Alright! We got the tone suckage part out of they way. Now we can move on to the chain of effects. And please, I gotta have a disclaimer in here. This post was really, really boring…..so I decided to spice it up a bit by being controversial. Ya, maybe not the best way to spice things up, but certainly the most fun way! So a lot of what I’m going to say is tongue-in-cheek. hehe I’m going to say bad things about effects you like. My apologies. My opinions are not fact, and could definitely be wrong. But where would the fun be in a blog if there wasn’t at least a hint of sporting controversy? These are just my honest opinions as of this afternoon. Tomorrow, they will change–I’m a guitarist. Please feel free to lash back at my cynicism with ‘yo momma’ or ‘yo delay’ jokes in the comments section. You know…..
‘Yo analog delay is so thin-sounding……when you play it, I think it’s digital!’
Sorry…..guitar player jokes……ya, no…….I think even the guitar players are shaking their heads right now. So’s Jean Luc:
(I’m guessing most of you are feeling this same way right now. Due to my, what I thought was, quite inventive ‘yo delay’ jokes.)
So, now that the disclaimer has been said, back to the effects and my may-not-be-so-right opinions. Like I said in part 1, my chain looks like this:
Guitar–>
Bypass looper–>
Bypass looper
–>Delay pedal–>delay pedal (always on)
–>
Amp.
But with the effects in the different loops, it looks like:
Guitar–>
Bypass looper–>
–>fuzz
–>mid gain overdrive/distortion
–>light gain overdrive (with boost switch)
–>solo boost
Bypass looper–>
–>phaser
–>tremolo
–>volume pedal
–>delay–>delay (always on)
–>modulation/phrase sampler
–>chorus/delay
–>
Amp.
Yikes, this is looking boring again. Quick, to the effects!
(To the effects, Batman! Sorry everyone……you’ll notice I’m in an interesting frame of mind tonight. And when those come along, you just gotta embrace ’em. And as a side note, I’m really not sure what they told Adam West as Batman to do here. ‘Ok! Now, pretend you’re sucking helium! Good! Ok, now we gotta see more ribcage!’ Seriously, I’m at a loss. Great show, though!)
So, the first things you’ll notice right away is that there are no wahs or compressors in my chain. The reason for that is that personally, I don’t particularly care for the sound of each. They have their place, and lots of great guitarists get great sounds out of them, but they’re just not for me right now. I’ve never been a big fan of compression, even in recording. If it needs to be used, use it sparingly. By it’s very nature, it’s squashing your tone. Most of the time I find that if I need to clean up my sound in a way that compression will help, I can do it more naturally through better eq’ing, more focused speakers, a cleaner guitar, a less gainy overdrive, etc. If I need more sustain, I re-setup my guitar or get a fret job or whatever. I guess what I’m saying is that to me, compression is a fix-it effect, and I prefer not to add something to try to fix something. Alright, I know them are fightin’ words to a lot of compression fans out there, and if you have one on your board and you like it, more power to you! You figured out how to get a good sound out of a pedal I couldn’t. :) But for now, no compression for me. I did at one time own an Emma compressor, and it was very, very good. I kept it a low setting, first in my chain, and it kind of focused my tone. But as my guitars and amps got better, I no longer had a need for it. Seriously, I can like already feel the daggers in people’s eyes as they’re reading this…..and it’s not even published yet! Well, if you’re reading this, it is…..but not right now as I’m writing it……hmmmm, conversations with myself. And I know. You come to a blog with pictures of 74 million pedals on top, and then you read a post saying how certain pedals may be unnecessary. Heresy!! Heresy in the guitar world!! But before you scream that, just remember that I’m still a guitarist……which means that by next week, I’ll probably have sold all my delays and have used the money to buy compressors. Well, maybe not so much. But it’s possible. That’s why being a guitarist is so great! You have the luxury of completely bad-mouthing today the pedal you’ll buy tomorrow, and no one says a word about hypocrisy. They just say, ‘Oh, he’s a guitar player.’ Fantastic.
(And by the way, my new friend over at http://lespaulplayerdoctor.wordpress.com just did a killer post on compressor pedals, and I’m sure his playing does them way more justice than me. If you like compressors, you should go check it out. That post is changing my mind about them! hehe)
And the wah? First off, let me say that there are guitarists who make a lot more money then I do who enjoy using wah pedals profusely. And if they make more money than you, you have the right to make fun of them, right? I thought that was a rule somewhere. Anyway, the wah for me is a bit of an out-dated sound. Every so often I get a hankering for one, and then I just listen to any rock band from the ’70’s, and I’m cured of wanting one for the next few months. (Oooh! Daggers again! I’m ducking behind chairs right now.) Seriously, though, you can get some great classic as well as modern sounds out of wahs, but I just don’t like the sound enough to use it enough to justify having one. Creative use of a phaser can cop convincing enough wah sounds for me the one time a year I get asked to replicate an exact guitar part that has a wah sound in it.
(Ah, one of the great and perhaps slightly over-used wah sounds of all time. Joe Perry. But, he does make much more money than I do……and when you make that much money, you’re free to dress like you’re from the American Revolution and nobody cares. And obviously, you’re free to buy incredibly gorgeous guitars. If I tried to buy that guitar, even if I had cash in my hands, they would look at me and say, ‘Sorry, kid. This finish is too nice not to ever be on tv. And they would be right.)
