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Modern Guitar FX Signal Chain
Modern Guitar FX Signal Chain
Guitarists — Video
Posted 07/24/2015 at 4:16pm | by Paul Riario, Christopher Scapelliti
Are you a pedal-board dunce? Fear not! In this illustrated tutorial, Guitar World shows you
everything you need to know, from choosing a board to powering up and laying out your pedals.
The more effect pedals you use, the more you need a pedal board. Even the most basic unpowered
board can provide a useful platform to hold your pedals securely, provide cable management and
keep everything from sliding around onstage.
Powered boards have the added function of supplying electrical connections to all your pedals,
thereby eliminating the need for power strips and multiple wall warts that can take up space and
create a nest of dangerous wires around your performance area. For more complex or specialized
rigs, a custom pedal board can meet your specific switching requirements and make performance
headaches a thing of the past.
Unfortunately for those who have never had apedal board, the prospect of building or buying one
can be overwhelming. You have to determine not only what size you’ll need for your set-up but also
make sure it matches the power requirements of your pedals, some of which might take require, 12,
16, 18 or 24 volts.
There’s also the matter of cables, of which you’ll need many, each cut to the minimum length to
ensure signal integrity and keep your layout tidy. The confusion only gets worse once you go online
and see the plethora of pedal board models and options available to you.
We wrote up this guide to make selecting and setting up a pedal board easier. In this tutorial, we’ll
walk you through every step of the process, from choosing the pedal board, power supply and
cables to laying out your pedals in the order that works for you and making it all work to meet your
needs.
What Size?
The choice of a small, medium or large pedal board comes down to one thing: the number and size
of the pedals you’ll need to use. If you use five or fewer standard-size pedals and don’t plan to add
to your setup, a small pedal board should suit your long-term needs. If you have more than five
pedals but fewer than 10, you’ll want to consider a medium board. More than 10 and you should
choose a large board. And if you have only five pedals now but plan to add another two or three in
the near future, it’s better to plan ahead and go for a larger board today.
Remember, too, that pedals with large footprints take up more real estate, and even a small set-up
consisting of a few oversized pedals may require a larger pedal board to prevent overcrowding.
When planning, remember to leave enough space between the pedals to facilitate cabling and
create a clean, uncluttered and easily accessible layout.
• First: Filters, pitch shifters, harmonizers and dynamic pedals/Wah or Whammy (such as
compressors)
• Second: Distortion, overdrive, fuzz, boost and EQ pedals
• Third: Modulation pedals (phaser, chorus and flangers)
• Fourth: Time-based effects (echo, delay, tremolo and reverb)
For example, if your pedal board consists of a distortion, a wah, a compressor and a reverb pedal,
you would probably connect them as follows:
Wah > Compressor > Distortion > Reverb
In the next section, I’ll explain the rationale behind the ordering of these categories to help guide you
along.
Filters, Pitch Shifters, Harmonizers and Dynamic Pedals
These pedals typically work best at the front of the signal chain, where they act upon the pure signal
from your guitar. Filters include pedals such as wahs and low-pass filters. Pitch shifters and
harmonizers also include the ever-popular Whammy Pedal, all of which benefit from having a strong
and unaffected signal from your guitar so that they can track your notes cleanly and accurately.
Dynamic pedals include compressors, which “squeeze” a signal’s dynamic range—its quietest to
loudest values—by reducing signal peaks as they occur. Compressors typically feature volume or
make-up gain controls that let you boost the overall signal to compensate for the lower volume that
results from compressing. For that matter, auto wahs/envelope filters are actually dynamic filters that
allow a filter’s frequency cutoff to respond to changes in signal response due to variances in pick
attack and volume.
Bear in mind that you should be careful of the effect order within these categories. For example, a
compressor placed after an EQ pedal will be more responsive to the frequencies that the EQ is
boosting, because the compressor seeks out the loudest part of the signal and reduces its volume.
It’s probably better to place the compressor before the EQ, where it can respond to your guitar’s
signal rather than the frequencies boosted by the EQ pedal.
