Need Some Help With My Pedalboard! (fx Placement?)

[dumbassbob]

No Delay Before Fuzz

I know the Mr.Gypsydanger might be try'n to help NEVER put Delay Before Wha,Fuzz.Voodo Lab makes a ok chain loop for all your front end pedals,wha fuzz even your phaser,but if the amp has its own FX loop in the back put you delay there.

[chipaudette]

Yeah, I'm really against chorus/delay/reverb in front of a fuzz/distortion box myself. My approach might be really old-fashioned, but I always vote for the order of:

(1) gain/distortion boxes
(2) chorus/phasers/flangers
(3) delays
(4) reverbs

If you use a compressor, it can go before or after your gain/distortion box. It's your call. If you use a wah, it can go before or after your gain/distortion box...though I think most people do it before. If you use an EQ pedal, it can go before or after the gain/distortion box depending on what you're going for.

The argument with FX loop or not boils down to whether or not you use the gain/overdrive/distortion built into your amp. If you like to use the amp's built-in distortion/overdrive, then you should put all items from (2)-(4) above into your FX loop. If you never use your amp's distortion/overdrive, then it doesn't matter if you put them in the amp's FX loop or not.

These comments are just old-school, traditional, and boring. But, they've served millions of guitarists well over the years. By all means go try radical configurations like putting your fuzz/distortion last. But, man, when I do that I really dislike the muddy sound. But, to each his own. All that matters is that you have fun!

Chip

[noirengineer]

Yeah, I'm really against chorus/delay/reverb in front of a fuzz/distortion box myself. My approach might be really old-fashioned, but I always vote for the order of:

(1) gain/distortion boxes
(2) chorus/phasers/flangers
(3) delays
(4) reverbs

agreed.

I like this order (ALL IN DIRECT AMP INPUT)

1. hbe comp
2. zvex fuzz
3. hotcake overdrive
4. nebula phaser
5. chorus
6. Ernie ball volume pedal
7. line 6 DL4 delay

Now what am I supposed to do with my whammy?
Will i need to put a booster pedal somewhere? Where?
after whammy (the only tone sucker in my chain so far)?

[Liam]

Sorry, a bit late chiming in with this, have been busy building another pedalboard!

Yes, your order of effects looks good to me, I also go for putting effects in the order you/Chipaudette use. I.E. dynamic filters (and compression), then distortion/overdrive, then phase/colour/trem/vib, then delay, then reverb. There are no rules, but this works for me. Use your ears...

Loopers, yes, the effect stays on all the time, and the looper sends your effect through it or not in a true bypass stylee. It's actually reasonable straight forward to make your own. You could even go wild and try to put some form of impedance matching in there.

I'd probably put the whammy EITHER inbetween the chorus and the volume OR inbetween the hotcake and the nebula. I'd try it both ways and see what I like the sound of best.

I NEVER use amplifier effects loops for pedals. Used to use them for some rackmount stuff, but the true colour of a decent distortion effect, or for that matter a nice old phaser or flanger, is only truly "good sounding" to me when it's abusing the input stage of a tube amp.

I used to like a preamp at the end of the effects chain (MXR microamp), but I find the preamp of a copicat tape echo does the job pretty well.

As for true bypass - people think of it as a be all and end all - it isn't. I generally remove a pedal from the loop, see if it colours the tone or sucks anything from it, if I can't hear it doing it at home the audience sure as hell aren't going to notice. Pedals I have owned that have really needed true bypass have been colorsound supa tonebender and tonebender, fuzzface, dunlop and vox wahs. I honestly think that's about it.

FWIW my newest creation's signal path goes:

Lovetone meatball
MXR Dynacomp
Ibanez TS10
Proco RATII
MXR Phase 90
EH Small Clone
EH Electric Mistress
Roger Mayer Voodoo Vibe
WEM Copicat (later transistor version)

The meatball and the clone are new additions that I'll be testing this week, but everything else was on my old board, (together with a Big Muff, Dunlop Wah and a Colorsound Supatonebender, a few other bits and pieces too), and all obvious combinations sounded pretty good to me.

Another thing - don't know how much George L cables are, but I'm a real sucker for Neutrik jacks and quality cable (Van Damme or Klotz). Made my own cables for this board, but Session Award Cleartones use the same parts I love, and the cost of finished cables is less than I pay for the parts.

