Overdrive-Distortion Chain ??

[Big K]

Curious how other fretters place their stomp boxes when using more than one in the effects chain? The way I usually end up plugging them in is in a a mild to wild sequence ie: guitar - mild overdrive - distortion - heavy fuzz - other effects - amp seems like they cascade into one another going from the lighter effect into the harsher one. Any other methods?

[Spudman***]

I actually do my distortions the other way around. I put the lesser distorted boxes after the more distorted ones.

What I found out is that I can have this really great singing super distorted sound going on and then when it's time to solo it gets lost in the mix.

Now when I use a Tube Screamer or Tone Driver etc. after the heavy distortion then then I still have the smoothness and sustain from the heavy distortion, but turning on the less distorted pedal throws up that mid-range hump that makes the whole thing cut right through the mix without having to be a lot louder. It's all in the frequencies baby.

[Big K]

I've never thought about using the monkey or tube overdrive pedal to add to the established mix, i usually use them for my base tone then kick in something heavier... interesting... me thinks I have to try changing the order and/or maybe the sequence of which to use when........

chasin' tone again....

[Tone2TheBone]

I run my MXR Micro Amp (clean boost) first...then into the Marshall Guv 2, the Little Big Muff then the Zonkin' Yellow Screamer then out from that bunch into the NS-2 suppressor loop. I've been using my pedal board almost exclusively these days so I usually have my amps turned up loud on the clean channel and then back off the levels on my pedals. Doing it this way pretty much eliminates me having to boost anything with the clean boost since the clean volume is already loud to begin with and my other pedals are so different from each other, they're already set for their particular sounds so I don't cascade from one pedal into the other. At max gain the Guv and Muff are totally saturated and I just back off my guitar volume to reduce that gain. About the only thing I've done as far as cascading is to set my Muff pedal with low gain/sustain and kick that in on top of the Guv or the Zonkin'. That eliminates having to switch off the Guv first then stomp on the fuzz when I want that saturated fuzz sound. I eliminate one move there.

[duhvoodooman***]

I swap stuff around a lot. Right now, my primary pedal chain looks like this:

Guitar-->compressor-->ZYS overdrive-->wah-->phaser-->Rabid Rodent distortion-->Chicken Salad vibrato-->amp

I'm finding this to be pretty flexible, with distortion available before and after both the wah and phaser. And the vibrato after the Rabid Rodent (a ProCo Rat clone) lets me get a pretty convincing Hendrix/Trower tone when I have the urge.

[Big K]

keep those chain sequences comin'

[sunvalleylaw]

Based on talking to Spudman, Crybaby > Wah DS-1 > Monkey > CE-5 Chorus > Tuner > PB-1 Clean Boost > Looper. I like having the DS-1 ahead of the Monkey, as it seems to boost, warm and smooth it. If I want to cut through with some snarl, I often play with the Monkey on, then click on the DS-1. If I want to have the sound of both on then boost the sound to cut through, I can have both on and leave of the PB-100, then click it on. I guess I could just use the volume knob, but I am not that proficient at that yet.

[t_ross33]

Before:
Guitar > Compressor > Blues OD > Turbo Dist > EQ > Amp with a Digitech RP-80 in the effects loop.

After:
Guitar > GNX3000 > Amp