Guitar Pedal Board Signal Chains 101

Possibly one of the most daunting tasks that electric guitarists face is the construction of their first pedal board, or set of pedals, and most importantly what order to put them in.

“Does my drive go before or after my delay”, “Where should the reverb go?”, and “What is an effects loop?” are the questions most guitarists ask themselves when first approaching pedals.

We’re going to take you through some of the basic terminology, break down different types of guitar effects, and provide you with some general guidelines to follow when constructing your pedal board signal chain.

The Terminology

Before getting into the nitty gritty, we’re going to go over a few commonly used terms.

Signal Chain: Put simply, a signal chain is just the sequential chain in which you put your pedals, that your signal will then flow through. A simple example would be Guitar –> Overdrive Pedal –> Amplifier.

Patch Cable: These are short instrument cables used to connect multiple pedals to one other, and are fundamental to building your pedalboard.

Effects Loop: An effects input in your amplifier which allows you to add certain effects after the pre-amplifier in your signal chain. This is specifically useful when using the overdrive of an amplifier.

The Order

Let’s take a step-by-step look at each element in in order of the point in the chain they should ideally be. Bear in mind that this is a general guideline, and that experimentation will always take you a long way!

#1 The Guitar

It goes without saying, your guitar is the first step in your chain, the point at which your signal originates.

#2 The Tuner

The next step is your tuner. You don’t want any pedals affecting the accuracy of your tuner, so it is best placed directly after your guitar.

#3 Dynamic/Pitch Effects

This includes things like compressors, wah pedals, octave pedals, or pitch shifters. These type of effects alter the fundamental sound of your guitar, so it’s ideal to process that before adding additional sound modification.

#4 Drive/Distortion Effects

Overdrive and Distortion pedals produce tone, or fundamental sound. It is important to add these early on, as you only want to overdrive or distort your fundamental sound. It is important to note that this function can also be carried out by your amplifier if you are using the gain provided by your amp.

These first four categories should always be placed before the effects loop in an amplifier. The following categories, 5 and 6, can be placed either before, or in the effects loop of your amp, depending on whether you are using your amplifiers drive or not.

#5 Sound Replication Effects

This includes effects like delays and loopers. It is important to have these this late in the chain as you don’t want to be distorting your delay or your loops.

#6 Ambience Effects

Ambient effects include things like reverb pedals. These are best placed at the very end of your chain, as they add space to your tone, and it is ideal to have them affect your complete tone.

A Visual Guide

Take a look at this quick reference visual guide from Boss

Shop Guitar Effects

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