Pedal layout

cshallcross

New Member
Joined
Oct 10, 2017
Messages
174
Location
Atlanta, GA
Anyone want to play a game with me?

If I name off my pedals, would you tell me the order in which you would set them up in the loop, as well as what order you would place items in front of the amp? I can share how I have stuff setup, but I've never been good with understanding what order I should really go with.

If so, here is the current inventory:

1. Strymon Timeline
2. Boss ph3
3. TC T2 reverb
4. Boss EQ
5. Boss sd1
6. Suhr Riot distortion
7. no name comressor
8. Boss NS2
9. Sonicake cry bot
10. Trembulator clone
11. Son of Clay Jones OD

My current setup is (I'm still waiting on the Sonicake, Sony of Clay Jones OD and trem to arrive so those will be new to me):

P24 > compressor > sd1 > riot > ns2 > Mesa 5:50 front

In the loop I would run all the pedals into the Timeline and then back into the loop.

If this is against the rule for General Posting I do apologize. I would like to add a small acoustic combo for the piezo but I think I'll just run a line out directly from the p24 to that amp when I get it.
 
This is my opinion and how I would route these effects. There are many other good ways to do it I'm sure.

Guitar
1. Boss NS2 (if you need it for feedback control or something - I took my noise suppressor out, I found it was just cutting some of my low volume sustain and quiet notes) If you put this after a compressor or OD that are not always on, the input level changes so much that i don't think you can really have it set in a way that it doesn't mess with your sound.
2. no name compressor
3. Trembulator clone
4. Boss ph3
5. Sonicake cry bot
6. Son of Clay Jones OD
7. Boss sd1
8. Suhr Riot distortion
Amp
Loop out
1. Boss EQ
2. Strymon Timeline
3. TC T2 reverb
Loop in

That is what I would do. why?
Have compression early, it will even out what the rest of your effects see
3-4 alter the pitch/frequency sweep of your guitar tone, you want this before any overdrive is added
6-8 and amp - gain stages and tone shaping, lots of options here, the order doesn't matter too much, but I would say least gain to most gain. you want an OD before the amp's input so you can hit the input hard if that is what you are after, doing this can tighten up the gain structure a bit in many amps.
loop
having EQ in the loop makes the eq extremely powerful for shaping overall tone. it is less influential before the amp's preamp section. but it can also be put there to clean up unwanted frequencies like low bass that is making the amp sound "flubby"
Delay you basically want everything except reverb to go into your delay last. You wouldnt want to add distortion after delay, or as the repeats weaken it will clean up the repeats and they wont really sound like repeats anymore!
Reverb - this effect is basically trying to mimick a room or hall, it should be very last, running overdrive after reverb is one of the worst sounds I have heard (in my opinion)
 
Thanks for the info! I think I'm actually going to pull the NS2 off the board as it was really just there from a previous rig that really needed it. I will give this layout a try and go from there.
 
I would also set it up very close to how InTooDeep suggested.
However I would run the NS2 first and last in the chain in front of the amp. Plugging directly into the NS2 and the rest of the front of amp chain in the loop if the NS2.
This way it acts as a buffer for the pickups and lowers the noise floor going into the front end.
Also, you are able to set the threshold much lower than if you just had it at the end of the signal chain, and the suppressor doesn’t have to work as hard.
Try a few different configurations and see what works for you.
Different pedals will react differently with each other depending on where they are in the signal chain. There is no wrong answer when experimenting, just preference.
YMMV.
 
I feel overly stupid when it comes to this stuff. In my head I thought I would want the OD's, dirty, and comp in front of the amp, I just wasn't sure in what order. So it looks like from my guitar out I need to go > NS2 (if I keep it on the board) > od > dirt > comp?
 
Here’s how I think about pedal order (note that I hate effects loops and don’t use them at all, even if the amp has one):

The first thing you want is a buffered signal at the point the guitar hits the pedalboard. Why? It’s a game-changer when it comes to impedance. Preserves high frequencies. I’ll argue like hell in favor of a high quality buffer coming first in the pedal chain. Tuners often have buffers. Some are good, some suck eggs. Your call.

Then I chain my pedals from low gain to high gain. That way, the low gain pedals stack well into the higher gain pedals. Example, clean boost into low gain overdrive, into higher gain overdrive, into fuzz (unless the fuzz is germanium; germanium needs to come first). I can use a clean boost into a low gain overdrive to glue the tone into a syrupy sauce, etc.

After gain, I like EQ. It can go before or after distortion, but I like after. This is because I can use the EQ to deal with the audio artifacts of distortion boxes. And after EQ, that’s where I put my compressor. Again, why? The dirt boxes compress the signal, but I like compression after distortion. If I’m not using distortion, I like compression after EQ as well. There aren’t any rules on this. It’s a matter of what you like. I use compression after EQ most often in my audio mixing life. Just because that’s where I like it.

From there, I like to go to modulation pedals. This includes wah. I like modulation after distortion, but of course there are no rules. Try both and see what you like. Some wahs need to come first in the chain, so a lot depends on what you have.

Finally, I go to time-based effects, delay, then reverb. Why this order? Because delay sounds good going into reverb - imagine delay in a reverberant room. Sounds better than a reverberant room into a delay, to me.

The only pedals I’d ever put in a loop, if someone held me at gunpoint and said, ‘put pedals into a loop’, would be time-based effects, in the same order.

As stated above, I hate loops. They’re often noise sources, plus I like the sound of effects before an amp’s preamp section. Sounds more glued-together to me. But most folks disagree, so take my advice with a grain of salt.
 
Last edited:
The Sonic Yoda has spoken...
Take notes boys, the man has ears of gold...he's being modest with the grain of salt thing. Trust me.
 
(In Front) > Compressor> drives> Eq> Noise reduction> (In loop) >Modulation> Delay> Reverb.
^My version, but there are always exceptions. If you use drives for gain with a clean amp and have a good responsive OD/DIstortion pedal and like to vary the amount of breakup by picking force and/or volume knob, you may want to move the compressor to behind ODs. If using mainly ODs to push a gain channel of an amp, then I like the Comp in front of ODs better.
 
^My version, but there are always exceptions. If you use drives for gain with a clean amp and have a good responsive OD/DIstortion pedal and like to vary the amount of breakup by picking force and/or volume knob, you may want to move the compressor to behind ODs. If using mainly ODs to push a gain channel of an amp, then I like the Comp in front of ODs better.

Makes a lot of sense.

Incidentally, I use two buffer boxes in my signal path. The first one’s the Pettyjohn Lift; it has a boost and some tone shaping controls, has a ‘sound’, and is designed to start a pedal chain.

However, the output of my board goes to an external amp switching system, and external bypass loop, and from there another cable run to the amps. This sits on a rack, it’s not part of the pedalboard. So I connect the pedal board output cable to a Suhr buffer box that’s got no controls and is transparent sounding, to preserve signal integrity into the switching system and on the cable run to the amps.

Some vintage wahs and germanium fuzzes need to come before a buffer, however. Some don’t.

In any case, I like what’s happening when I have two buffers in this kind of studio switching setup where the aggregate cable runs can total 40-50 feet from guitar to amps.
 
Every 3-4 months you should take all of the pedals off of your board and put them in a sack. Then, at random, pull each pedal out of the sack and hook them up in the order that they come out. It might not always work but you might stumble on some excellent pedal combinations or pedal order.
 
Back
Top