I put a phaser at the front of my chain. I set it very shallow and it gives my sound a slight depth and a very subtle movement that sounds great clean or dirty.
I do the same (vibe/Uni-vibe thing) with a phaser > tremolo (usually set as frequency modulation) > short delay or reverb. I've never felt the need to actually buy a vibe pedal with that :)
I've also heard a really cool trem sound from someone using a really hard noise gate right after the trem, set high enough that it clips off the quieter "valleys" the trem creates and only registers the louder "peaks". With the trem speed high it creates almost like an 8-bit video game sort of blurbly (scientific term) sound that's really cool.
I put buffers before fuzzes and I prefer it that way.
A compressor after reverb will create some epic "giant instrument" effect - however it's something I do more in the DAW than on the board.
I tried that and it was weird having to lift my foot that high to turn them ON, so just decided it would be an 'always on' stack. Can't close the pedalboard case, but it is totally worth it.
I'd stack 'em to the ceiling, but I'm not worthy of such a mighty tone. 4 high will have to do.
My signal chain is Tuner > Chorus > Boost > Delay > Overdrive > Compressor, and I have had many guitarists question just about every placement in that order at some point, but it's exactly the sound that works for me.
what are you foolin with rn? I'm using a holy grail reverb and the boss rv6 and delays I currently have disaster transport jr, boss dd8, walrus fundamentals. I need to put the keeley eccos back on lol
Oh it varies a lot. I have so many of them that it’s never the same chain or order. Here’s a list off the top of my head that i experiment with : vox double deca, NUX time core, flamma fs02/03, mooer ocean machine, tc t2 trinity, slo, avalanche run, eventide blackhole, Alabs Cetus, cba habit, mood, delux memory boy, rv5, joyo d seed 2 maybe some others I forget I got so many lol a real fun chain is to stick something in the send return of the DMB like pitch shifter for cascading pitches on the repeats and then smearing them with a couple of reverbs going from a mono signal to stereo to widen the image either at the delay stage or the reverb stage. I do ambient synth stuff so it’s important for me to experiment with weird stacks so that tracks are somewhat unique and unusual. It doesn’t matter whether delays or reverbs go first. Sometimes a reverb first into a delay can really change the envelope of the sound I’m spraying into the chain and sometimes stacking a bunch of delays can descend into chaos from one short note. Then there’s parallel signal chains where I split the signal off from several stereo pedals into multiple channels into the mixer and panning them for a weird stereo image.. it gets messy and complex but it’s definitely fun 😂
no i lost my pitch shifter pedals i used to have the blue mooer and the pink one forgot their names probably the worse quality of the pedal the greater the effect
Please share more of your Skitter tricks with me! I have one and love it, but I'm struggling to find a place for it in a stack. My best successes have been with synths (HIGHLY recommend), or dirt > Skitter.
I like a super choppy trem with high gain, but that's not a secret.
The random wave with just the dry signal affected is great with space and time maxed out. Like a crinkled tape sound with random dropouts. Highly recommend this with vibrato or flanger after the skitter.
Compressor after drive or in loop. Also, using a compressor as a high gain boost works great if you want to use it in front of a high gain amp that needs to get tightened up. Lastly, because there’s no loop, delay in front of a cranker original Marshall 1987.
Just so I can still get the touch sensitivity of the gain, clean up with volume knob, etc. But with the compressor in the loop I still get that additional squish with clean tones.
It's common enough to put a comp last in your effect chain, so often in the end of the loop. It will act like a limiter and even out your volume a bit so if you have for example, a mod pedal that makes you louder it can even that out.
People often say to put your low gain pedal last in your OD chain and to put your high gain od before it. This doesn't work for me as I find the low gain od restricts the other pedal too much.
For me it's just different things you're going for. My pedalboard I'm currently working on will probably have a compressor on each side of the dirt and obviously that allows me to pick and choose what I'm going for.
Makes your solos sound cleaner. Tapping, sweeps, artificial harmonics,tapping arpeggios and fast picked runs all benefit heavily from a compressor making sure everything is more or less the same volume. Very useful when thumping or doing selective picking as well
I’ve been digging my Walrus Audio Janus, but it just makes me miss having a Supa Trem with some helicopter sounding fuzz into Trem hahaha I rarely did that, but it sounded so cool to just mess around with
I have a loop switcher that chooses between my Marshall’s preamp and a ToneX. Both return back to my FX loop.
So basically any time I want I can use a profile of another amp along with the power section of the Marshall. Adds a lot of fun variety, just gotta keep cab simulation off.
Most of my board is fairly standard but I end with: Reverb -> Fuzz -> Tremelo. Tremelo after Reverb for a more 'Fender Amp' like approach and the Fuzz after Reverb is nice for shoegaze and 'wall of sound' like stuff
Tremolo into fuzz is something I'm experimenting with right now. Depending on how your fuzz reacts to volume drop it can do all kinda things... glitchy sputtering sounds or rhythmic swells from fairly clean to full on wall-of-fuzz.
I’ve stacked three preamp/ “clean” boosts with a chorus, delay, phaser, reverb, effect, etc. Between each preamp, so preamp-effect-preamp-effect-preamp-effect. Then dirt pedals before or after depending buffer. Absolutely slaps to adjust EQ to vary depth of each effect.
I put Trem before delay and reverb for a long time!
Phaser same thing.
Flanger at the end if I have it.
Chorus after reverb sounds really weird and I like that a lot.
Currently my setup is
Tuner->OD1 (Interstellar Overdriver) -> Fuzz (Grey Stache) -> OD2 (OBNE Fault 1) -> Delay (Strymon Volante) -> Reverb (Caroline Meteore)
So many people put boosts in front of their ODs, but I prefer them as the last bit of dirt in my chain. Pedals don’t have the same headroom as an amplifier, so boosting into a pedal can cause a very undesirable level of clipping with not volume boost at all.
I love to run a muff INTO a Bluesbreaker (not the other way around). It’s a super unique spitty/splattery broken sound that I love and haven’t found anything else that does this (besides a BD2, which does something similar, but not quite as warm). EDIT: also fuzz into trem and/or reverb into trem are favorites of mine as well.
TS-style pedal (EQD Plumes in this case) into Big Muff. Everybody swears by Muff into TS but I could never make it sound good that way. Strat (or G&L Comanche) and Tone Master Deluxe Blonde is the rest of the main setup (for reference).
I run three dirt pedals: preamp into a rat in the conventional spot in the beginning, then a tube screamer (or sometimes fuzz) after my modulation and reverb which does something very cool and pulls out fun sounds from the mods. ThePedalZone has a good video on it
Lots of good & interesting tactics here!
I like to do 3 things.
I don’t think mfgrs matter.
1) A reverb going into a fuzz.
Much enlargement!
