The Website of Harry George Pellegrin -- .Author, Musician, Recording Artist, Pedagogue

The Daisy Chain of Death

The order in which you place guitar -- all your pedals -- amplifier will make all the difference in the world. You'll either sound like a pro using all the colors of your sonic palette to create a masterpiece of tone, or you'll sound like little Tommy Pimple scaring the neighbor's cat out in his garage on any Saturday morning.

We all know the guitar goes next to you, everything else goes in between, and the signal ends at the amplifier. How does one go about making the decision as to where an effect sounds the best in his loop? There is trial and error, but one can go about this whole thing in a logical manner. How?

Think about what each effects pedal does. If the effect is one that should be used to color all your sound, then that one should be placed closest tot he amp. Think of a reverb unit (yeah,  they're all inside the amp these days, but there was a day of external reverb tanks.) The reverb makes your amp sound like it's playing in a large room or a cave. If you take this fact and work logically with it you see that it is at the end of the chain -- it makes the amp sound like it's in a bigger space. It works with the final sound. You wouldn't want to add a distortion pedal between the reverb and the amplifier because you'd be distorting the end product. You'd have a sound like a bad amp in a bad room. You want to sound like a distorted guitar in a large room, so the guitar gets distorted, then the resulting signal gets the reverb. Guitar + distortion pedal + reverb + amplifier = good natural sound. Make sense?

Logic should tell you that a phase shifter is something that you want to use late in the chain, closer to the amplifier, Why? Well, you want the guitar plus certain other effects to be phase shifted, you don't want to take the phase-altered signal and then distort that! Your distortion pedal would then take all the signal changes the phaser makes and add it's own odd-series harmonics and clipping to that. Result? Wall of Muck.

How about that Wah Wah. Think of it this way. The Wah is nothing more (most simply) than a foot-activated tone control. Where is your tone control? ON your guitar! The wah pedal goes first in the chain after your guitar. BUT MY AMP has a tone control!!??!!! Well, no it doesn't. What did I just write? Your amp has an EQ stage, simple as it is, to modify the tone for variations in the room. Don't think of it as a high frequency roll-off, which is what your tone control on your guitar is. The wah modifies your guitar's basic output signal -- just like a tone control -- then all your other effects modify that basic signal.

Okay, so where does the distortion pedal fit in? Just after the wah pedal and before your signal modifying pedals such as a flanger, phaser or chorus. You want to distort your basic signal, then process it. You don't want to process your signal than distort the process!

Understand what each device does. I consider certain devices organic -- they are a reproduction of a naturally occurring phenomenon. I consider those effects that do not exist outside a pedal to be inorganic -- they are a new phenomenon, one not found in the natural interaction bewteen guitar and amp. A processed signal -- anything that is desgined to process the signal -- EQ, echo, etc. is a processor, not an effect.

Basic rule:

These devices are 'organic'

Wah -- an outboard tone control.

Distortion -- emulates the natural sound of an overdriven amp.

Fuzz -- trashier, but same as above.

Octave Doubler -- creates an extra 'unprocessed' note either below or above -- treat it like a natural signal.

Acoustic Emulator -- a gray area here, but I liken it to an inorganically generated organic signal.

These devices are processors:

Flange -- adds a bit of generated pitch, altered to fatten and widen the resulting signal.

Phaser -- swirls the sound to fatten it by messing with the phase of the signal

Chorus -- beats me, sounds like a mix up of a phaser and a flanger.

Where does an echo unit fit in? It does generate a new signal and it is a generation of the natural signal. Does it go in close to the guitar? Nope. You want to echo all your effects, not effect all your echo. It goes dead last, right before the amp.

Okay, let's look at my mess. It functions in all permutations and combinations. It ain't like I have a million pedals, but I have at least one each of the organic, inorganic and extraneously processing effects!

Here's the rig: (L to R) Dunlop 95Q, Blues Driver, DOD Chorus, Dan Echo. I also have a in-line tuner, that can go anywhere. BUT not if you run one of your effects ALL THE TIME. Then you want the tuner just after the guitar, before your other effects.

The guitar plugs into the wah then the signal goes right down the line from left to right, then into the amp.

You can a use this as a guideline, not a hard-and-fast rule, but experimentation is critical. Remember -- unless you're making really horrible noise, if it sounds like what you are aiming at tone-wise, it's right -- at least for you!