What order for pedals?

I have a noise supressor, a compession/sustain, and an overdrive/ distortion pedal. Is there a proper sequence to string them in and why?

Thanks

GG

Originally Posted by: GuitardedGeezerI have a noise supressor, a compession/sustain, and an overdrive/ distortion pedal. Is there a proper sequence to string them in and why?

Thanks

GG

I'm certain you'll get some more detailed responses, but here is mine regarding your pedals. (Other responses will help confirm or deny the things I am learning, too! :) )

Go with Compressor->OD->Noise Gate in that order. You don't want the compressor after the OD because it will further compress the distortion effect. Distortion works by clipping or compressing the high & low volumes of the signal, and the compressor will mess with that.

(ren did a good article on distortion in one of the GT Newsletters: http://www.guitartricks.com/forum/showthread.php?t=31367 )

Noise Gate will generally be last. You want it to clean up any unwanted noise from the rest of your chain along with pick up noise, string noise, etc.

Artists do different set ups to get different effect results and certain effects are less critical to have at any particular point in the chain. There is a general order, but like most things, some experimentation is required to get what sounds best to you.

Here is how I look at the chain: Things that affect your guitar sound directly (like a wah) should come before the distortion. Things that affect time (like delay, reverb, etc) should come after the distortion. And the Gate comes last.

In my sig is my signal chain. The modelling pedal (the RP250) is used for time-based effects, tuner & eq.

Originally Posted by: GuitardedGeezerI have a noise supressor, a compession/sustain, and an overdrive/ distortion pedal. Is there a proper sequence to string them in and why?

Thanks

GG

Although experimenting is never a bad thing, I would thing the best set up would be:

Compression/Sustain >> Overdrive/Distortion >> Noise Supressor

More to the point, if you put a compression pedal after the overdrive, you would increase unwanted noise. Even though you have noise suppression, you don't want to start with that issue if you don't have too.

A related article...

http://www.fender.com/news/index.php?display_article=505

There is a terrific article in Guitar Player magazine (May '08 - Vol 42, No. 5) on this topic and more. It's the cover article and it's contributors are none other than Bob Bradshaw, Pete Cornish, and Dave Friedman. Pedal order is talked about on pg. 76, yet all through the article the authors say to experiment and trust your ears.