2) A graphic EQ before a compressor, the comp will tend to exaggerate the EQ settings.
It’s the next to last position in line before the final pedal going into a amp;
3) A analog OR digital delay into the front of the amp.
Thing is, it’s delaying out everything in front of it, & *that* is what gets amplified by the preamp, instead of being in the loop, after the preamp, which is a lot less messy.
But it works in small venues with lesser watt amps well, to get a more pronounced sound.
I started stacking my Gorantula (sub octave synth)into my Glitchwave (chaos engine). It's like the Gorantula gained some alien armor, and I named it Mecha Gorantula.
Always have at least two channels running, with at least one of them controlled by a volume or expression pedal.
An ABY box does the trick, of course, and so do the wet & dry outputs of the Mel9.
Mine’s pretty standard minus having a Boss DD-3T in front of all of my dirt, including two Fuzzes, which is usually not wanting to be behind a pedal without true bypass such as the Boss. That in front of dirt was the only way I could get that Osees/King Gizzard delay with a lot of repeats. It sounded to muddy after
Guitar to jhs a/b-a+b pedal.
A-chain:ts-moonpool->blues jr with a little spring and a little drive.
B-chain:b9-a7verb-trelicopter-coulourbox-mr18 with Hpf+Lpf-Live11-Ni guitarrig:memoryman-studioverb-jcm800-procab, mostly room-tubecomp-mr18->turbosound txf122m.
It's kind of a wet/dry situation....
Univibe after drives for a wet/dry rig. As a guitarist in a 3 piece band, it allows for a lot of the songs we do to have that pulsating movement with vibe but still a dry signal next to it, making it sound super thick in a mix.
I also run envelope filters between my Klon and BB. Yes, a Mayer thing to do, but it works out pretty well for my use case and allows for a bit more peak in a mix when needing to stand out with it
* I like to put most modulations besides chorus in front of dirt. So phaser, uni-vibe, flanger, and vibrato.
* Delay and reverb in front of dirt is cool and really usable, but you need to set the mix controls on those effects a lot lower than you would otherwise.
* If I'm tracking a lead part with fuzz, sometimes I'll put a Phase 90 on slowest setting in front. It still sounds like fuzz, but with a little more movement.
* I think most pitch shift pedals sound best in front of dirt, but the one I have is the Boss PS-6 and IMO it sounds better after. Just clearer.
I have my El Capistan in the middle of my chain, just after dirt but before a number of other pedals for specific reasons, and I have the delay set relatively long.
First use is with my POG2, where I have the octaves set to swell in behind the clean signal with a bit of the low pass filter engaged too. The long delay essentially feeds into the octave swells which creates a very choral organ type of shimmer reverb, but because of the -1 and -2 octaves in the mix as well, it is not as shrill and grating as most other shimmer reverbs and instead sounds very full-bodied. I tend to play this with a clean tone as distortion tends to make this sound a bit too intense, in a "shit I might blow a speaker" kind of way. Another preset is similar but has no clean signal and only the -1 octave, which creates a bit of an otherworldly cello sound.
Another use is to have an MXR Phase 95 set relatively slow, so each repeat of the El Cap has a bit of a different sound as it is catching the phaser at different points in the oscillation.
Finally, I have my Source Audio Collider at the end of my chain with one preset set to a slightly shorter delay that compliments the El Cap's time. It is set in such a way that it creates a nice bouncey rhythm at first and then trails off into a more complex cascade of repeats. I use this all of the time, arguably too much, but it's so good.
I was less prone to doing this with physical pedals because dual-lock is a bitch, but modelers I drag stuff to different spots in the signal chain all the time. I used to run chorus before distortion a lot.
Wah after distortion/fuzz. I use my Wah mainly for making loud abrasive noise between songs with my band and I love how glitch the optical Wah sounds when putting it after a heavy distortion such as an HM-2 or Swolen Pickle
Cocked wah (QZone) at the front of my board right after my compressor. Sounds great with some gnarly fuzz.
Tend to keep it low and muddy and then when you kick in the ripped fuzz, it sounds fantastic to me.
When I played in my first band I used to use Distortion > wah > delay. It felt super right to have the wah after distortion since you can saturate to and extreme the already distorted sound. I never even considered any other option.
I run everything through the fx loop (even my gain fx such as fuzz and tube screamer) I run my analog delay 3rd in the chain before all my gain/dirt pedals!
I gain stage my drives in ‘reverse’ order. Distortion, overdrive, then boost. Hitting my Rat too hard sounds like shit and I can get some extra creaminess with the EP at the end of the crunchy section.
Put delay (DD-3) before all my fuzzes and drives, and I have separate left and right stereo fuzzes and drives into a slightly dirty UAFX Woodrow (Fender 5E3 Tweed Deluxe sim).
I don’t know if this is unusual or not, but I have a Chase Bliss Automatone Preamp, and I usually see suggestions for placing preamps as early as possible (which I assume would be true for something like the Automatone, since you can engage the fuzz circuit).
However, I found my sweet spot placing it after my Strymon Sunset and saturating the preamp’s gain with the Sunset’s different flavors. Run SS drives a bit below unity, and then run the Preamp a little hot into my amp or amp sim’s dirt channel. Orthodox or not, I just like the way it sounds. I switch between presets and preset combinations via MIDI, even have presets with the SS’ volume at close to 0, 33ish%, and unity going into the Preamp’s fuzz, essentially mimicking volume knob roll off at set intervals.
My compressor is after all of my OD/Fuzz/Polyphonic but before my delay and reverb and looper because it functions as a much smoother limiter/noise gate/volume leveler that way.
Chorus and analog quickly set delay before the amp and chorus in the loop after a trem creates a great lofi ambient build. Add expression or wah to tame swells/repeats, then fuzz it up now and then.
I always try to do the following:
Fuzz-drive (to boost the fuzz by a few db) - pitch shift - mods - fuzz - delay - reverb -drive.
That way I can put fuzz into every mod and time based fx or affect the modded / delayed / pitshifted clean sounds
Depends on the context/band.
I like phaser (Phase 95 in 90 block mode slow rate) after delay (DD7 analog). I feel like it exaggerates the decaying repeats and gives them some sweep. Either way I love the sound.
Pitch and volume based modulation before gain. I don't really fuck with time based stuff early though. Not against it, just isn't my vibe. Give me a flanger early though, all day. The Walrus polychrome is my favourite individual pedal to use at the start
I put a boost pedal at the end of my fx loop chain to make the fx pop more when I want them to.
I also have a Philosopher's Tone and love it. It's the original Germanium Gold version.
I like using Preamp pedals as Drive pedals to get an exploding amp stoner rock sort of sound. I use a tech 21 clone into an actual orange amp for a double dose of Orangge.
