts, and tried multiple multiple setups without noticing any difference.... I have an American Fender Telecaster going into a Peavey Prowler... Most of my music is straight rock/ambient... along the lines of Daniel Lanois... I'm looking for some basic advice and some do's and don't's.... thank you in advance!!!

Here's a list of my pedals...

Ibanez TS-9
Boss Octave
Boss Tremolo
Boss Super Chorus
DOD Vibrato
Turbo RAT
Boss Volume Pedal
Boss Super Phaser
Crybaby Wah
Danelectro Dan-Echo...

thanks for your time!

 

[Lt. Bob]

Well...........you'd want the echo and volume pedal last in the chain. IMO
That's cause pedals will often change their sound depending on how hard you drive them so you don't want the volume in front and you want the echo to echo the already FXed sound rather than, for instance, have the distortion distorting the dry signal and it's echos.

As for the others....in general I'll put distortions to the front of the chain so that the modulating type devices are modulating the type of guitar sound that I'm using as opposed to have the FX go thru the distortion.

 

[M.Brane]

As a general rule you want your envelope effects first, followed by your OD/distortion, then time domain.

If it were me, I'd probably do something like this:

octave->wah->phaser->OD->dist->chorus->volume->echo

I have a Boss octave pedal, and it freaks out if you give it a distorted signal. Actually it freaks out with a clean signal too just not as much.

You can also run the phaser after the OD/dist. I like it before. Makes it a bit more subtle that way.

Where you put the trem depends on if you want your echo to be trem'd or if you want you trem echo'd. It should definately be after the chorus.

I'm also not hip to that DOD vibrato. Is it a true vibrato? A true vibrato changes the pitch, not the volume like a trem. I assume it's the former otherwise what's the point in having both? Those terms often get confused.

My reasoning in putting the volume before the echo is so you can do swells without cutting off the echo. If you put it in front of the gain effects (OD/dist) you can use it to alter the amount of gain you get, more like the volume on your guitar.

 

[beaverbiscuit]

I was looking for some advice on putting my guitar pedals in order to acheive the best result... I have followed advice from previous posts, and tried multiple multiple setups without noticing any difference.... I have an American Fender Telecaster going into a Peavey Prowler... Most of my music is straight rock/ambient... along the lines of Daniel Lanois... I'm looking for some basic advice and some do's and don't's.... thank you in advance!!!

Here's a list of my pedals...

Ibanez TS-9
Boss Octave
Boss Tremolo
Boss Super Chorus
DOD Vibrato
Turbo RAT
Boss Volume Pedal
Boss Super Phaser
Crybaby Wah
Danelectro Dan-Echo...

thanks for your time!

I think your problem is just that you have too many pedals. It's causing you all sorts of grief, and I hate to see anyone grieve. Tell you what, you send me a few of them (let's say the TS-9, the RAT, the Octave, and the Super Phaser) and thus clean up your signal chain a bit. If you need to send more to make this work, feel free.

Seriously, you already got some good advice here; the main thing I would have suggested was putting your time-based effects at the end of your chain. Does your amp have an effects loop? I seem to recall reading somewhere that it often works well to put your time-based stuff through the loop. So you'd have a linear chain from guitar to effects to amp, then the t-b effects in the loop. Anyone able to verify or deny the veracity of this suggestion?

(A separate note: it might be a good thing if you could scare up a couple of decent graphic EQs. Put one in before and after your overdrive/distortion. The amptone website has some information that might be useful to you. . .

http://www.amptone.com/#postampfx

. . . but I've never had an opportunity to test this info for myself. Again, anybody here have any input on the subject?)

 

[M.Brane]

Yes, it is better to run your time domain effects in the effects loop. That's exactly how I run mine.

Here's my live setup:

Morley wah/volume-> Phase 90-> TS9-> Boogie preamp-> Ross flanger-> MXR analog delay-> Boss Harmonist-> Boogie power amp.

I run the Harmonist pedal last because it has a better buffer than the MXR. It also likes a hot signal. I use it for it's chorus sound, and for an octave effect not for harmonies. It's smart harmonies don't pitch right when you detune.