Pedal Board Talk

MarcWink

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Dec 17, 2020
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Okay gang, I picked up an Archon in September, and with it, a Horsemeat overdrive as part of the buy an amp get a pedal promo. After having played with both for a while, I've decided I'm going to build out a new pedal board for the Archon with the Horsemeat, my Jerry Cantrell wah, a tuner pedal, and perhaps my SMG C*ockblocker in front of the amp and then my Holy Grail Reverb and MXR Carbon copy in the loop along with a Boss NS2 noise suppressor. The pickle is, do I want to put my Small Stone in the loop or in front of the amp. Traditionally, I put the phaser in front, but I want to minimize the number of buffers that my guitar goes through before hitting the front of the amp. What are y'all's preferences for phasers? In front or in the loop?
 
I don’t use loops either, I run all pedals in front into the clean channel. For your set up, try both ways and see what works best for you. I’ve found experimenting, trying different positions, and A/B testing them is the best way to figure out the placement.
 
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It's always educational to hook you pedals up in a variety of configurations to see which series really rocks your boat... there can be some surprises . I run my gain pedals first, then modulation .. but everybody has their recipe
 
I like my pedals in front of the amp, too.

Since I'm not a high gain player, I see no reason not to have the amp add some tube sound to whatever's running through it, and the preamp section's an important part of that.

But these thing are very personal, and as everyone agreed above, try the pedal in different spots and see what works. You never know until you do that.
 
Here's how I wound up:
Guitar > SMG C*ock Blocker Noise Gate> Boss TU2 > Front of Amp; in the C*ck Blocker loop I have my Horsemeat OD and my JC95 Wah. Effects Send to input of Decibel 11 Switch DR effects switcher, output of the Switch DR to the input of my Boss NS 2 Noise Suppressor output of the NS2 to the Amp Return. I then have my Reverb and delay in one of hte Switch DR effects loops and my Small Stone in another of the Switch DR effects loops. This keeps the modulation and time based effects in the effects loop of the amp and the gain staging in front. The bonus of the Switch DR is that I can reduce the amount of tap dancing that I need to do...not quite as well as building out a 4CM patch or three with my Helix, but this also allows me to use more of my analog pedals versus digital models of them in the Helix. I got the Archon to be the backbone of an analog rig, and I'm going to keep it as analog as possible.
 
I haven't used any effects loops as send and return in a long time.

Currently I go:
Feedbacker > OverDrive > Compressor > OverDrive > Wah/Envelope > Looper > Guitar Rig 7 on PC.

Breaking the rules on one of the OverDrives being after Compressor and the Wah being after it.
 
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