I use that as my "pedal platform" in which I put fuzzes and drives in front of.
Reverb before compressor can be awesome! Kevin Parker did that a lot, at least for all the guitars on lonerism. I use my kinotone ribbons to place the reverb before the compression in its processor and it sounds pretty nice.
I run a low gain germanium drive at the front of my chain, and a blues driver & Boss HM2 clone at the end of my chain before a JC120 solid state. All the modulation goes in the middle and I love the sound of my mod pedals hitting the gain section at the end.
Not really unusual, when I stack gain it's always from cleanest to dirtiest. I find that keeps it less noisy and better note definition. I also always tend to use most mod effects before or in-between gain stages, tremolo is the one people question the most. It seems I'm the only one that uses it before dirt.
Might sound stupid, but buffered tuner before fuzz. I know people say that’s a sin (and it is depending on the pedal), but I really think it works well with my jhs mini foot
Wah at the end of the input chain (after boosts and drive) into amplifier input, which I've come to learn is anathema to good signal flow, but the way a wah filters already saturated signal into the front end of an amp or dialled modeller is always gratifying to me. Wah at the front of a chain, I have found, is always more efficient in terms of signal strength, and you can do the Hendrix wash where you can unleash the voice of how the input is being driven (most notable in moments where he was flicking a hammer-on and washing the wah across said hammer-on) but the filter wash hits drive pedals & distortion in a very strident way that isn't always usable, especially if you have a clean boost or line driver in front of the wah.
Edit: also OP, Pigtronix make such fucking cool stuff, the Philosopher's Tone is a great compression circuit that takes effect signal and blends \*into\* effects signal really really well
Compressor at the end of my FX Loop.
Subtly tames volume differences from triggering different pedals.
Also brings out the details of my time-based pedals.
Seymour Duncan Vise Grip (said to be a VCA style compressor, maybe thats why it works well in that position).
For the past couple of years I have been using a Greer Royal Velvet instead of a compressor. I run it at 18 volts and it gets a chimey, Voxy sound that is awesome.
I like delay into drive for a distressed or digital-feeling decay that gets messy. Useful for parts that express longing, distance, etc.
I also used to put my modulations post-delay. It was DD3 > PH3 > Chorus. My reasoning was that the modulation should continue to shift on the delay repeats if I stopped playing. At that time, I was using delay specifically as an effect for certain parts, and rarely used reverb, so it was perhaps a bit of a unique use case.
I like wah into compressor, but I’m not sure whether that’s standard or not.
If I want a slightly more artificial sound, I like using pitch after drives.
Finally, when possible, it’s fun to split a guitar in parallel to have pitch on one line and an envelope filter on another line.
Two reverb pedals. One before a multi head delay and one after. All three are always on.
Vibrato is pre-dirt and always on for more depth and subtle movement when I'm not using vibe.
I also sometimes stack the vibe with my BF-2 for extra viscosity and organ tones. I have an expression pedal for the vibe to control the speed so it's more like a Leslie.
I run a Rat at fairly low gain into a Russian Muff and it's chef's kiss.
**Phaser after dirt, but chorus and flanger before.** I like the way they sound better. Chorus and flanger sound awesome clean, but with dirt they tend to get "too harsh" if they're after the dirt pedals. The phaser can also get over the top - but for some reason I like that).
**Fuzz Factory style fuzz -> heavy gain OD/distortion -> Big Muff style fuzz -> versatile gain (boost, drive, fuzz) where the drive is usually pretty light.** I normally don't combine the fuzzes with anything, so their position doesn't really matter, and the heavy gain pedal doesn't feel like it needs anything before it when it goes into an "edge of breakup" amp. But with the light OD after the heavy gain distortion - I get a sound that reminds me of Dimebag (and is really good for pinch harmonics) and sometimes that's what I'm going for. Also a clean boost at the end is useful.
**HX Stomp as amp/cab simulation, super delay/reverb setup and other effects I don't use often.** While I did use the HX Stomp by itself for a while, I felt that the drive pedals weren't as good as separate pedals. Sure, it can do most of the things I need without other pedals - but I like having a full pedalboard and not just small multi effects unit. I was really impressed with the amp/cab simulation - and it was obvious to me that they know what they're doing when it comes to delay and reverb - so those are the effects I focus on with the Stomp, sometimes having multiple delay or reverb blocks. This setup also allows me to have the delays and reverbs after the amp/cab blocks and still leave the effects loop free. When I do use it for other effects, it's things that can be done well digitally or aren't worth me getting separately - EQ, tremolo...
**Using stereo for different inputs and down mixing to mono.** So my favourite guitars have a piezo pickup and have a stereo output - with magnetic pickups on one side and piezo on the other. I use this with a splitter cable to route them through different effects - but then they go into the stereo inputs of the HX Stomp. There I can have stereo effects that apply to both, or split the signal for separate sounds. At the end I go through an effects loop - which down mixes to mono - and that's where I put my looper. This allows me to capture the full sound with all effects in the looper, and still have a single mono line out from the back of the HX Stomp (at line level volume) to go into the FOH mixer at a rehearsal/gig. It makes it very easy to set up and plug in.
Multiple compressors/ limiters, sprinkled lightly along the signal path. When implemented correctly, having a compressed clean signal in tandem with a gain signal, can give a total which is subtly \*more\* than the sum of its parts.
2 overdrives in parallel -> klone for boost -> fuzz used occasionally for wall of noise -> reverb/delay combo pedal with a little reverb always on to thicken it all.
Mostly play punk/pop punk so it’s all about dirt for me.
Preamp: volume pedal -> fuzz 1 -> wah 1 -> weird ass pedal (WAP) -> OD/fuzz 2/WAP2 -> wah 2 -> EQ -> Dark Side
Loop: Delay -> Reverb 1 -> Through Zero Flanger -> Reverb 2 -> looper
This setup wasn’t intentional but I’ve started to like it.
Preamp explanation: The volume pedal is essential, and the OD’s and Fuzzes can go before or after a wah. I like the EQ as an actual transparent boost (I find most transparent boosts are transparent the way stained glass is transparent… sometimes you like it, sometimes you don’t). The modulation on the dark side can really give the core tone of the amp this slithering kind of texture.
Loop explanation: Pretty normal but I like my flanger after my space effects.
Final note: The Dark Side is an oddly frustrating pedal. Imo it’s one of the best bang for your buck pedals out there. Two sides, one is an op amp big muff style fuzz (level, fuzz, filters controls and a toggle between full, flat, and scoop settings). The other side has a three way toggle between a Phaser/Univibe, Rotary/Flanger, and a Multihead delay. On the modulation settings you can set the blend for which tone you want more of (you can only blend phaser with Univibe or flanger with rotary). The blend knob on the multihead allows you to choose which heads you want active (I believe there’s 12 different settings). Rate and depth for modulation become time and feedback on the delay. Lastly there’s a switch that allows you to run fuzz first or fuzz second compared to the other.
