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Signal Chain Help


Johnny Wishbone
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Right guys, I've recently gone "pedal mad" and picked up a few used pedals to widen my range of sounds. Only trouble is I'm not sure which order to put them in.

At present (in order) my signal goes: Bass > Korg DT-10 Tuner > Modded Boss CS-3 Compressor > EHX Big Muff > EHX Small Stone > Boss CE-2 Chorus > Amp

New ones to be included are: Dunlop 105Q Bass Wah, Digitech Bass Synth Wah, Boss TR-2 Tremelo, Boss OC-2 Octaver and an as-yet-unacquired delay.

I'm pretty sure the wah needs to go near the front of the chain, but I prefer it after the Big Muff, so I guess that would go between that and the Small Stone? I assume the delay would need to go right at the end, but what about the others?

Cheers,

Matt

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Bass - OC-2 - Digitech BSW - Big Muff - Bass Wah - CE-2 - Small Stone - TR-2 - Delay - CS-3 - DT-10(Though this could also go first but I like them last so I can mute any hum or setup some effects in silent mode before a song a starts)

Reason for this is CS-3 last will give you all the limiting you need make sure you don't get any nasty peaks.

Fuzz into Wah sounds best

Chorus into Phaser will give you huge swooshy noises and isn't that great the other way around

Octaver needs to be first to track as well as possibly

BSW needs to be as close to beginning as possible as well also synth and octave in Fuzz, Phaser, Wah and Trem will give you the synthy sound where as other orders aren't that great.

Delay last is the most useful but you can get some great sounds earlier but it is limiting.

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[quote name='tayste_2000' post='42920' date='Aug 8 2007, 03:23 PM']Bass - OC-2 - Digitech BSW - Big Muff - Bass Wah - CE-2 - Small Stone - TR-2 - Delay - CS-3 - DT-10(Though this could also go first but I like them last so I can mute any hum or setup some effects in silent mode before a song a starts)

Reason for this is CS-3 last will give you all the limiting you need make sure you don't get any nasty peaks.

Fuzz into Wah sounds best

Chorus into Phaser will give you huge swooshy noises and isn't that great the other way around

Octaver needs to be first to track as well as possibly

BSW needs to be as close to beginning as possible as well also synth and octave in Fuzz, Phaser, Wah and Trem will give you the synthy sound where as other orders aren't that great.

Delay last is the most useful but you can get some great sounds earlier but it is limiting.[/quote]

I strongly disagree on 2 things:

I'd never put the Fuzz before the 105q. That gives it a synthy effect that loses all the distortion when the wah is engaged and that's not what I want. I want the Timmy C effect, not the Cliff Burton one. Might be what some people want, but swaping those 2 around gives such different results that it's not a matter of what sounds better but what result suits you best. It's also so easy to spot the difference it's really worth to try and pick by yourself, you'd have to be deaf not to have a favourite...

And I'd never use the compressor after all those effects either. I used to prefer it after the wah, then I decided I preferred it before. Not a big difference. But to me it definitely makes it all sound worse after chorus or fuzz. Not to mention that it maximizes any noise that goes into it, so a fuzz before it's pretty much the worse you could do regarding noise in the signal...

Ultimately, try it all and chose with your own ears! Most of it is pretty easy to decide once you hear it.

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[quote name='1976fenderhead' post='42962' date='Aug 8 2007, 04:50 PM']I strongly disagree on 2 things:

I'd never put the Fuzz before the 105q. That gives it a synthy effect that loses all the distortion when the wah is engaged and that's not what I want. I want the Timmy C effect, not the Cliff Burton one. Might be what some people want, but swaping those 2 around gives such different results that it's not a matter of what sounds better but what result suits you best. It's also so easy to spot the difference it's really worth to try and pick by yourself, you'd have to be deaf not to have a favourite...

And I'd never use the compressor after all those effects either. I used to prefer it after the wah, then I decided I preferred it before. Not a big difference. But to me it definitely makes it all sound worse after chorus or fuzz. Not to mention that it maximizes any noise that goes into it, so a fuzz before it's pretty much the worse you could do regarding noise in the signal...

Ultimately, try it all and chose with your own ears! Most of it is pretty easy to decide once you hear it.[/quote]

Apart from your minimising the signal going into your fuzz and you lose a lot of touch response from a fuzz, it is all personaly preference at the end of the day I love dirt pedals and just have transparent limting from a decent rack compressor.

Personally on the wah if it was me I'd have dist before and after it :) or stick it in a wobo loop so youi can reverse it and do both, then you get best of both worlds.

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[quote name='tayste_2000' post='42964' date='Aug 8 2007, 04:56 PM']Apart from your minimising the signal going into your fuzz and you lose a lot of touch response from a fuzz, it is all personaly preference at the end of the day I love dirt pedals and just have transparent limting from a decent rack compressor.

Personally on the wah if it was me I'd have dist before and after it :) or stick it in a wobo loop so youi can reverse it and do both, then you get best of both worlds.[/quote]

Well, you always lose touch response with a compressor, but you win clarity and punch, and to me a clear and punchy signal going into an effect provides a much better base for that effect to do its job properly with better results. A fuzz will deliver an effect that was applied to more of the signal than if it hadn't been compressed. The fuzziness itself, comes out in all its glory. If you apply compression after a fuzz, you're compressing all the fuzzyness and taking the life and brightness out of it and making it sound dull...

