Pedals and
Processors:
Order Out of
Chaos
I’d like to start by stating that rules are
made to be broken. There is no such
thing as “correct” effects routing. Some
of the coolest tones ever laid to tape or
DAW have been the result of either
happy accidents, or deliberate deviation
from “normal” effects routing. However,
if one is new to the world of pedals and
racks, this feature should lay down the
general logical law and lay of the land,
so one can make his or her own decision
on whether to fall in line, rock the boat
or just plain create chaos. I encourage
all of the above, but it is good to know
the general rules before breaking them;
it makes the ripe taste of deviance all
the sweeter.
I remember when I was a boy and I got
my first bow and arrow. My dad said
straight away, “whatever you do, don’t
shoot it straight up in the air.” Of course,
the first thing I did was release the arrow
straight up into the sun. After what
seemed like minutes later, my grandma
comes pulling up the driveway in her big
brown Volvo, only to be greeted by a
descending bolt of doom that penetrated
straight through the headlight and
through the metal to the fletching.
Fortunately, in the world of guitar effects,
the consequences of aiming high and
releasing with reckless abandon are far
less dire. Let us learn the general order of
things and then create a little chaos.
Frequency
Shapers,
Compressors,
Fuzzes, Boosts
and Overdrives
Generally speaking, I like to run wahs and
envelope filters before everything else on
the pedalboard. I like to shape the core
clean guitar input signal before anything
else processes it. The logic here is that I
am, as a human being, the start of the
signal chain. My hands and feet provide
the physical inertia that feeds into the
chain reaction. Envelope filters respond
to touch sensitivity, so it is important to
me to have no barriers or translators
between them and the fingers. The same
goes for compressors or any other touchsensitive tone device. This logic can make
decisions about routing for me.
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