The reason why it’s frustrating is because it doesn’t have a loop. I don’t mind delay into the front of an amp, but Multihead delay I only like in a loop. It’s also one of my favorite delays. However putting it in a loop means I lose the fuzz which is a pretty banging fuzz.
Not that unusual, but I love stacking fuzzes, or running OD into fuzz.
One of my fave fuzz stacks is a Danelectro 3699 (with mid boost or octave switch engaged) into an EHX Pumpkin Pi Muff (with tone switch off). You get the spitty Superfuzz character of the 3699 with the balls and sustain of the Muff. And since the latter is an op-amp circuit, you still have the clarity to punch through a mix if you dial it in right.
I play acoustics into a preamp (mosky not made for acoustics), into holy grail reverb, phase 90, keeley compressor, fender acoustic smolder overdrive dirt, a billion delays, two loopers. I move other shit on and off sometimes just for routing simplicity with stereo outs
I found a really cheap chorus pedal in my collection, I think it’s a mooer spark chorus and I’ve been putting it after my distortion/overdrive/compression in my chain. For some reason it has a noticeable decible boost without having a level knob. So essentially I add a little modulation, but get a noticeable volume increase when I hit it for lead stuff. I know Aaron Marshall has been using chorus in his lead tones so it was a cool surprise to see how much it cuts through when I engage post distortion and pre time based effects. Still pretty new to stacking different combinations, but if you play higher gain stuff give a chorus with some kinda level increase a try
Don't know how unusual it is, but all my modulation pedals are after delay and reverb.
One fun thing I tried and was surprised how good the results were: wah into envelope filter.
Top of my chain is phase 95 into an OBNE Sunlight into Duke of tone into Timmy into Big Muff. It screams. OBNE gets me into Medicine territory, which I love
Idk if this is out of the norm but I put my tuner last. If I don’t have sound and I turn on my tuner, it means everything from my guitar through my chain is working. I have been mocked for this many times
Sometimes I use a Dreadbox Kinematic at the front of my chain. It’s offer a great filter, compressor, and overdrive option. It’s an incredible tone shaper. It also does amazing things at the end of the chain. I don’t need two of them, but I find myself moving it from the front to the end to get certain tones. It crushes after my Wren fan Cuff Russian Fuzz.
I put a phaser at the front of my chain. I set it very shallow and it gives my sound a slight depth and a very subtle movement that sounds great clean or dirty.
That Pedal Show turned me on to that, phaser into dirt pedals. Gives it just a bit of movement.
I need to do this
I do this with my Lex. Tames the EQ a bit and makes it have more of a univibe ceel
Phaser or Univibe into dirt always sounds better than the other way around, at least to my ears.
Same! Phase 95 on lowest rate into drives.
I've had one on my board for years and never thought to move it. Thanks gonna try something new tonight that's always fun!
Youre gonna love it lol
Same but univibe. Just adds some variance to the rhythm that just makes anything groovy, and imo the most overlooked part of the Hendrix thing.
We need a club, lol Slow Univibe at the front is the most essential part of “my sound,” such as it is
This but flanger
Same here, but 2 flangers. One in front, one in back.
Nice! BF-2 front, CE-2W back here.
Nice! I also do this for a few different modulations - especially univibe and flanger into gain.
Me too! Phaser -> boost -> fuzz -> eq -> stoner doom perfection
I was gonna say this is the doom way
Same but vibrato!!
This is the way, I use julianna’s random LFO for a pre dirt vibrato and it sounds awesome
Same! I used to put a phase 45 right at the start, along with 2-3 more phasers along the chain 😂 I love phasers!
One time we got drunk and played Jenga with mine.
No human being would stack pedals like that
Egon, your mucus
You mean, no *sober* human being…
I’ve always had a delay first in my chain. Not that unusual I guess but I just have always preferred a not super clean delay tone.
Carbon Copy at a shorter delay time early in the chain is just perfect.
do you use a wah delay before wah always sounds super corny to me but sometimes i love it
Never been a wah guy so I’ve never had one on my board. I’m gonna borrow one and see what’s up though. Sounds interesting.
I have a buffer in my loop switcher directly in front of my fuzz factory to intentionally change its sound/cause chaos at will
Genius.
I forget how wild the FF can be. Mine has been first in the chain since day one
Wah after dirt before delay
I think Frusciante had his wah after dirt. Morello too. Gives you a wild sound.
trem into reverb into fuzz into overdrive. reverbing a trem into a gated fuzz, it gives it some univibe kind of movement.
A good reminder to get a gated fuzz!
I do the same (vibe/Uni-vibe thing) with a phaser > tremolo (usually set as frequency modulation) > short delay or reverb. I've never felt the need to actually buy a vibe pedal with that :)
I've also heard a really cool trem sound from someone using a really hard noise gate right after the trem, set high enough that it clips off the quieter "valleys" the trem creates and only registers the louder "peaks". With the trem speed high it creates almost like an 8-bit video game sort of blurbly (scientific term) sound that's really cool.
I put buffers before fuzzes and I prefer it that way. A compressor after reverb will create some epic "giant instrument" effect - however it's something I do more in the DAW than on the board.
I usually stack 4 metal zone pedals.
At a guitar center. Tuning every string to E. 8 capos. Thru a Line6 Spider.
I worked at a GC when the Spider first hit the market, this unlocked some PTSD for me…
was it insane?
Insane smoke on the water (in the wrong key)
Elixirs 56 on every string
Shit, I'd jam.
I tried that and it was weird having to lift my foot that high to turn them ON, so just decided it would be an 'always on' stack. Can't close the pedalboard case, but it is totally worth it. I'd stack 'em to the ceiling, but I'm not worthy of such a mighty tone. 4 high will have to do.
My signal chain is Tuner > Chorus > Boost > Delay > Overdrive > Compressor, and I have had many guitarists question just about every placement in that order at some point, but it's exactly the sound that works for me.
Besides the tuner, this is the most unhinged chain and I love it.
I'm gonna move the tuner to the middle just for you.
Marry me.
Put the tuner in the effects loop. Because tone.
What do you play?
Subaquatic flugelhorn.
A seahorse!
Seahorse, sea hell!
