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The definitive "What order should my FX pedals be placed in?" thread


zeuzman

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yeh i do agree on the slightly questionable placement of the gate. and yeh its a mic'd up amp here :p but for all purposes we can say thats the fx loop :LOL:

I take it that's the signal chain from a POD? Wouldn't it be nice to have stompbox effects on your mic'd up signal! :LOL:

 

I know im a little late with this but on the tone sucking bastard whammy subject.

 

I have heard that if you put a true bypass pedal before and after an old tone sucker (big muff..... etc). Mabey this might work on the whammys crappy buffer. Now i have'nt tried this but it might help. Or has anyone tried a looper to isolate it? Or mabey mod the buffer for a better one?!!

 

My 2 cents...:D

not sure a tbp pedal would do...ANYTHING when the pedals are turned off cos they are just a bypass (e.g. the input and outut of the pedal get connected together. This is the same of having an extra 15cm of patch cable between effects! when the pedals are ON, they just run as a non tbp pedal would.

Not sure what you're getting at Donbenjy - the point of a looper is to leave the buffered pedal on and switch it in and out 'manually'... It just takes the (often highly suspect) buffer out of the chain when you're not using that pedal. Obviously this doesn't help the tone-suckage when the whammy is on but that's more about frequency response than buffering!

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Not sure what you're getting at Donbenjy - the point of a looper is to leave the buffered pedal on and switch it in and out 'manually'... It just takes the (often highly suspect) buffer out of the chain when you're not using that pedal. Obviously this doesn't help the tone-suckage when the whammy is on but that's more about frequency response than buffering!

 

I was talking about this sentence:

 

I have heard that if you put a true bypass pedal before and after an old tone sucker (big muff..... etc). Mabey this might work on the whammys crappy buffer. Now i have'nt tried this but it might help.

 

Obviously a true bypass looper would cure the problem. But a true bypass pedal is effectively see-through when turned off, so there wouldn't be a difference.

 

I think the guy got confused with a true bypass mod on the big muff, rather than tbp effects either side of the muff.

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I was talking about this sentence:

 

 

 

Obviously a true bypass looper would cure the problem. But a true bypass pedal is effectively see-through when turned off, so there wouldn't be a difference.

 

I think the guy got confused with a true bypass mod on the big muff, rather than tbp effects either side of the muff.

 

Ahh I see! Yes, I think the grammar of it all became too much for everyone to handle ;) !

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About that custom pedal... The guy got back to me and I'm not sure on a few things.

 

"Hey, don't worry. As standard I use stomp switches. The Fuzz was just a special line of studio effects that were originally used by people working on recording stuff. On a circuit update, I've found that the best/closest sound to the muse sound is a sequenced wah pedal. Much like the seek wah. Are you really set on having octave circuits in there? The problem with the octave circuits was that they didn't track well enough when the speed was high, so it sometimes missed notes, the only way to get round this was to filter the guitar input - losing top end."

 

After reading, what would you suggest I do? I replied asking at what sort of speed does the octave tracking mess up occasionaly. If it skips the octave whilst tracking at a high speed, that would be no problem, right? I mean... I may not even want to use it set on high speed. Also could you clarify the phrase in bold please.

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if you've got a whammy, turn down the tone control on your guitar, it tracks and sounds a bit better.....that's basically what he'll be do for when the pedal is on, put a filter (that's all a tone control is) fixed at a certain value to cut the treble down from the guitar.

 

he could also be referring to playing speeds aswell as the rate of the pedal

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if you've got a whammy, turn down the tone control on your guitar, it tracks and sounds a bit better.....that's basically what he'll be do for when the pedal is on, put a filter (that's all a tone control is) fixed at a certain value to cut the treble down from the guitar.

 

he could also be referring to playing speeds aswell as the rate of the pedal

Oh right, thanks. I'll wait for his next reply and see what he meant by "speed". I'm sure he's refering to the pedal though.

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it might be good to have glitches in it though...unless you're going for a clean digital sound?

 

Oh Haze, has your DMM ever acted strangely? like not behaving like it should? I had it oscillating last night, with lots of wah and fuzz running through it, & it just suddenly popped & the effect light went out! Had to flick the power switch off & on to get it working again...wondered if this was cos I was overloading the pedal perhaps? so it decided to cut out, cos it had been oscillating quite highly (feedback at 1 o'clockish)...Sounds fine now, but it scared me a little :stunned::(

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it might be good to have glitches in it though...unless you're going for a clean digital sound?

 

Oh Haze, has your DMM ever acted strangely? like not behaving like it should? I had it oscillating last night, with lots of wah and fuzz running through it, & it just suddenly popped & the effect light went out! Had to flick the power switch off & on to get it working again...wondered if this was cos I was overloading the pedal perhaps? so it decided to cut out, cos it had been oscillating quite highly (feedback at 1 o'clockish)...Sounds fine now, but it scared me a little :stunned::(

 

:LOL:

 

 

never had any issues with it :)

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ok, i dont think mine is actually broken, but there is some random crackly weirdness noise if I have too many distortion/fuzz things on & the overload light blips on when it does it, if the thing is turned off...I think thats the problem! harde to pinpoint though!

