How should we place our pedals on our board? What’s the perfect guitar effects pedal order? What pedal comes before or after what? On the face of it, it can be very confusing, but the truth is there’s a simple guide that works for most options, but don’t be afraid to play with the options available to you though, that’s what creativity is about, messing with the normal, looking for new sounds, new ideas. So play with the order and see what you get.
But let’s lay out the basics that will work for you most of the time on your pedalboard. It’s pretty simple and will work for most set ups…
Signal flowing from guitar to amp, so from guitar into…
- Dynamic Effects: we’re talking Compressors, filters such as Wah, Pitch Shifters, and Volume pedals. These typically go at the beginning of the signal chain.
- Gain Effects: so think Overdrive, Distortion, and Fuzz pedals come next.
- Modulation Effects: pedals such as Chorus, Flangers, Phasers usually come next in the chain.
- Time Based Effects: such as Delays and Reverbs usually work best at the end of the signal chain.
- Volume pedals can go at the beginning or end of your signal chain, this will provide slightly different functionality, from increasing gain at the start of the chain, or simply increasing volume later in the chain (but don’t forget they can still drive the front end or power amp stage of your amp.
And that’s it really. There are some outliers in the pedal world, but this will get you there in most cases.
Guitar effects pedal order doesn’t have to be complicated, but there are further options like placing all pedals in front of an amp, or splitting them and putting some in the loop. That’s for the next blog…
Any questions, why not drop us a line?
