Effects and signal chain
The families of guitar effects, what each one does, and a common connection order you can use as a starting point.
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Content under musical review. It may contain inaccuracies.
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The families of guitar effects, what each one does, and a common connection order you can use as a starting point.
Applied
The signal chain is the path the sound takes from the pickups to the speaker. Effects, whether pedals, rack units or a digital processor, sit along that path and transform the signal. The order you connect them in changes the result.
A time-based effect such as delay repeats what you play. Picture this phrase followed by its echoes, each one quieter:
Saturation effects, on the other hand, add harmonics. Compare a smooth wave with a harmonically rich one:
Smooth wave Harmonically rich waveA widespread order, from guitar to amp:
| Position | Family | Examples | Why there |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tuner | pedal tuner | gets the cleanest signal |
| 2 | Dynamics | compressor | evens out level before colouring |
| 3 | Filters | wah, auto-wah | responds best to an unprocessed signal |
| 4 | Gain | overdrive, distortion, fuzz | saturates the already filtered signal |
| 5 | Modulation | chorus, phaser, flanger, tremolo | colours the saturated sound |
| 6 | Time | delay, reverb | echoes and space last, as in a room |
It isn't a rule. It's the starting point most manuals suggest, and many players change it on purpose.
Always tune before trying effects: modulation and saturation make tuning problems very obvious.
TunerIf you have pedals, try swapping distortion and delay. With delay first, the echoes get saturated and blur into the note; with delay after, the echoes stay clean and separate.
Many amps have an effects loop between the preamp and the power amp. If you get your saturation from the amp's preamp, put modulation and time effects in the loop: that way they come after the saturation, just as in the table. Gain pedals, wah and compressor stay in front of the amp.
Hunter explains that some classic fuzz pedals react to the pickup's impedance and sound worse after a buffered pedal, which is why they're often placed first. Conversely, a very long cable with no buffer loses treble through its capacitance. Watch levels too: a gain pedal set very loud can overload the input of the next one.