Tip 3: Pedals & Processors

Pedals & Processors can aid your endeavors as you pursue the world’s most face melting tone. Before the amp, between it & the speaker and even in some sort of combination of both can help lessen the homework for your amplifier…consider the following:

Signal Flow:

The following types of pedals will be read as the following recommendation of signal path outlines, for easy reference. The path from your guitar to your amplifier is a straight line, and anything you stick into that path will affect everything down the line. That makes the order of your effects almost as important as the kind of effects you put on your pedalboard. While there’s no right way to arrange your pedals, the most common arrangement looks like the following:

• guitar → tuner → gain stage → frequency → modulation → time → AMP 🤘

Let’s take a look at each section and the kind of effects that belong there.

Tuner:

Tuners are an integral part of your setup unless you’re into some weird stuff….but in reality it’s almost the most important piece of equipment in your rig. Most often used in pedal form, it also can come as a rack mount unit, or even a clip on style. For the sake of the topic here, we’ll discuss the pedal form.

Tuners are what keep you able to compliment the rest of your band or the ears of your listeners of you’re just a solo artist. The mind just processes music that’s tuned to something quicker and easier, thus allowing your creativity to have the best chance to be remembered, recognized, or requested again and again. Another great feature of most tuner pedals – you can use them as a mute for your guitar for things like effects, feedback elimination between songs/parts or even as you switch instruments. Most have a pass through feature as well, as so your signal will pass as you tune as well.

Pros & Cons to Using Pedals in your setup:

Pedals make everything great, most of the time. They make tone easier and possible for some, and boost creativity for others. Sometimes they don’t, however. Know your rig, so when something goes wrong and you’re in the middle of a set you can quickly troubleshoot where the issue lies. Did a battery die? Hardwire ALL your pedals. Did a cable fail? Buy TONE VAULT and eliminate as much risk of this as possible! Carry or have clip on lighting to use when the club is dark and you have to do a dissection of your front end rig mid-set!

Our Choices for Types of audio processors & pedals according to style:

• Pop – Bass – Darkglass Alpha Omega Ultra v2 – Blendable overdrive and fuzz, impulse response cabinet emulation, 6-band & aux In and ‘phones out for practice! Guitar – Line 6 POD Go Guitar Multi-Effects Pedal, Black
• Hip-hop and Rap – 
• Rock – Guitar – Maxon Reissue Series OD808 Overdrive – Bass – Tech 21 SansAmp Bass Driver DI (Version 2)
• Dance and Electronic music
• Latin music
• Indie and Alternative Rock
• Classical music
• K-Pop
• Country
• Metal –