The Guitar Effects Flow Chart

Vreny's Pedal Board and Guitar Effects

Guitar students often revel in the size of my pedalboard.
I love my stompboxes.
They bring out the kid in me. 🙂

While there is not substitute for experimentation, and no right or wrong, there is a certain order of placement in the signal chain of guitar effects that is generally preferred.

The Signal Flow

You typically place the frequency altering effects first in the chain, followed by the dynamics processing effects, followed by the time processing effects.

Frequency Based Effects / Filters.
These effects affect the frequency range of your guitar signal.
Whatever comes out sounds brighter or darker than the original guitar signal that went in the box.
1. Wah Pedals:
  1. Cry Baby
  2. Vox Why
  3. Clyde Wah
  4. My fav: The John Landgraff Wah
2. Envelope Filter (automatic wah). This is a filter that automatically opens up more or less (like a wah) dependent upon how hard or soft you attack your strings (envelope).
  When you hit harder, you get more wah, when you hit softer you get less wah sound.
  1. My fav: Robotalk (X otic)
Dynamics Processing
Dynamics altering effects affect the dynamic range of your guitar signal. Whatever comes out of the box has a different voltage than what went into the box.
These effects change the input to the output signal in loudness and power.
Time Based Effects
Time-based effects are the most complex effects of the 3 groups.
What it comes down to in a nutshell: is that a copy of your original guitar signal is created inside the box, and then delayed.
At the output of the box, you hear your original guitar sounds, mixed in with the delayed copy of that guitar sounds.
Depending on the delay time between your original guitar signal and the delayed copy of that signal, you get different sounds: chorus, flanger, phaser, reverb, echo.
Mojo Vibe.
This effect falls in a classification of its own. The effect is created through a series of staggered phasing filters, which creates a sound that seems to fall somewhere between a chorus and a phaser.
What makes this effect unique: is that with an extra foot pedal you can alter the delay time/intensity of the effect.
This effect is heavily featured in Jimi Hendrix’s Machine Gun, Robin Trower’s Bridge of Sighs, and Pink Floyd’s Breathe.
This was one of Jimi Hendrix’s favorite effects. It was called the “Univibe” at that time.
He used it heavily with Band of Gypsys and on “Hey Baby (New Rising Sun)”

Volume Pedal Placement.

You may have noticed that I put my volume pedal (which is a dynamics-based effect) at the end, before reverb and echo, and after everything else.
The reason why this is the preferred placement in the signal chain for a volume pedal is that you don’t want to cut out the tail of your reverb and echos in your signal.

It would defeat the whole purpose of having reverb and echo if you would place your volume pedal after the echo and shut down the volume on the echo repeats and reverb tail.

By the same token: you want your volume pedal after all other effects so you are sure to cut out all the noise build-up from the dynamics processors and filters when you press the volume pedal down.

Flanger and Phaser.

Also: a quick word about the main difference between a flanger and a phaser.

A flanger is what for example Brian May used in the intro to “Keep Yourself Alive” or Nancy Wilson in the song Barracuda. (Sounds like an airplane “swoosh”)

A phaser is what Jimi used in the intro to the song House Burning Down. (Sounds more “otherworldly”)

The main difference between the 2 effects:

A flanger has a constant even delay time over all the frequencies that make up the input signal, and in a phaser, the delay time is variable per frequency.

If this doesn’t entirely make sense, and you are interested in learning more about this, here’s a really good resource:

Click The Difference Between Flanging and Phasing.

Another good resource is the book “Guitar Gadgets” by Craig Anderton.

And The Stompbox by Dave Thompson.

Conclusion

Hit me up anytime at vreny@zotzinmusic.com if you have any questions, or if you would like to book a lesson.

These free lessons are cool, but you will never experience the progress, joy, and results that my students experience in lessons when you’re learning by yourself from blogs and videos.

That is why people take lessons: way better results and progress, much more complete information, exposed to way more creative ideas than you can get from a blog or YouTube video.
There is only so much that self-study can accomplish.

If you want to see amazing results and progress in your guitar playing, buy your first lesson here and get started ASAP.