hi all.

im a thew weeks away from my first pedalboard. really excited!
its not big. strat> compressor>2 distortions> delay/looper> amp. so nothin complicated. but still costin a bit so wanna try and get it right. and try and understand any problems i might have. hopefully none

with respect to the 2 distortions, is there a particular way to put them. say the more transparent one first in the chain? or the tbescreamer type one first? i suspect it doesnt matter, but just wondering. also one is true bypass and the other isnt. would that create any probs?

and theres no probs powering some with power supplys and some with batteries is there?

thanks alot

Congratulations... sometimes I think I'll never get around to the "board" part! One day...

True bypass is a fashionable attribute for pedals to have at the moment, but in a small board you're probably not going to notice that much of a difference if you have one or two buffered pedals. Plug straight into your amp and play, then plug into your non-bypass pedal (with it turned off) and then into your amp. If you're hearing a significant difference when the turned-off pedal is in the signal chain, adjust your amp's tone controls to account for the fact that it's having some minor affect on your sound.

I have a delay pedal that's switchable from buffered to true bypass, and honestly my overall sound is more muffled when it's in bypass mode!

If you want to bypass any pedals you may have, consider investing in a small bypass looper. They're available with between one and six (or more) switchable loops, and any pedal (or chain of pedals) you have plugged into them can be bypassed by stomping the switch. Often they're used just to turn on multiple effects simultaneously, so you can set them up beforehand and not have to worry about whether you're going to hit them at the right time. A single-switch looper will be the same size as the smallest of your pedals.

With your distortions... I can't really say much without knowing what they are (and probably wouldn't know even then!), but for what it's worth I run my Tube Screamer equivalent (a Cusack Screamer) into whatever else I'm using for distortion -- usually a tube-based pedal, either a Real Tube or a V-Twin. I like it that way... the "mid hump" usually associated with TS-type pedals helps to push the tubes in the following pedal into a nice thick yet crisp sound. TS pedals drive your amp in a good way if you need to be heard in a mix, and I find that they can also have that effect on other distortion pedals. But you know how it is... try mixing them up and seeing which combination sounds best. That's all that matters.

Power... you can power them any way you like; just make sure that they all take 9V DC neg-tip power if you're using a small power supply with a daisy chain. Most 9V pedals are neg-tip, but those that aren't will need a negative-to-positive adaptor. If you invest in a more expensive power supply (Voodoo Labs has cornered the market here, but there are a few other options) a mixture of 9, 12, 18 and 24V are all catered for. AC powered pedals (like the V-Twin mentioned earlier) need a different power supply to your DC pedals, but they'll have their own horrid little wall-warts anyway.

Use batteries for effects which can't be powered any other way, like a retro treble-booster or similar. Often they're built with no power inlet. I have one or two old pedals that date from the dawn of externally powered boxes, and although they can take power I prefer to stick to batteries with them as I wouldn't want to fry anything irreplaceable.

Have fun, and don't be afraid to change the order of your pedals and twiddle those knobs..!

The only advice I can give with 2 distortions is to mix and match and see what works best for the sound you are going for...Sometimes I use an overdrive set sort of clean before a fuzz pedal set a bit dirtier. Others will often use an OD after a distortion, or another distortion, as more of a boost than a dirt box...Sorry I couldn't give a solid answer, but thats sort of the fun with pedals, as while there are guidelines, its not written in stone that you must adhere to those guidelines at all times...

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You may have to add a noise suppressor in that line up.

Agree short pedal board should be fine just use good quality patch cables.

The worst effect for noise I have is the Boss RT-20 COSM pedal.
It injects a lot of noise when the effect is turned off, sounds great when on, that one needs atrue bypass or something to silence it when offline.

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Keep on Truckin, Going full speed ahead down the highway to hades.

thanks for your replies everyone. very helpful thanks.

the whole noise thing is a bit worrying tho. will defenatly use high quality patch cables.

might not have enough money for compressor yet, should imagine that would cut some noise for now.

thankyou

As far as the distortion/overdrive pedals go, if you are planning to run both at once for some songs you need to understand that the last pedal in the chain will be the dominant sound and the pedal(s) feeding signal to that last pedal will provide more gain if switched on but won't affect much in the way of tone.

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Just think of how awesome a guitar player you could have been by now if you had only spent the last 10 years practicing instead of obsessing over pickups and roasted maple necks.

how did your pedal board turn out?''

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