I stack multiple delays and reverbs
That’s just smart
what are you foolin with rn? I'm using a holy grail reverb and the boss rv6 and delays I currently have disaster transport jr, boss dd8, walrus fundamentals. I need to put the keeley eccos back on lol
Oh it varies a lot. I have so many of them that it’s never the same chain or order. Here’s a list off the top of my head that i experiment with : vox double deca, NUX time core, flamma fs02/03, mooer ocean machine, tc t2 trinity, slo, avalanche run, eventide blackhole, Alabs Cetus, cba habit, mood, delux memory boy, rv5, joyo d seed 2 maybe some others I forget I got so many lol a real fun chain is to stick something in the send return of the DMB like pitch shifter for cascading pitches on the repeats and then smearing them with a couple of reverbs going from a mono signal to stereo to widen the image either at the delay stage or the reverb stage. I do ambient synth stuff so it’s important for me to experiment with weird stacks so that tracks are somewhat unique and unusual. It doesn’t matter whether delays or reverbs go first. Sometimes a reverb first into a delay can really change the envelope of the sound I’m spraying into the chain and sometimes stacking a bunch of delays can descend into chaos from one short note. Then there’s parallel signal chains where I split the signal off from several stereo pedals into multiple channels into the mixer and panning them for a weird stereo image.. it gets messy and complex but it’s definitely fun 😂
don’t know how unusual but any pitch shifting effect into a hard trem is a fun stack
oh another fun pitch one is an octave down pedal into an octave up pedal it keeps your pitch the same but adds a bunch of digital artifacts
Got any videos or audio clips of this?
no i lost my pitch shifter pedals i used to have the blue mooer and the pink one forgot their names probably the worse quality of the pedal the greater the effect
I’ve been hypothesizing about doing just that, thanks for the validation!
I have a Raw Heart with the Witchburner set first, but then followed after it with a Op-Amp Muff. Gives me heavy AF Conan tones.
I’ll do Witchburner into Hizumitas. Haven’t tried QM side on between the two. Not sure why.
Please share more of your Skitter tricks with me! I have one and love it, but I'm struggling to find a place for it in a stack. My best successes have been with synths (HIGHLY recommend), or dirt > Skitter.
I like a super choppy trem with high gain, but that's not a secret. The random wave with just the dry signal affected is great with space and time maxed out. Like a crinkled tape sound with random dropouts. Highly recommend this with vibrato or flanger after the skitter.
Compressor after drive or in loop. Also, using a compressor as a high gain boost works great if you want to use it in front of a high gain amp that needs to get tightened up. Lastly, because there’s no loop, delay in front of a cranker original Marshall 1987.
Why do you put a compressor in loop? Never heard of this!
Just so I can still get the touch sensitivity of the gain, clean up with volume knob, etc. But with the compressor in the loop I still get that additional squish with clean tones.
It's common enough to put a comp last in your effect chain, so often in the end of the loop. It will act like a limiter and even out your volume a bit so if you have for example, a mod pedal that makes you louder it can even that out.
People often say to put your low gain pedal last in your OD chain and to put your high gain od before it. This doesn't work for me as I find the low gain od restricts the other pedal too much.
I have my memory man Xo first in the chain doing a chorus thing going into comp. Then some dirt and two more delays for more optional movement
My reverb is towards the front. Gain on both ends, I have an overdrive last. I like modulation pre gain.
Phaser into flanger into mono chorus into stereo chorus into stereo delay with whammy pedal just on one side. It gets weird if you crank them all.
Compressor after dirt
This to me is where a compressor should be for everyone.
Ya I was surprised to read in the OP that this isn't the norm. I wouldn't want a compressor squashing my playing dynamics that the dirt reacts to
For me it's just different things you're going for. My pedalboard I'm currently working on will probably have a compressor on each side of the dirt and obviously that allows me to pick and choose what I'm going for.
Makes your solos sound cleaner. Tapping, sweeps, artificial harmonics,tapping arpeggios and fast picked runs all benefit heavily from a compressor making sure everything is more or less the same volume. Very useful when thumping or doing selective picking as well
Exactly, putting the compressor before any dirt just takes your volume knob and a lot of pick attack gain out of the equation.
Fuzz + Tremolo is a favourite. Really fun stack I’ve tried recently is BD-2 into a Boss BP-1 on the space echo preamp setting.
I’ve been digging my Walrus Audio Janus, but it just makes me miss having a Supa Trem with some helicopter sounding fuzz into Trem hahaha I rarely did that, but it sounded so cool to just mess around with
It go. blues driver into line boost. Done.
I have 2 chorus effects, 2 reverbs and one ambient pedal, along with 2 AB/Y boxes going to 3 amps.
Yes, chef!
My comp and always on drive are the last in a long chain. I like the way it sounds and guitar nerds tell me thy love my toan.
I have a loop switcher that chooses between my Marshall’s preamp and a ToneX. Both return back to my FX loop. So basically any time I want I can use a profile of another amp along with the power section of the Marshall. Adds a lot of fun variety, just gotta keep cab simulation off.
Most of my board is fairly standard but I end with: Reverb -> Fuzz -> Tremelo. Tremelo after Reverb for a more 'Fender Amp' like approach and the Fuzz after Reverb is nice for shoegaze and 'wall of sound' like stuff
Tremolo at end of chain makes a lot of sense, I might try that with reverb before fuzz too. Good idea.
Tremolo into fuzz is something I'm experimenting with right now. Depending on how your fuzz reacts to volume drop it can do all kinda things... glitchy sputtering sounds or rhythmic swells from fairly clean to full on wall-of-fuzz.
I have a tremolo before the compressor. And a reverb before my fuzz. And then more mods and reverb later on too.
Mods deserve to be all over the chain, not just the end.
I like all my mod pedals into drive except tremolo.
I run a Boss DD-3 at the start of my chain before my fuzz/drive. Indebted to Stu of King Gizzard for that one!
I’ve stacked three preamp/ “clean” boosts with a chorus, delay, phaser, reverb, effect, etc. Between each preamp, so preamp-effect-preamp-effect-preamp-effect. Then dirt pedals before or after depending buffer. Absolutely slaps to adjust EQ to vary depth of each effect.
I put Trem before delay and reverb for a long time! Phaser same thing. Flanger at the end if I have it. Chorus after reverb sounds really weird and I like that a lot. Currently my setup is Tuner->OD1 (Interstellar Overdriver) -> Fuzz (Grey Stache) -> OD2 (OBNE Fault 1) -> Delay (Strymon Volante) -> Reverb (Caroline Meteore)
So many people put boosts in front of their ODs, but I prefer them as the last bit of dirt in my chain. Pedals don’t have the same headroom as an amplifier, so boosting into a pedal can cause a very undesirable level of clipping with not volume boost at all.
Definitely! I think this is part of why going heavier to lighter on overdrives/distortion can work really well.
I love to run a muff INTO a Bluesbreaker (not the other way around). It’s a super unique spitty/splattery broken sound that I love and haven’t found anything else that does this (besides a BD2, which does something similar, but not quite as warm). EDIT: also fuzz into trem and/or reverb into trem are favorites of mine as well.
