Page 22 - RYAN'S GIG GUIDE June 2014

Before we start I'd just like to say that there is
no definitive single solution sometimes happy
accidents can happen when you plug your
phaser into your fuzz or your delay into your
chorus so try lots of different ways before you
decide what's best for your music Having said
that there are some general tips that most play
ers will agree with so here goes:
) Frequency/EQ like wah wah and equalizers
) Overdrives & distortions
) Modulation chorus & vibrato
) Time based effects like delay and reverb
) Dynamic effects like Compressors & Limiters
) and what I call "other" for want of a better
classification eg tremolo harmonizers octavers
I find that I'm forever going from how many
pedals can get on my board to what's the
least I can get away with; maybe that's you
too? It's always a trade off though as the more
pedals and interconnects the more signal loss
and tone sucking but the more tone options
you have at your feet A line selector can help
here so that you can keep the minimum number
of pedals in your signal path and then use the
line selector to bring in a loop of effects only
when you need them
Ok so what's the best order for all your effects?
first is often the wah pedal You can try your
wah after overdrives etc and some people use
two wah's one before and one after
Next would come a compressor if you use one
you want this before any overdrives to avoid too
much noise and a smoother sustain If you put
your compressor after your overdrive and have
both switched on the compressor will keep rais
ing the volume and background noise generated
by the overdrive/distortion
like to arrange them so that I can use more than
one at a time I find that putting the higher gain
distortions and fuzz first and then the lower
gain pedals like overdrives and tubescreamers
etc afterwards works best What this does is
allow the lower gain pedals to boost the signal
If you run a lower gain overdrive into a higher
gain distortion you can't get the volume boost
you might get a bit more squash to the signal
though I use a clean boost pedal as well and I
put this after the distortions so I can get a vol
ume boost for solos
How to set up your
pedal board
Typically there are six types of effects;
COMPRESSORS
OVERDRIVES
rggsince 1995