Liam

[noirengineer]

george ls sooo over-rated for the prices

[noirengineer]

Question:

My whammy pedal is the major concern, when it's active or inactive in the chain but (not true bypassed).. it kills my tone and sucks volume!

That's my main concern, the whammy wh1 is such a cool little effect,
but its a shame i usually keep off to the side, unhooked (and not in my pedalboard).

I've heard of true-bypass loopers, but how can this solve my tone sucking issue? I figure that whammy is the only one that needs a looper, but won't
i just get a huge dip in volume when the loop is activated, and then a huge
tone / volume jump when stomping out of loop.

There's gotta be a way to solve this problem!

[chipaudette]

Here's what you want...

Boss LS-2 Line Selector

You put this pedal in your chain of pedals exactly where you would have placed your whammy. Then, you connect the whammy pedal to this LS-2 line selector pedal via the send and return jacks on the LS-2 pedal. Your whammy is only connected to the LS-2 pedal...it is connected to nothing else.

With this LS-2 pedal, you always leave your whammy pedal activated. But, by default, the LS-2 pedal will have the whammy out of the signal path, so you don't hear it and it'll have no effect on your sound. You'll have pure suck-free tone (I wish I had suck-free tone).

Then, when you want to use the whammy pedal, you step on the LS-2 pedal. It brings your whammy pedal into the signal chain. Now, go ahead and work your magic on the whammy. Sweet.

When you're done, step on the LS-2 pedal again and it'll cut the whammy out of your chain again. No tone suck.

This thing is currently $80 at Musicians Friend (link above). You might find one cheaper by looking for used ones on eBay or something. Either way, problem solved.

Chip

[Liam]

Not the cheapest way of doing it, but that will definitely work.

Liam

[chipaudette]

I agree it's not cheap. You could build your own loop pedal. And, unlike the Boss pedal, it could be completely passive (ie, not battery or power supply). You'd need:

Four 1/4" jacks
One DPDT footswitch ($8-$10)
A little bit of wire
A robust enclosure to mount everything inside

So, it's $20-30 in parts, depending on the enclosure. But, I hate building/cutting/drilling enclosures. And, once built, robustness is a concern. Eveything that I build is not robust enough to be stomped on...I'd quickly find that it would start acting very intermittently. It would be so annoying. And it would look like crap because I've got no graphics skills.

But, that's simply a reflection of my inadequacies in building pedals. Most people have better skills with that sort of thing. With something that you just want to work, though, $80 is not too much (to me) for piece of mind.

Chip

[dumbassbob]

Whammy Worries

Buy a Line or looper.By the time you get parts and time it will cost the same.Also what kind of Whammy pedal is it.Are you giveing it the right power.If its a Digitech it need the right wall wart No batterys.My DOD pedals take 10 volts .Only old Vox Crybabys sound good with batterys

[robrhy]

Have a look here http://www.beavisaudio.com/techpages...erSwitcher.htm see if that's any help.

[dumbassbob]

Bevisaudio Cool Diagram

Thats a nice diagram,Is there one like that to make a 6 in line looper series box

[Ben N]

Just a couple of comments:

W/re fuzz and delay/chorus: You need to be sensitive to the headroom of the delay or chorus input. If you are in the habit of getting a big boost from your overdrive (and I'm guessing that the Hotcake is meant to overdrive the AC30), then you might want it after the delay, since overdriving a delay or chorus is generally not a good thing, sonically. If you are looking for the distortion pedal to create your distortion tone, then run it ahead of the delay-based pedals, but at unity gain or close to it. Ultimately, "correct" order depends on how you use the pedals in combinations.

As for the Whammy sucking tone in bypass, there are really only two solutions: buffer it or bypass it. Buffering can be accomplished as simply as sandwiching it between buffered pedals, like Boss. I keep a mix of buffered (like Boss & Ibanez), TBP (like Barber, EHX reissue and stuff I have modded) and crappy bypass pedals (like vintage MXR, EHX and Marshall)) on my board, and usually making sure there are buffers fore and aft of the crappy ones takes care of the tone sucking problem pretty well. Of course the idea of an outboard bypass, whether a buffered one like the Boss LS-2 or a simple DIY passive true bypass pedal, will do you fine, but it means adding a pedal to an already crowded board.