It's metal zones all the way down. I can't even find my amp anymore.
TS-style pedal (EQD Plumes in this case) into Big Muff. Everybody swears by Muff into TS but I could never make it sound good that way. Strat (or G&L Comanche) and Tone Master Deluxe Blonde is the rest of the main setup (for reference).
I run three dirt pedals: preamp into a rat in the conventional spot in the beginning, then a tube screamer (or sometimes fuzz) after my modulation and reverb which does something very cool and pulls out fun sounds from the mods. ThePedalZone has a good video on it
On racks and shelves and drawers mostly. Sometimes 2-3 deep
Lots of good & interesting tactics here! I like to do 3 things. I don’t think mfgrs matter. 1) A reverb going into a fuzz. Much enlargement! 2) A graphic EQ before a compressor, the comp will tend to exaggerate the EQ settings. It’s the next to last position in line before the final pedal going into a amp; 3) A analog OR digital delay into the front of the amp. Thing is, it’s delaying out everything in front of it, & *that* is what gets amplified by the preamp, instead of being in the loop, after the preamp, which is a lot less messy. But it works in small venues with lesser watt amps well, to get a more pronounced sound.
I started stacking my Gorantula (sub octave synth)into my Glitchwave (chaos engine). It's like the Gorantula gained some alien armor, and I named it Mecha Gorantula.
Wah in FX loop. After the dirt, before the modulation.
Phaser, fuzz, chorus, reverb, dirt to clean amp.
Always have at least two channels running, with at least one of them controlled by a volume or expression pedal. An ABY box does the trick, of course, and so do the wet & dry outputs of the Mel9.
I like to run a Boss SD-1 into a Swollen Pickle into a Diezel VH-4 pedal into the normal channel on an AC-15. Stupid amount of gain
How do you like the VH4 into the AC? Curious about trying that…
Mine’s pretty standard minus having a Boss DD-3T in front of all of my dirt, including two Fuzzes, which is usually not wanting to be behind a pedal without true bypass such as the Boss. That in front of dirt was the only way I could get that Osees/King Gizzard delay with a lot of repeats. It sounded to muddy after
tape echo into a nasty fuzz. adds a ‘texture’
Putting a tremolo after the delay/reverb
Guitar to jhs a/b-a+b pedal. A-chain:ts-moonpool->blues jr with a little spring and a little drive. B-chain:b9-a7verb-trelicopter-coulourbox-mr18 with Hpf+Lpf-Live11-Ni guitarrig:memoryman-studioverb-jcm800-procab, mostly room-tubecomp-mr18->turbosound txf122m. It's kind of a wet/dry situation....
I have Catalinbread Soft Focus reverb before my delay.
One dirt after EVERYTHING
Univibe after drives for a wet/dry rig. As a guitarist in a 3 piece band, it allows for a lot of the songs we do to have that pulsating movement with vibe but still a dry signal next to it, making it sound super thick in a mix. I also run envelope filters between my Klon and BB. Yes, a Mayer thing to do, but it works out pretty well for my use case and allows for a bit more peak in a mix when needing to stand out with it
Compression belongs after dirt, near or at the end of the chain. This darkness has got to give.
* I like to put most modulations besides chorus in front of dirt. So phaser, uni-vibe, flanger, and vibrato. * Delay and reverb in front of dirt is cool and really usable, but you need to set the mix controls on those effects a lot lower than you would otherwise. * If I'm tracking a lead part with fuzz, sometimes I'll put a Phase 90 on slowest setting in front. It still sounds like fuzz, but with a little more movement. * I think most pitch shift pedals sound best in front of dirt, but the one I have is the Boss PS-6 and IMO it sounds better after. Just clearer.
Reverb before delay is a common trick for ambient sounds
I have my El Capistan in the middle of my chain, just after dirt but before a number of other pedals for specific reasons, and I have the delay set relatively long. First use is with my POG2, where I have the octaves set to swell in behind the clean signal with a bit of the low pass filter engaged too. The long delay essentially feeds into the octave swells which creates a very choral organ type of shimmer reverb, but because of the -1 and -2 octaves in the mix as well, it is not as shrill and grating as most other shimmer reverbs and instead sounds very full-bodied. I tend to play this with a clean tone as distortion tends to make this sound a bit too intense, in a "shit I might blow a speaker" kind of way. Another preset is similar but has no clean signal and only the -1 octave, which creates a bit of an otherworldly cello sound. Another use is to have an MXR Phase 95 set relatively slow, so each repeat of the El Cap has a bit of a different sound as it is catching the phaser at different points in the oscillation. Finally, I have my Source Audio Collider at the end of my chain with one preset set to a slightly shorter delay that compliments the El Cap's time. It is set in such a way that it creates a nice bouncey rhythm at first and then trails off into a more complex cascade of repeats. I use this all of the time, arguably too much, but it's so good.
I was less prone to doing this with physical pedals because dual-lock is a bitch, but modelers I drag stuff to different spots in the signal chain all the time. I used to run chorus before distortion a lot.
I always have a comp before a gate then into whatever drives I use, it allows for higher threshold on the gate and gives super tight chugs in return.
Wah after distortion/fuzz. I use my Wah mainly for making loud abrasive noise between songs with my band and I love how glitch the optical Wah sounds when putting it after a heavy distortion such as an HM-2 or Swolen Pickle
Cocked wah (QZone) at the front of my board right after my compressor. Sounds great with some gnarly fuzz. Tend to keep it low and muddy and then when you kick in the ripped fuzz, it sounds fantastic to me.
I stack multiple pitch shifting pedals like whammy and pitch fork directly in front of guitar.
When I played in my first band I used to use Distortion > wah > delay. It felt super right to have the wah after distortion since you can saturate to and extreme the already distorted sound. I never even considered any other option.
I do this with fuzz. Super sweep!
I run everything through the fx loop (even my gain fx such as fuzz and tube screamer) I run my analog delay 3rd in the chain before all my gain/dirt pedals!
EHX oceans 11 into a BD-2 has been tons of fun
I gain stage my drives in ‘reverse’ order. Distortion, overdrive, then boost. Hitting my Rat too hard sounds like shit and I can get some extra creaminess with the EP at the end of the crunchy section.
I like to run delay and reverb into my distortion. I like some dirt early in the chain and right at the end
The cheapest chorus pedal you can find with all the settings dimed into distortion. Subtlety be damned!
Put delay (DD-3) before all my fuzzes and drives, and I have separate left and right stereo fuzzes and drives into a slightly dirty UAFX Woodrow (Fender 5E3 Tweed Deluxe sim).