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he means if they dude puts in a blend control that when dry will bypass the octave section, and wet will be just the octave section (this doesn't mean that the guitar won't get through - if just means that 100% of the signal will be octavated (yes, thats a word :p)). Then he can put in the filter needed to fix the glitching, and mix in the dry high section afterwards. Dunno if this is likely to work but if he made a low pass filter (ie filtered the highs out), then couldn't he make the dry path a high pass filter? so that you end up with dry highs and wet lows...

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Okay... still not sure what you mean but I'll let him know because he would understand. Thanks. I asked him for a demo of what he's produced so far anyway so if he carries that out I'll have a better idea of what he meant earlier today as it may be that this glitch wont matter.

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About that custom pedal... The guy got back to me and I'm not sure on a few things.

 

"Hey, don't worry. As standard I use stomp switches. The Fuzz was just a special line of studio effects that were originally used by people working on recording stuff. On a circuit update, I've found that the best/closest sound to the muse sound is a sequenced wah pedal. Much like the seek wah. Are you really set on having octave circuits in there? The problem with the octave circuits was that they didn't track well enough when the speed was high, so it sometimes missed notes, the only way to get round this was to filter the guitar input - losing top end."

 

After reading, what would you suggest I do? I replied asking at what sort of speed does the octave tracking mess up occasionaly. If it skips the octave whilst tracking at a high speed, that would be no problem, right? I mean... I may not even want to use it set on high speed. Also could you clarify the phrase in bold please.

 

Ask the guy if he's switching the inputs or outputs... It would make more sense to feed all the inputs simultaneously and have the sequencing on the output (also reduce glitching).

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Ask the guy if he's switching the inputs or outputs... It would make more sense to feed all the inputs simultaneously and have the sequencing on the output (also reduce glitching).

Will do! Thanks.

 

Here's another update as you might be interested...

 

"It depends on the tone of your guitar, if you have alot of treble it sometimes mistracks quite a few notes - this is just a drawback of the octave design concept. On the neck pickup with no treble it worked quite well. I still feel the best way to create this effect would be to modify a wah wah style filter to operate slightly differently, so it would seem like the pitch was being shifted when infact it was only being filtered differently. Unfortunatly I'm away from my recording gear at the moment. I'll get it sent down to me and go from there."

 

So you guys were right about the guitar tone.

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if you are after the MotP affect dont cop out and end up with a seek wah despite what the guy says :)

That's what I thought. Hopefuly I'll have the demo's by next week. I think I'm just starting to get impatient now because he has the circuit board but I don't know whether to stick to what he's done or not. Do you reckon it just glitches when the speed is really fast?

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well from random things that my pedals arn't supposed to really do & experiences with fuzz here my 2p:

 

My custom opamp fuzz is alot like the FF, but it does have an octave knob. when you get it oscillating (when not playing) and turn up the octave to get a thick oscillation (something close to the tone on motp, but it's not controlled by a sequencer). When you play over the top you get a synthy type fuzz, but if you hit a string (usually a bottom string) and let it ring, the note kinda modulates back into the oscillation in a way not unlike the motp track, but randomly. When done on high strings it tends not to do it as much.

 

Generally with all fuzz pedals i've played, when you get lots of saturation you get an octave effect anyway...playing on the high strings doesn't octavize (is that a word) really, and sounds much weaker than lower pitched notes.

 

So I think the glitching is gonna be fairly regular & common...Why not ask him to just put in a switch to toggle between what he has atm, & the octave effect?

 

how much will this cost btw?

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oh btw, can I just see how people would order these, I have my own opinion, but just want to see if there are any differences:

 

*Custom opamp fuzz that acts abit like the FF, so needs a high impedance input to work properly & interacts well with guitar volume.

*Boss OS2- Overdrive/Distortion

*DB design Lemon Fuzz - just a basic germanium fuzz

*EHX Deluxe Memory Man

*Morley Classic Wah

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hey folks, got another reply:

 

"Hi, I wasn't using switching at the moment. That would involve a huge circuit of IC Switching/Relays. The sequencer works by creating a variable voltage/resistance which is then used to control one of the effects pots (In this case it would be the amount of octave). Are you thinking that I'm using say 8 different octave circuits and switching from one to the next? You probably could go down this route but the cost and size of the pedal would be astronomical! Currently I'm only using one octave board and varying one of the input controls (the octave level) with the variable resistance supplied by the sequencer."

 

I'm not too sure what he means. Could someone please tell me what he means and what you meant by "switching". He seems to have explained how the pedal works by the looks of it... could someone possibly draw this out?

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hey folks, got another reply:

 

"Hi, I wasn't using switching at the moment. That would involve a huge circuit of IC Switching/Relays. The sequencer works by creating a variable voltage/resistance which is then used to control one of the effects pots (In this case it would be the amount of octave). Are you thinking that I'm using say 8 different octave circuits and switching from one to the next? You probably could go down this route but the cost and size of the pedal would be astronomical! Currently I'm only using one octave board and varying one of the input controls (the octave level) with the variable resistance supplied by the sequencer."

 

I'm not too sure what he means. Could someone please tell me what he means and what you meant by "switching". He seems to have explained how the pedal works by the looks of it... could someone possibly draw this out?

 

 

What does he mean by 'amount of octave'? The blend/strength or actual pitch shift?

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