Pedal setup

[Iris]

Me again. Any ideas on what order to set all these pedals up in a signal chain? Until I get a pedalboard I have those short little connecting cords. I'd like them all in a chain so I'm not constantly connecting and disconnecting.

 

[Ed Seith]

TYPICAL would be to have that tuner first, compressor, volume or wah, gain pedals, then delay. If you plan to use more than one gain pedal at once, for some gain staging-type stuff, you'd have to experiment with that, and you may find you like different things in different places. "Typical" doesn't mean right; it just means common. You have to do you.

To expand on the why:
You want the tuner first so the cleanest signal goes into it, even if you've left a pedal (or three) turned on.
Compressor shapes the input signal, and if you put it AFTER a volume pedal, it will interfere with the smoothness of the volume adjustment. Less critical for a wah, which may or may not sound better with the compressor AFTER to tame some of the boosted frequencies of the wah.
Delays you typically want after the gain stages, because if you apply gain to a delayed signal, it typically becomes a single mashed and distorted signal that you can't really hear any delay in (this could also be the GOAL, but it's not - again - TYPICAL).

 

[William B.]

Order may make a slight difference but I haven't tried it myself.
What's a Blues Driver do?

 

[Iris]

Order may make a slight difference but I haven't tried it myself.
What's a Blues Driver do?

It's a overdrive/distortion pedal. Gives you a really nice warm blusey sound.

 

[Brian Haner Sr.]

Exactly what Ed said: tuner, comp, volume/wah, gain, delay/verb. This is the safest and most user-friendly setup. There are exceptions to this order - but it's usually done for a special effect. I have moved the comp around in the chain, depending on what I want compressed. Start with this setup and then move things around to see how it effects the signal. You might stumble on to something you like.

 

[Calvin Phillips]

Me again. Any ideas on what order to set all these pedals up in a signal chain? Until I get a pedalboard I have those short little connecting cords. I'd like them all in a chain so I'm not constantly connecting and disconnecting.

Experiment. They all sound different in different links.

 

[Zesty Rage]

I know nothing about pedals but have no way to learn about them. If anyone on this thread could help me out it would be appreciated

 

[Rad Synner]

I know nothing about pedals but have no way to learn about them. If anyone on this thread could help me out it would be appreciated

Hey dude! Ask away any questions you might have and im sure either I or a someone else knowledgeable in this forum will answer! What's on your mind?

 

[Zesty Rage]

Hey dude! Ask away any questions you might have and im sure either I or a someone else knowledgeable in this forum will answer! What's on your mind?

Well what's some good pedals to get if you know nothing about them? How would I go about using them in terms of connecting pedals to my amp? I mean honestly my knowledge on pedals is zero and I have no idea where to start when it comes to pedals. My amp has effect dials but turning dials isn't really practical if I were to play live.

 

[Rad Synner]

Well what's some good pedals to get if you know nothing about them? How would I go about using them in terms of connecting pedals to my amp? I mean honestly my knowledge on pedals is zero and I have no idea where to start when it comes to pedals. My amp has effect dials but turning dials isn't really practical if I were to play live.

That really depends on what type of sound you want. There are a lot of different effects that can be found in pedal form and it will really be depending on the sound you want.

And in the way of plugging it to an amp, well let's take a distortion pedal for example. So you want a heavy, chunky tone and you decide to buy a distortion pedal, okay cool! Now what you wanna do is put you amp on clean because you don't want to stack your distortion pedal with the distortion of the amp for example, that's just not gonna sound good.

And so you want to keep your amp clean so you can build up your tone from the pedal only. Plug the guitar into the input of the distortion pedal, the output of the distortion pedal into the input of the amp, and voila, play around until you find what you like.

Now that's just a start. At first, you will probably want to start with the fun pedal that directly affect your sound like distortions, wah, time based effects like reverb, delay, phaser, etc... and once you would have those you will probably more knowledgeable and will turn to effects that aren't, let's say as fun as the others, but are definitely as important like for example compressors, EQ, Volume, tuner, etc...

And that's how typically people build their pedalboard over time. Then again, the process really depends on you and your need and what type of sound you want to get knowing that there are thousands of possibilities. For one effect like distortion, there are probably 20 pedals that do distortion but they all do it with their different quirks and it adds personality. And that goes for all effects which is what allows guitar players to really diversify their tones.

Let me know if this was clear enough for you!

 

[Iris]

Well what's some good pedals to get if you know nothing about them? How would I go about using them in terms of connecting pedals to my amp? I mean honestly my knowledge on pedals is zero and I have no idea where to start when it comes to pedals. My amp has effect dials but turning dials isn't really practical if I were to play live.

@Radu-Cristian Perde is right on here. When I got my first electric, someone said I needed a compressor. So I got one. Then I learned that Jimmy Page in his days as a session musician and with early Zeppelin used a Fuzz box. Which was an early type of distortion. So I got a fuzz box. Same with the Wah pedal. Over the years people would suggest things and I would get them. I got the metal zone on impulse.

But if you really wanna mess around with pedals, go to Guitar Center or any store like that. They have a huge pedal board set up where you can mess around with all the different pedals.

 

[Calvin Phillips]

YouTube pedal demos. They will give you an idea what the pedal doesm

 

[Zesty Rage]

Thank you all so much for your helpful tips guys it really means alot. I'll give this a shot and let you know how it goes