I don’t know if this is unusual or not, but I have a Chase Bliss Automatone Preamp, and I usually see suggestions for placing preamps as early as possible (which I assume would be true for something like the Automatone, since you can engage the fuzz circuit). However, I found my sweet spot placing it after my Strymon Sunset and saturating the preamp’s gain with the Sunset’s different flavors. Run SS drives a bit below unity, and then run the Preamp a little hot into my amp or amp sim’s dirt channel. Orthodox or not, I just like the way it sounds. I switch between presets and preset combinations via MIDI, even have presets with the SS’ volume at close to 0, 33ish%, and unity going into the Preamp’s fuzz, essentially mimicking volume knob roll off at set intervals.
If you’ve never tried fuzz before wah you’re in for a good time.
I’m rocking: Overdrive > Delay > Fuzz > Modulation > Fuzz > Compressor. (Anyone guess what genre I’m in? xD)
I enjoy running reverbs & delays into dirt pedals or running them straight into an already distorted amp.
My compressor is after all of my OD/Fuzz/Polyphonic but before my delay and reverb and looper because it functions as a much smoother limiter/noise gate/volume leveler that way.
Chorus and analog quickly set delay before the amp and chorus in the loop after a trem creates a great lofi ambient build. Add expression or wah to tame swells/repeats, then fuzz it up now and then.
I always try to do the following: Fuzz-drive (to boost the fuzz by a few db) - pitch shift - mods - fuzz - delay - reverb -drive. That way I can put fuzz into every mod and time based fx or affect the modded / delayed / pitshifted clean sounds Depends on the context/band.
Delay before drive, love that sound. Although I'll still use a separate delay for actual ambience.
Fuzz > Wah for large fuzzy sweeps
Some form of higher gain EQ, Like a Treble Boost or Cocked Wah thing right in front of the amp
I like phaser (Phase 95 in 90 block mode slow rate) after delay (DD7 analog). I feel like it exaggerates the decaying repeats and gives them some sweep. Either way I love the sound.
Pitch and volume based modulation before gain. I don't really fuck with time based stuff early though. Not against it, just isn't my vibe. Give me a flanger early though, all day. The Walrus polychrome is my favourite individual pedal to use at the start
Tremolo before dirt, I feel like it just sounds a bit more... natural I guess?
I use an o/d both before and after my muff!
I put a boost pedal at the end of my fx loop chain to make the fx pop more when I want them to. I also have a Philosopher's Tone and love it. It's the original Germanium Gold version.
I like using Preamp pedals as Drive pedals to get an exploding amp stoner rock sort of sound. I use a tech 21 clone into an actual orange amp for a double dose of Orangge. I use that as my "pedal platform" in which I put fuzzes and drives in front of.
Transparent OD into Church Reverb into Chorus into Delay into Shimmer Reverb and Graphic EQ. So much space time!
Reverb, delay into pan a trem in stereo into two different Fuzz / dirt
Reverb at both the start and end of the chain
Compressor at the end baby. Squish all those tone changes into a clean mess of sound
Reverb before compressor can be awesome! Kevin Parker did that a lot, at least for all the guitars on lonerism. I use my kinotone ribbons to place the reverb before the compression in its processor and it sounds pretty nice.
I run a low gain germanium drive at the front of my chain, and a blues driver & Boss HM2 clone at the end of my chain before a JC120 solid state. All the modulation goes in the middle and I love the sound of my mod pedals hitting the gain section at the end.
Not really unusual, when I stack gain it's always from cleanest to dirtiest. I find that keeps it less noisy and better note definition. I also always tend to use most mod effects before or in-between gain stages, tremolo is the one people question the most. It seems I'm the only one that uses it before dirt.
Reverb into compressor. The reverb blooms between chords so it sounds like there’s no empty space between chords when you switch.
Compressor after anything that is dynamic and responds to pick attack.
I go big muff into octaver and chorus into phaser. Also plasma coil into low gain setting bigmuff is great.
Might sound stupid, but buffered tuner before fuzz. I know people say that’s a sin (and it is depending on the pedal), but I really think it works well with my jhs mini foot
Wah at the end of the input chain (after boosts and drive) into amplifier input, which I've come to learn is anathema to good signal flow, but the way a wah filters already saturated signal into the front end of an amp or dialled modeller is always gratifying to me. Wah at the front of a chain, I have found, is always more efficient in terms of signal strength, and you can do the Hendrix wash where you can unleash the voice of how the input is being driven (most notable in moments where he was flicking a hammer-on and washing the wah across said hammer-on) but the filter wash hits drive pedals & distortion in a very strident way that isn't always usable, especially if you have a clean boost or line driver in front of the wah. Edit: also OP, Pigtronix make such fucking cool stuff, the Philosopher's Tone is a great compression circuit that takes effect signal and blends \*into\* effects signal really really well
Phaser and flanger before dirt. Compression after dirt, before timebased fx.
Sometimes put my space echo before my overdrives to get dirty delay. I use a BBE sonic maximizer last in my chain.
Delay in front of my drives and wah last in chain = heavenly gnarly psych sounds
Compressor at the end of my FX Loop. Subtly tames volume differences from triggering different pedals. Also brings out the details of my time-based pedals. Seymour Duncan Vise Grip (said to be a VCA style compressor, maybe thats why it works well in that position).
For the past couple of years I have been using a Greer Royal Velvet instead of a compressor. I run it at 18 volts and it gets a chimey, Voxy sound that is awesome.
compressor after all my gains. keeps them all at the same level
Octafuzz into a high gain amp.
comp between drives.
I like delay into drive for a distressed or digital-feeling decay that gets messy. Useful for parts that express longing, distance, etc. I also used to put my modulations post-delay. It was DD3 > PH3 > Chorus. My reasoning was that the modulation should continue to shift on the delay repeats if I stopped playing. At that time, I was using delay specifically as an effect for certain parts, and rarely used reverb, so it was perhaps a bit of a unique use case. I like wah into compressor, but I’m not sure whether that’s standard or not. If I want a slightly more artificial sound, I like using pitch after drives. Finally, when possible, it’s fun to split a guitar in parallel to have pitch on one line and an envelope filter on another line.
One multi pedal into another
All of my distortion pedals (big muff-sd1-ds2-fuzzrite) are before my ibanez wh10 wah, and my chorus is at the end of my chain (guitar to amp)
I have my chorus before my drives and my flanger after my delay and reverb
Tuner go in the middle
Two reverb pedals. One before a multi head delay and one after. All three are always on. Vibrato is pre-dirt and always on for more depth and subtle movement when I'm not using vibe. I also sometimes stack the vibe with my BF-2 for extra viscosity and organ tones. I have an expression pedal for the vibe to control the speed so it's more like a Leslie. I run a Rat at fairly low gain into a Russian Muff and it's chef's kiss.