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OK, so apart for the position of the wah and compressor in the chain it's pretty much as tayste_2000 said then?

I realise that most of this comes down to personal preference but obviously there are some pedals that for logical reasons work better either at the front or the end of the chain (for instance tayste's reason for the octaver & synth wah to go first makes sense to me). I can see what both of you are saying about the compressor - I've found that putting it after fuzz does tame the sound a bit too much for me, but then I can see why you'd have it after the octaver/synth/phaser to even out any nasty peaks, perhaps affording the amp some protection if things get a bit silly.

I'm pretty happy with the order of my current pedals (although I may switch the phaser and chorus around as tayste suggests for a more extreme effect) so I guess I'm just looking at where the new pedals would fit into my existing chain. I'm not really about subtlety, effects-wise, as I'm usually holding down the low end beneath two heavy guitars so any effect I use has to cut through the mix (think along the lines of Tim Commerford & Chris Wolstenholme).

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i would always put a comp last because for one it your signal maybe run through a comp in the pa so if you have it last in general it's closer to the front of house sound and i reckon you'd send a better signal to both your amp and the desk.

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If you look at what happens to a signal you can decide whether you have a use for the audio consequence.

You have amongst your efx:

type a. signal dynamics limiting devices === compressor

type b. tonal spectrum altering devices === wah wah, eq

type c. signal waveform altering devices === distortion

type. d. amplitude modulation devices ==== tremolo, phaser

type e. time modulation === delay, chorus


The conventional wisdom is that you put your type a before type c and these before type d & e if you are running your signals in series.
Type e tends to run in parallel internally even if you do not choose to run time modulation in parallel - you will have a wet/dry mix control.

Puttting type a AFTER type b, will mean that you end up with higher noise,
Putting type d or e BEFORE type c, will mean you end up with increasing or decreasing levels or modulating levels of waveform alteration
Putting type d AFTER type c, will mean that your amplitude fluctuation will be fluctuation of a consistently modified waveform shape.
Putting type e AFTER type a,b or c will mean you end up with a time modulated compressed, eq'd or distorted signal.
Putting type e BEFORE type a, will mean that you end up with less distinct levels of signal decay.


A type b efx, will alter the tonal spectrum of your signal. If you place it after any other effect, it will alter the tonal spectrum after that effect's modification of the original signal. If you put it before, it alters the signal before it gets altered by another effect. viz. if you EQ before compression, you change the nature of the signal that will be compressed, and if you EQ after compression you change the tonal nature of the already compressed signal. A wah wah is a modulating bandpass tonal modification and is really a tonal effect. So a wah after distortion is like an EQ after distortion, and an wah before distortion is like an EQ before distortion, ie. distortion of an altered tonal spectrum.

Effectively you can do what you want as long as the signal modification is something you want to achieve. If you are a novice, try various combinations and see if you can find a use for it.... but if you don't like the results stick to the conventional:

type a into type c into type d or e, type b can fit anywhere in between.

Edited by synaesthesia
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[quote name='synaesthesia' post='43049' date='Aug 8 2007, 09:02 PM']If you look at what happens to a signal you can decide whether you have a use for the audio consequence.

You have amongst your efx:

type a. signal dynamics limiting devices === compressor

type b. tonal spectrum altering devices === wah wah, eq

type c. signal waveform altering devices === distortion

type. d. amplitude modulation devices ==== tremolo, phaser

type e. time modulation === delay, chorus
The conventional wisdom is that you put your type a before type c and these before type d & e if you are running your signals in series.
Type e tends to run in parallel internally even if you do not choose to run time modulation in parallel - you will have a wet/dry mix control.

Puttting type a AFTER type b, will mean that you end up with higher noise,
Putting type d or e BEFORE type c, will mean you end up with increasing or decreasing levels or modulating levels of waveform alteration
Putting type d AFTER type c, will mean that your amplitude fluctuation will be fluctuation of a consistently modified waveform shape.
Putting type e AFTER type a,b or c will mean you end up with a time modulated compressed, eq'd or distorted signal.
Putting type e BEFORE type a, will mean that you end up with less distinct levels of signal decay.
A type b efx, will alter the tonal spectrum of your signal. If you place it after any other effect, it will alter the tonal spectrum after that effect's modification of the original signal. If you put it before, it alters the signal before it gets altered by another effect. viz. if you EQ before compression, you change the nature of the signal that will be compressed, and if you EQ after compression you change the tonal nature of the already compressed signal. A wah wah is a modulating bandpass tonal modification and is really a tonal effect. So a wah after distortion is like an EQ after distortion, and an wah before distortion is like an EQ before distortion, ie. distortion of an altered tonal spectrum.

Effectively you can do what you want as long as the signal modification is something you want to achieve. If you are a novice, try various combinations and see if you can find a use for it.... but if you don't like the results stick to the conventional:

type a into type c into type d or e, type b can fit anywhere in between.[/quote]

+1 to all that.
That said, exceptions happen every now and then. I prefer flanger after distortion, however, I'm now using fuzz as distortion and I want a jet flanger sound with it at times. I find with my BF-2B after the fuzz, even at very low resonance, the swoosh is so loud it overpowers the notes I'm actually playing. So I now have it before the fuzz, where the effect is less luscious but I can get only as much swoosh as I want.

I'm getting an MXR Flanger soon and for what I tried I believe I'll be able to have it after the fuzz without the swoosh being too overbearing...

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