Effects unit between guitar/pedal or pedal/amp

Wayne Franco · Post by **Wayne Franco** » 15 Jul 2003 7:03 am

I've almost always put it between guitar/pedal after listening to an instruction tape by PF years ago. BTW I am using a Hilton pedal and he suggests you put effects between pedal and amp. Give me your opinions and thoughts. Thanks

Jim Smith · Post by **Jim Smith** » 15 Jul 2003 7:15 am

Whenever I've seen Buddy Emmons he had his effects after his volume pedal. I used to run all of mine between the guitar and pedal, but now I have my volume pedal in the movable effects loop of my processor so I can have some before and some after.

I still prefer most, if not all, before the pedal. This allows me to feed the full signal to the effects and also to cut off delays and reverbs by backing off the pedal.

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Jim Smith jimsmith94@comcast.net
-=Dekley D-12 10&12=-
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David Mason · Post by **David Mason** » 15 Jul 2003 7:50 am

It depends on what you want it to do. Many effects like distortion or envelope followers are volume sensitive - the intensity increases as you feed it more signal, either by picking harder or feeding it after the volume pedal. Most guitar players (I know more about standard guitar) put their distortion unit first in the signal chain and set it so that the effect increases as they pick harder. The signal coming out of the fuzzbox is going to remain fairly constant, so you would want the volume pedal after the box. However, if you don't want the effect to be touch-sensitive - if you want a consistent level of distortion that doesn't flare up on chords - you could put a compressor in front of the distortion. I would say that most top-flight rock guitarists nowadays split their signal so that they have an effects channel and a clean channel, and vary the blend between the two. You can use a little mixer to do this, or a pan pedal. Rich guys use two entirely separate amps, but you can make do with a Y-cord and a $50 Rolls mixer on a stand. This should still go before the volume pedal, so if you have an amp with an effects loop, use that for the volume pedal. Rich guys also have soundmen who know what to turn up and down and when, must be nice. I wish stomp boxes had blend controls, because mixing some clean signal with the processed signal is definitely the way to go to keep a solid tone.

b0b · Post by **b0b** » 15 Jul 2003 3:26 pm

Moved to 'Electronics' section.