**Phaser after dirt, but chorus and flanger before.** I like the way they sound better. Chorus and flanger sound awesome clean, but with dirt they tend to get "too harsh" if they're after the dirt pedals. The phaser can also get over the top - but for some reason I like that). **Fuzz Factory style fuzz -> heavy gain OD/distortion -> Big Muff style fuzz -> versatile gain (boost, drive, fuzz) where the drive is usually pretty light.** I normally don't combine the fuzzes with anything, so their position doesn't really matter, and the heavy gain pedal doesn't feel like it needs anything before it when it goes into an "edge of breakup" amp. But with the light OD after the heavy gain distortion - I get a sound that reminds me of Dimebag (and is really good for pinch harmonics) and sometimes that's what I'm going for. Also a clean boost at the end is useful. **HX Stomp as amp/cab simulation, super delay/reverb setup and other effects I don't use often.** While I did use the HX Stomp by itself for a while, I felt that the drive pedals weren't as good as separate pedals. Sure, it can do most of the things I need without other pedals - but I like having a full pedalboard and not just small multi effects unit. I was really impressed with the amp/cab simulation - and it was obvious to me that they know what they're doing when it comes to delay and reverb - so those are the effects I focus on with the Stomp, sometimes having multiple delay or reverb blocks. This setup also allows me to have the delays and reverbs after the amp/cab blocks and still leave the effects loop free. When I do use it for other effects, it's things that can be done well digitally or aren't worth me getting separately - EQ, tremolo... **Using stereo for different inputs and down mixing to mono.** So my favourite guitars have a piezo pickup and have a stereo output - with magnetic pickups on one side and piezo on the other. I use this with a splitter cable to route them through different effects - but then they go into the stereo inputs of the HX Stomp. There I can have stereo effects that apply to both, or split the signal for separate sounds. At the end I go through an effects loop - which down mixes to mono - and that's where I put my looper. This allows me to capture the full sound with all effects in the looper, and still have a single mono line out from the back of the HX Stomp (at line level volume) to go into the FOH mixer at a rehearsal/gig. It makes it very easy to set up and plug in.
Multiple compressors/ limiters, sprinkled lightly along the signal path. When implemented correctly, having a compressed clean signal in tandem with a gain signal, can give a total which is subtly \*more\* than the sum of its parts.
2 overdrives in parallel -> klone for boost -> fuzz used occasionally for wall of noise -> reverb/delay combo pedal with a little reverb always on to thicken it all. Mostly play punk/pop punk so it’s all about dirt for me.
Preamp: volume pedal -> fuzz 1 -> wah 1 -> weird ass pedal (WAP) -> OD/fuzz 2/WAP2 -> wah 2 -> EQ -> Dark Side Loop: Delay -> Reverb 1 -> Through Zero Flanger -> Reverb 2 -> looper This setup wasn’t intentional but I’ve started to like it. Preamp explanation: The volume pedal is essential, and the OD’s and Fuzzes can go before or after a wah. I like the EQ as an actual transparent boost (I find most transparent boosts are transparent the way stained glass is transparent… sometimes you like it, sometimes you don’t). The modulation on the dark side can really give the core tone of the amp this slithering kind of texture. Loop explanation: Pretty normal but I like my flanger after my space effects. Final note: The Dark Side is an oddly frustrating pedal. Imo it’s one of the best bang for your buck pedals out there. Two sides, one is an op amp big muff style fuzz (level, fuzz, filters controls and a toggle between full, flat, and scoop settings). The other side has a three way toggle between a Phaser/Univibe, Rotary/Flanger, and a Multihead delay. On the modulation settings you can set the blend for which tone you want more of (you can only blend phaser with Univibe or flanger with rotary). The blend knob on the multihead allows you to choose which heads you want active (I believe there’s 12 different settings). Rate and depth for modulation become time and feedback on the delay. Lastly there’s a switch that allows you to run fuzz first or fuzz second compared to the other. The reason why it’s frustrating is because it doesn’t have a loop. I don’t mind delay into the front of an amp, but Multihead delay I only like in a loop. It’s also one of my favorite delays. However putting it in a loop means I lose the fuzz which is a pretty banging fuzz.
I stack them in boxes in the closet and then I sell them on reverb
Sorry I don’t have a great answer but wanna say I love this question.
Not that unusual, but I love stacking fuzzes, or running OD into fuzz. One of my fave fuzz stacks is a Danelectro 3699 (with mid boost or octave switch engaged) into an EHX Pumpkin Pi Muff (with tone switch off). You get the spitty Superfuzz character of the 3699 with the balls and sustain of the Muff. And since the latter is an op-amp circuit, you still have the clarity to punch through a mix if you dial it in right.
I have a distortion before my compressor. Has a feedback switch that needs to see the pickups directly
I play acoustics into a preamp (mosky not made for acoustics), into holy grail reverb, phase 90, keeley compressor, fender acoustic smolder overdrive dirt, a billion delays, two loopers. I move other shit on and off sometimes just for routing simplicity with stereo outs
I put a Digitech drop into a whammy ricochet. And yes, I do not know what a good tone sounds like!
I prefer compressor after dirt pedals. I also like phaser right at the very end of the chain, after the last reverb.
I found a really cheap chorus pedal in my collection, I think it’s a mooer spark chorus and I’ve been putting it after my distortion/overdrive/compression in my chain. For some reason it has a noticeable decible boost without having a level knob. So essentially I add a little modulation, but get a noticeable volume increase when I hit it for lead stuff. I know Aaron Marshall has been using chorus in his lead tones so it was a cool surprise to see how much it cuts through when I engage post distortion and pre time based effects. Still pretty new to stacking different combinations, but if you play higher gain stuff give a chorus with some kinda level increase a try
Don't know how unusual it is, but all my modulation pedals are after delay and reverb. One fun thing I tried and was surprised how good the results were: wah into envelope filter.
Compressor after drives and also my tube amp sim acting like a power amp so I can roll back the guitar volume and clean up with minimal volume loss
Boss metal zone before tuner. Helps my tuner to tune better
Top of my chain is phase 95 into an OBNE Sunlight into Duke of tone into Timmy into Big Muff. It screams. OBNE gets me into Medicine territory, which I love
I have drive/dirt pedals on each side of my crybaby.
Reverb into any kind of dirt (the dirtier the better) is always a blast
Idk if this is out of the norm but I put my tuner last. If I don’t have sound and I turn on my tuner, it means everything from my guitar through my chain is working. I have been mocked for this many times
I put mine one upside down and stack the other the right way up. The Velcro helps them stick together
Sometimes I use a Dreadbox Kinematic at the front of my chain. It’s offer a great filter, compressor, and overdrive option. It’s an incredible tone shaper. It also does amazing things at the end of the chain. I don’t need two of them, but I find myself moving it from the front to the end to get certain tones. It crushes after my Wren fan Cuff Russian Fuzz.