Q&A for How to Set Up Guitar Pedals

A basic setup for your pedals might be: booster overdrive pedals, modulation pedals (chorus, flange, Tremolo), delay pedal, and reverb.

It depends on what purpose the noise suppressor will fulfill. You may need more than one placement depending on your purpose. If you position it behind the tuner, it will remove any unwanted noise from the guitar signal before it gets modified with the pedals (this is the most common placement). Guitarists also use the noise suppressor or noise gate pedals after an overdrive to cut the riff sharply.

After the compressor, but before the gain (distortion) pedals. This will increase volume on clean tones and boost the drive on lead tones.

This depends on personal preference; changing the order of drive pedals changes how they sound when used together. For instance, a clean boost placed before a heavy distortion or fuzz will result in a louder boosted signal hitting the heavier distortion circuit which in turn works that circuit harder and you get heavier distortion. If you place that clean boost after the heavy distortion, it will just make the original distorted sound louder. Experiment with different placement order and you will find your own preference.

Your wah is a link in the chain, but if it has true bypass when it's off, it should provide the same tone as playing without one.

That really depends on what you are going for. There are good arguments for before everything and right after the tuner, but also for after the distortion and before your modulation pedals. If you put yours right after the tuner in the front of your chain, you can equalize your guitar tone before it hits anything and adjust your pedals accordingly.

The common order would be Tuner, Comp/Sustainer, Overdrive, Chorus, and Reverb. Chorus could also add some echo so pay attention how you combine Reverb with it.

Your looping pedal should be the last pedal in your chain, assuming you want the effects of every other pedal to be part of what is being looped; any pedals placed after the looper will not be part of what is looped (i.e. if your reverb pedal is placed after the looper, your looped riffs will not have reverb on them).

The way it's explained in this article; the first pedal in the chain is the one which you plug your guitar into, and the last one in the chain will go out to the amp.

Reverb can be treated like delay, so before the looper, but after everything else.

Each individual pedal should have a power input or battery power. You can buy a single power (commonly 9v) source and a chain to power multiple pedals at once.

This depends on a number of things. Are you looking for placement in a series of pedals? If so, it should go towards the end of your chain. Are you looking at it as a functional point? If so, using an octave lower can give some hugeness to heavy guitar or might pull a fatter sound out of some higher solos, whereas an octave up is almost always great for a layering effect.

Same place as wahs, a talk box is a filter, such as envelope, auto wahs, etc.

Place the whammy right after the tuner. That way it can bend/transpose the guitar signal before any other effects hit it.

The more dynamic an amp is, the more the delay pedal reacts to the input attack. For example, on a clean setting, the harder you hit the strings, the more volume the delay will sense and you will hear louder and more frequent repeats. The softer you hit the strings, the less you will hear the delay. With this being said, some amps have an effects (fx) loop that is not as loud as others. There are other amps that have a boost/cut button or knob to adjust the fx loop volume. Most tube amp loops are also buffered, which means that the signal is stronger and is being compensated with some of the higher frequencies that get lost when you have an extensive number of pedals or a really long cable.

The amp/cabinet simulator should be placed at the end of the pedal chain, as if you were connecting to an actual amp.

Yes, these general rules do apply in guitar effects processors, commonly known as ‘effects chain’. The explanation above is a very good base to start experimenting with sound effects.

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You'll plug your guitar into the right side (the input) and have another cable coming out of the left side (output jack) that you'll put into the amp. You'll then plug the power cable into the slot (that likely will say (9V DC above it) and plug that into the wall. Turn on the amp and click the foot switch on your reverb pedal and you'll be good to go!

The microsynth is in the same wheelhouse as an octaver, but also has some modulated qualities, so I would put it either before or after your overdrives (depending on your preference/what kind of tone you're dialing in on it), but definitely before reverb.

You can technically put them in any order, yes. The order provided in this article is just the most sensible order. With other orders, you may get new kooky sounds (whether they sound good or not is up to personal preference).

Yes, any of these pedals can go into an effects loop. Just keep in mind you can't use them if the effects loop is not engaged on your amp.

As many as you want. However, turning on too many pedals at once may muddy up your tone.

The ones that bring out your individual sound and style, and bump your creativity to the next level, are the best ones. The ones that take you to your happy place. Test a few out before deciding what works for you.

A preamp pedal should be placed quite early in your overall signal chain, and obviously before power amp or cab simulator pedals. As it’s a substitute for an amp’s preamp, it should therefore be one of the first stompboxes that your guitar’s output signal comes into contact with.