Conversely, placing a compressor before an auto wah will reduce the guitar signal’s dynamic range
of the and thereby impede the auto wah’s expressiveness (auto wahs thrive on dynamics). On the
other hand, placing a compressor before a wah pedal can help you control some of the guitar
signal’s inherent brightness that can make some wahs sound shrill and piercing at the top end of
their range. Of course, some of these considerations change if you raise your compressor’s make-up
gain to the point that it’s actually increasing the signal like a gain boost (see the next section on
distortion and overdrive).
On the subject of wah pedals, it’s worth noting that some guitarists prefer to place wahs after
distortion pedals, where they can be driven hard for a funkier sound. Again, none of this is carved in
stone. Set up your effects as they work best for you, but try to be aware of the interactions that result
from the order of pedal placement.
Distortion, Overdrive, Fuzz, Boost and EQ
Distortion, overdrive and fuzz pedals affect harmonic content by enhancing overtones and
compressing peaks in the signal. Their purpose is to simulate the sound of a cranked amp through a
speaker cabinet. In the natural order of things, these pedals go after filters and EQ, just like your
amp’s output and speakers. They also follow the compression pedal, whose purpose is to flatten
peaks and ensure the entire signal is “hotter.”
Which brings us to another reason why you shouldn’t put a compressor after a distortion pedal: they
can add volume to everything that comes before them, including noise generated by effects like—
you guessed it—distortion, overdrive and fuzz pedals.
Most modern fuzz pedals work very well after wah pedals, but the same isn’t true of some vintage
fuzz units. If you have an older fuzz pedal that doesn’t sound good when placed after the wah, try
moving it before the wah and see if it improves things.
If you use boost or EQ pedals to give your tone a kick for solos, try placing them after the distortion,
overdrive and fuzz pedals. This will help to raise your overall level without having an undue impact
on the sound. As always, experiment to see what works best for the pedals in your setup.
Modulation Effects
These are tone modifiers and sweeteners, and they include effects like chorus, phase, flange and
vibrato. Traditionally, these can be noisy effects, and placing them before gain-increasing pedals like
distortion or compression will tend to intensify their noise.
In addition, chorus, phasing and flanging all introduce time delays and pitch fluctuations that create a
sense of spatial movement similar to what happens in the physical world. Placing them after
amplification-style effects like distortions and overdrives produces results that are in keeping with
naturally occurring sound. Plus, the extra boost a signal gets from an overdrive pedal can help
emphasize the oscillation of modulation effects.
Of course, plenty of players like to put modulation effects like Uni-Vibes and phasers before
distortion. Think Jimi Hendrix (Uni-Vibe) and Eddie Van Halen (MXR Phase 90). Doing this delivers
more harmonic content to the distortion box and can result in more dramatic and animated effects.
Time-Based Effects
This one is pretty obvious. Reverb, delay and echo are ambience effects that imitate how sounds are
affected within room environments. Naturally, they go at the end of the chain. Tremolo, for that
matter, is amplitude modulation—amp on, amp off—and therefore goes at the end of the signal
chain.
Tuners
Though they’re not effects, tuners are a part of every guitarist’s setup, so it’s important to think about
where they’ll go in your signal chain. Some guitarists like to have them at the front of the chain, while
others like them last or somewhere in between. If you place your tuner at the head of the chain,
activating it will silence your guitar but not your pedals.
This is fine if you want to allow time-based effects to continue trailing off while you tune up, but it’s
not ideal if you want to silence your rig between songs. For that you’ll need to place the tuner last in
the chain, though doing so will require you to turn off your distortions and other effects prior to
tuning. As you can see, there are trade-offs to either scenario. Pick the one that works best for you.
The Bottom Line
The bottom line is that pedal order is subjective and varies from player to player. If you’re trying to
nail a certain guitarist’s tone, then it’s useful to know what effects he uses and the order in which
they’re placed. But when it comes to your tone, you have to decide what works for you.
Experimenting can be fun, so start plugging away. And don’t worry, there is no right or wrong order.
Besides, the best part about effect boxes and pedal boards is that you can always move things
around as your needs and tone goals change.