Pedals, Order in the Chain

I used to post here frequently but since last summer I've been slammed. Last fall I coached two youth soccer teams and then I found myself in two bands (both hobby bands). Things have slowed down a bit and now I'm only in one band. We play Americana, which seems to mean just about anything. More specifically we play a lot of Bluegrass style music, classic country, folk, classic pop and a few newer numbers. It's a great outlet for me because the styles are so varried, different keys, different scales etc. We have a gig coming up, an art studio opening, and I want to add a few more pedals to my pedal chain. I need some advice as to what order to place the pedals. I use a BBE Opto Stomp in the effects loop on my amp. This is a great pedal for subtle compression. It really adds sparkle to my tone. Currently in my pedal chain I have the following pedals, in order from guitar to amp: Boss tuner, Ibanez Analog Delay, Fulltone OCD overdrive. I want to add a Mojo Hand Sugar Baby tremelo, and a BBE Boosta Grande. I'm not sure where to put these pedals but I suspect the Boosta Grande should be the last in the chain, closest to the amp. When I put the tremelo pedal in the chain it seems to respond differntly based on its location and what other pedals are operating at the same time. Its unpredictable and I'm considering not using it. But I thought maybe there is a standard to use in pedal placement, a base from which to experiment and maybe I can get the tremelo to behave.

Any Advice?

Thanks

delay before od, and compressor in the loop, after the od? that is as backwards as it gets. tremolo and delay should be in the loop, and boost depends on what you want from it.

Welcome back, Tom. It sounds like you picked some nice things to be busy with!

I agree with Louis, but I'd also suggest an active A/B box at the very front that could let you run silently to the tuner. I'd also try putting the compressor right after the guitar (or A?B box if you go that route), but that depends on what you're wanting it to do.

Ken

Louis, Ken:

Thanks, I breifly tried your suggestions and the interaction of the pedals has improved. I think I've been geeting away with poor pedal placement because I rarely us the pedals in this new band and when I do it is usually only one at a time. But we have a new song which calls for both tremelo and OD and this is when I began to notice trouble. Placing the comp in the lead position smooths out my rythm playing but takes away some of the sparkle I was geting with the comp in the loop. Tonight we have practice so I'll get a better sense of how the new layout sounds.

No one ever accused me of having great tone!

put a sonic stomp from bbe in the loop the get the sparkle and leave the compressor as the first in the chain.

Hey Tom, nice to see you around again.

It sounds lik eyou are putting together a board with a lot of the same kind of stuff as I have on mine. I'm not a fan of compression at all, nor effects loops. I prefer to keep it simple as possible. This is how I'd set it up:
Compression > OCD > Boost > Tremolo > Delay > Tuner > Amp
Having the tuner last in the chain makes good use of the muted output - if there's a dodgy lead somewhere on the pedal board you can mute the output while you find the culprit. The boost after the OCD will give you a volume boost when playing lead, not just the significant increase in distortion if placed before it.

Like others have said. Signal boosts, compressors, and generally wah's out front. Modulation in the loop.

There are of course exceptions, mostly personal, but those are the rules of thumb. EQ's can be used anywhere, to different ends. I also like compressors at the very front. Some folks like everything out front, but I find you get nicer modulation in the loops.


Mine loops like this Wah-> Volume -> compressor -> OD -> Fuzz -> Amp

Send -> EQ -> flanger -> Chorus -> reverb -> delay -Return

Yeah I have 2 things in front of the compressor. The volume pedal is only in front of it for convenience on the board . I don't often use both at the same time (or the compressor much at all recently)

Louis, Ken, Jamie, Sirmyghin:

Thanks for the response and it's nice to see you all around here still. This pedal order issue is all starting to make sense to me now and last night at practice my pedals sounded good. The art studio gig is next Sunday. I'm going to record it on my Zoom 4 with a couple of condenser mics. If anything decent comes out of it, I'll post an mp3. This band is prime for a G & L Bluseboy so I may sell something to make it happen. We'll see. I also want a resonator acoustic so I'll have to set priorities.

Tom, your music venture sounds like a lot of fun. It's good to hear you are doing this.

Kit

The art studio gig is next Sunday. .

Is this a show open to the public?... Details if it is?
It'd cool to see ya perform.

elwood

Elwood:

Yes it is open to the public. We are only playing 7 songs however, so I don't know if it's worth a trip. It's actually an art gallery not an art studio. The location is 104 E Main St, Auburn WA. The owner is not sure if 20 or 120 people will show up. We will probably start at around 7:00 PM, Sunday. We aren't great but the music is a lot of fun. We have some other gigs coming up if you can't make this one.

Kit:

I haven't been down to Portland in a long while. My sister in law usually comes up to Seattle because my kids are so busy on the weekends now. Are you still playing in your band? I'd love to hear how that's going.

Tom, I've actually travelled to Seattle several time in the last few months because my daughter is now a student at UW.

I'm still with the hobby band but we've had some personnel changes. Our drummer decided to quit because we only played out twice last year for a total of 6 hours, and that was not enough for him. Our new drummer has never been in a band before but has had 2 years of drum lessons. Recently our female singer started being unreliable and that upset some of the members and she is now replaced by another singer who sang with us the first time a week ago. We think she's is going to work out if she decides that she like this band.

The second guitarist had his small recorder with him last week and just kind of placed it in the middle of the room to record. Here's the third run through of this song with this new singer. See what you think:

http://home.comcast.net/~kitn13/music/no_good.mp3

Kit