And honestly, if money and board space were limitless, I’d have both a wah and a compressor in bypass loops, just for the odd times that a worship leader will want the exact cd sound, and to get it I would have to use compression or wah. But that’s only happened a few times, and I can usually get close to the same sound with other tactics. But if you were to run them, traditionally you would want the compressor at the very beginning of your chain (i.e. right after the guitar), followed by your wah. (The rare exception is that some fuzz pedals freak out–literally–if they are not first in the chain.) There’s also been some recent talk amongst guitarists (and the guitarists here have been no exception) about experimenting with the compressor’s place in the chain. So you may want to try it last in the chain (i.e. right before the amp), as this is how compressors are usually used in recording or front-of-house sound.
You’ll also notice I don’t have a tuner in my chain. It’s out of a tuner mute send from one of my bypass loopers. Tuners are one of the most important pedals you can have…..probably the most important. The best tone in the world will suck if it’s out of tune. But tuners suck a lot of tone, so it’s nice to not have them in your actual effects chain. Some of them, like the Boss TU-2, have buffers; so some people like to place them like they would a line buffer, at the beginning of their chain as the first pedal, or at the end as the last pedal, to push the signal along and regain some highs.
Next is the fuzz pedal. I love fuzz pedals. (Some of you are going…..wow, an effects pedal he actually likes in a blog about guitar effects? No way! Ya, ya……I know.) Anyway, fuzzes are interesting beasts that kind of take on a life of their own. That being said, they usually (though no one really knows for sure) like to be first in your overdrive chain. After the compressor and wah, but before anything else. One time I put it after something else, and the world almost caved in on itself with out of control overtones. It was in the middle of a service. The sound guy was yelling at me to stop. But I was powerless. The fuzz had taken over. So, they don’t like to have too much fed into them…..or maybe they just like it too much. But usually they should be the first in your overdrive chain.
And after this, I like to put the vibe pedal. It’s like a mix of phaser and chorus, and it just gives subtle, vintage modulation color to your overdrives. Bluesy type sounds. I have yet to land on a vibe pedal I like, but soon enough it’ll be in my chain. It can go after the drives, too…..but I really like what it does to the tone before them.
(Yep. The man who basically pioneered the fuzz and vibe sounds. Sorry…..got absolutely nothing tongue-in-cheek to say about Jimi. His tone’s too good, maybe. hehe)
As for the other overdrives, I like to go from gain first down through less and less gain. This is because I like to set my overdrives to a sound I like them at, and then use my less gainy drives and boosts to simply ‘boost’ that sound I like. That’s just me. I’m a control freak and like to know exactly how everything will sound. But it’s also crazy fun to go the other way and go less gainy to more gainy. Then the less gain and boost pedals will feed into the higher gain pedals, and have them take on new characteristics. It can be really fun, and you can get a lot of different sounds. So, no wrong way there…..except that my way is just slightly more right……I’m kidding, I’m kidding! Just experiment and see what you like.
Next is the modulation pedals: trem, phase, ring mod, filters, chorus, etc. Now, there is a tradition that puts modulation pedals before the drives, like I like to do with vibe pedals. It tames them a bit and gives a more subtle sound. Very cool….a little more vintage sounding. I did that when I had a Moog Murf……that thing was so crazy, it had to be before the drives to be tamed enough to be useable. But for more modern stuff where you really want the effect to be out front, it works best to put them after the drive pedals. I like phasers, filters, and weird stuff before the tremolo, because I like to be able to ‘trem-a-cize’ my phased sounds. But both ways will work. The trem usually gets a little softer if it’s before the phasers and such. Then you’re phasing the trem sounds, which can be cool as well. The comes chorus. However, for me, I love that huge ’80’s chorus sound…..so I actually like to put my chorus even after the delays, as my last effect. Just to chorus and mush everything together the few times I actually use chorus.
Next I have my volume pedal. I like to put this after the drives and effects for swells……so that I’m hitting my volume pedal with as much signal as possible. Then I place my delays after it, so that the delays are delaying the swelled sound. gets some cool keyboard-ish effects.
And then the delays and reverbs. Usually reverb is last, to kind of wash everything together. Dlays go right before, so that they can delay your whole board….all the sounds you’re doing. Delays before effects make them lighter and less pronounced, and the delays themselves become less distinct. Delay chains in and of themselves could be a post on its own. If you have more than one delay, experiment with placement. A lot of people run quarter notes into dotted eighths, getting a very rhythmic sound. Or short into twice as long can give a ping-pong effect. That’s, at least for me, is where the fun is…..running delays into each other.
(And of course, the master of delay himself, Edge from U2. Although actually, especially if you’re new to this blog, you’ll find that it’s just any excuse to throw in something about Edge. I admit….I have a bit of a big boy crush. Him and Brad Pitt. Wow……so much honesty right now. My wife says big boy crushes are fine…..as long as it means I want to be them, and not be close to them.)
And lastly would be your phrase sampler. The sampler is usually last just so you can sample all your pedals should you choose. I put a chorusy delay after even the phrase sampler, so that I can do some cool things with the sampled phrase, but again, that’s just my preference.
Okay. So this seriously only scratches the surface of effects placement. The cardinal rule for effects placement is whatever sounds good to you. Experiment, have fun, and don’t judge your tone too harshly. Tone is a journey, and it will probably never end for you, so you may as well learn to have fun along the way. It’s nice to have guidelines as to where the pedals go, which is what I have attempted to do; but in the end, it’s about what sound best to you, and the people who are listening to you. And in worship music, it’s probably even more important that it sounds good to the people listening to you and than it is that it sounds good to you yourself. Because we’re up there to try to make this music a vehicle to help them worship. So, it might be best to err more on the classic side than the experimental side. Not always; but just something to think about.
Sorry for another long and boring post. But in this one I got to throw out my own controversial opinions on a couple effects….just trying to liven things up! hehe Alright……on with the ‘yo delay’ jokes. ;)
Splendid.
Karl.
Guitar for Worship 