Pedal Board Sequence

[RexKeltoi]

It is always interesting hearing peoples take on which pedal goes where in the signal chain, recently purchased an Eruptor EQD legacy pedal for my board and they claim you can put it anywhere on the chain even in front of the tuner🤨 ( I have a TU2 ), first time I have heard that. Well when it arrives, I'll find out not sure if I will put it in front of my Speaker Cranker or after but will keep my phaser at the end of the chain. A site said to put the Wah in front but I think that would be more like a toner as Schenker would use it 🤷‍♂️  

[FatherAlabaster]

My ideal setup through my main guitar amp is: guitar > gate > synth > dirt pedals > amp > effects loop send > mod, delay, reverb > effects loop return. I have a tuner coming off the dry output of my EHX Hog synth. I'll switch around the order of the modulation, delay, and reverb depending on whether I want the mod to affect the tails of the other stuff. 

Having said that, my favorite guitar tone is straight into the amp with no pedals in the way, and if I could get a good lead sound without an OD in front, I would just use the loop.

I've been using an HX Effects for the past few years and it's great, good sounds and convenient switching. I got tired of the chippy sound of the buffer on my Boss NS2 noise gate so I'm just using the one on the HX unit, which is ok, but it does put the gate after the synth, which I don't love if I need the gate set up hard. I also currently have an EQ pedal first thing on the board, mostly as a tone shaper for when I switch over to bass.

My bass rig is different, I usually use a board with a parallel setup into both channel inputs on my old Traynor head. I'll have the gate, tuner, and synth before the split, and after the split, one side gets distortion and a delay, the other side gets a nice fat compression and a different delay and some kind of mod. I can also mock up this two-channel layout on the HX Effects and it works a treat.

 

[RexKeltoi]

On 6/14/2024 at 8:49 AM, FatherAlabaster said:

My ideal setup through my main guitar amp is: guitar > gate > synth > dirt pedals > amp > effects loop send > mod, delay, reverb > effects loop return. I have a tuner coming off the dry output of my EHX Hog synth. I'll switch around the order of the modulation, delay, and reverb depending on whether I want the mod to affect the tails of the other stuff. 

Having said that, my favorite guitar tone is straight into the amp with no pedals in the way, and if I could get a good lead sound without an OD in front, I would just use the loop.

I've been using an HX Effects for the past few years and it's great, good sounds and convenient switching. I got tired of the chippy sound of the buffer on my Boss NS2 noise gate so I'm just using the one on the HX unit, which is ok, but it does put the gate after the synth, which I don't love if I need the gate set up hard. I also currently have an EQ pedal first thing on the board, mostly as a tone shaper for when I switch over to bass.

My bass rig is different, I usually use a board with a parallel setup into both channel inputs on my old Traynor head. I'll have the gate, tuner, and synth before the split, and after the split, one side gets distortion and a delay, the other side gets a nice fat compression and a different delay and some kind of mod. I can also mock up this two-channel layout on the HX Effects and it works a treat.

 

I don't use a gate but was considering a Decimator, will it help diminish string squeaks as well as other unwanted sounds 🤔 

[FatherAlabaster]

I've heard good things about the Decimator, especially the G String model. Never used one. But string squeaks will probably be loud enough that they won't get cut off. I like the action of the old standby Boss NS2, but when I'm being a tone snob I don't like the sound of the pedal, which I think is down to the buffer. It has this subtly cheap zingy quality to it that feels a little plastic. It wouldn't make a difference in any situation like a show.

The gate on my HX Effects seems to work fine too. At my last place, the power was really noisy and I needed one most of the time even at low volumes. The new spot is the first place I've lived in almost 20 years where I can just plug straight into my head and it's dead quiet.

[RexKeltoi]

1 hour ago, FatherAlabaster said:

I've heard good things about the Decimator, especially the G String model. Never used one. But string squeaks will probably be loud enough that they won't get cut off. I like the action of the old standby Boss NS2, but when I'm being a tone snob I don't like the sound of the pedal, which I think is down to the buffer. It has this subtly cheap zingy quality to it that feels a little plastic. It wouldn't make a difference in any situation like a show.

The gate on my HX Effects seems to work fine too. At my last place, the power was really noisy and I needed one most of the time even at low volumes. The new spot is the first place I've lived in almost 20 years where I can just plug straight into my head and it's dead quiet.

My thing with the string noise has something I have never been able to totally mitigate, people I played with always said I was a bit of a noisy player, its gotten much better but not where it doesn't irritate me 😒 Though I hear during recording the string noise is taken out during the mix but I have never recorded anything other than with a camcorder. As for pedal noise I am thinking I might have to upgrade my old DC Brick PS, according to EQD some pedals can make a lot of noise when in sequence without isolation, I''ll know for sure when my Eruptor pedal arrives this week and I slap it on the board. Never even considered running my whole board through the effects loop, what would be the benefit?     

 

[FatherAlabaster]

8 hours ago, RexKeltoi said:

My thing with the string noise has something I have never been able to totally mitigate, people I played with always said I was a bit of a noisy player, its gotten much better but not where it doesn't irritate me 😒 Though I hear during recording the string noise is taken out during the mix but I have never recorded anything other than with a camcorder. As for pedal noise I am thinking I might have to upgrade my old DC Brick PS, according to EQD some pedals can make a lot of noise when in sequence without isolation, I''ll know for sure when my Eruptor pedal arrives this week and I slap it on the board. Never even considered running my whole board through the effects loop, what would be the benefit?     

 

 It's whatever lets me keep the delays and reverbs after the distortion. On my VHT all the distortion comes from the preamp, so I use the loop for time-based effects. On my old Traynor, the distortion I use comes from pedals, so it's ok to run the time-based effects after the distortion into the front of the amp as long as I run it fairly clean. No loop on that one anyway. 

It can be cool to run reverb and delay into distortion as a special effect but that's usually not the sound I'm going for.

Power supplies and good cables help. There are some pretty cool power supplies out there now but I'm happy enough with my Voodoo Labs Pedal Power 2, especially since the Hog and the HX Effects need their own power supplies anyway. Unfortunately with all of that stuff in the line it's not whisper quiet, but practically speaking it's still just fine.

[RexKeltoi]

34 minutes ago, FatherAlabaster said:

 It's whatever lets me keep the delays and reverbs after the distortion. On my VHT all the distortion comes from the preamp, so I use the loop for time-based effects. On my old Traynor, the distortion I use comes from pedals, so it's ok to run the time-based effects after the distortion into the front of the amp as long as I run it fairly clean. No loop on that one anyway. 

It can be cool to run reverb and delay into distortion as a special effect but that's usually not the sound I'm going for.

Power supplies and good cables help. There are some pretty cool power supplies out there now but I'm happy enough with my Voodoo Labs Pedal Power 2, especially since the Hog and the HX Effects need their own power supplies anyway. Unfortunately with all of that stuff in the line it's not whisper quiet, but practically speaking it's still just fine.

I hear ya, the VL PP2 is my preferred upgrade probably just trade in a few pedals for a used one rather than buying new