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No guitar rig is complete without a good pedalboard. But while learning how to organize a pedal board for the first time is a rite of passage for many guitar players, pedalboards are complicated, and even expert guitar players can have trouble figuring out how to optimize their setups. So, just how should you organize your pedalboard?
Well, there's no one single correct way to organize a pedal board. After all, if you don't experiment every once in a while, you'll be missing out on a ton of tonal possibilities and a lot of fun. That being said, if you want to know how to organize a pedal board in a way that optimizes your rig right away, here is everything you need to know.
When it comes to creating an optimal setup for your pedal board, there are a few essential things to consider. Some will have a big effect on the tone that you get out of your board, and others are more concerned with making your pedal board more versatile and easy to use, but all are incredibly important if you want to create a board that lives up to your highest expectations.
If it's your first time trying to organize a pedal board for the first time, you might not realize just how important the pedal order is. But, in reality, the order of your pedal chain has a huge effect on the tonal possibilities that you'll be able to get out of your board.
This can be a good thing, as experimenting with different pedal orders can help you create unique sounds that you wouldn't be able to produce otherwise. However, there are also some pedals that will perform much better if you place them at a certain point in your pedal chain. So, if you want a proven way to organize your pedals in a way that will create optimal tone, this is how you should order your pedals.
Your tuner needs direct, unaltered input from your guitar in order to accurately tune your guitar, so tuner pedals should always be the first pedal in your pedal chain.
Dynamic pedals like compressors and volume pedals should come next so that you can use your volume pedal to cut the signal to your whole board, and your compressors don't end up compressing your other effects.
Pitch shifters should come after dynamics because they need to track your signal, which is something that is made a lot harder if it's already muddied up by a bunch of other effects. Filter effects like wah pedals should come right after that.
Gain pedals, including distortion, boost, overdrive, and fuzz pedals, come next in the pedal order because these types of pedals amplify your entire signal, so having modulation and time effects before your gain pedals can cause things to get out of hand rather quickly.
Most guitar players have their own preferences when it comes to gain pedal order, but in general, the best way to do it is boost first, then overdrive, followed by distortion/fuzz.
As mentioned above, placing modulation pedals before gain pedals can lead to some less than ideal tonal consequences. So, if you want an optimal setup, it's best to place pedals like chorus, flangers, phasers, tremolos, and other modulation effects after your gain pedals.
Time effects like reverbs, delays, and loopers come last, as these are the types of effects that you typically want to layer on top of the rest of your signal. The best order for these pedals is delay, then reverb, followed by your looper, which should always be the last pedal in your chain.
Perfecting tonal quality is undoubtedly one of the biggest goals you'll have when organizing your pedal board. However, another big part of optimizing your board is making sure that it's as easy for you to use and make music with as possible.
The best way to do this is to think carefully about where you place each individual pedal. While the order of your pedal chain will act as a significant limitation on where exactly you can put your pedals, it's also a good idea to at least try to place the pedals that you use most where they are more easily accessible. This is especially the case for larger boards, as reaching from one side of the board to another quickly may require a bit more effort than you might think.
Getting your pedals the power they need is often the most significant challenge when setting up a new pedalboard, and though there are multiple ways to do this, by far, the best way is with an isolated power brick.
While it may be tempting for newbies to use a simple daisy chain, these excessively long collections of connected wires often struggle to provide sufficient power to more than just a few pedals. Not only does this lead to tonal degradation and background noise, but the fact that you can only use these daisy chains 9-volt pedals also significantly limits the types of pedals you can have on your board.
On the other hand, isolated power supplies offer a number of advantages over their daisy chain counterparts. These types of power supplies are often compatible with pedals with varying voltages and are much better at sending the required amount of power to each pedal, but that's not all.
These types of power supplies also eliminate the physical connection between pedals inherent to daisy chains, limiting unwanted background noise and improving the tone that you are able to get out of your board.
Are you looking for a custom pedalboard that makes it easy to optimize your setup? Give us a call or send us a message online. We're always here to answer your questions and will happily help you build a custom board that's fine-tuned to meet your specific needs as a guitarist.
You can even conveniently design and order your board directly from our website if you already have a good idea of what you want. So, don't miss out on bringing your very own custom pedalboard to life. Contact Pedal Pad and start building your dream board today!