Boss DS-1X Distortion

Ever since guitar effects pedals first became a thing, guitar as an instrument changed completely. No longer were you limited to just one type of sound. On the contrary, with effects pedals, the sky is pretty much the limit. However, there are things you need to consider when using these devices. Every pedalboard that contains more than two pedals needs to have a defined order.

Actually, it is recommended that you pay attention to the order of pedals even if you only have two on there. This whole issue is going to be the topic of our discussion today, so if you're planning on build a pedalboard, stay with us.

Why Does The Order Of Guitar Effects Pedals Matter?

Guitar effects pedals come in a wide range of flavors. Different pedals alter the signal in different ways, which means that they can come into conflict depending on their nature. A conflict between two or more effects pedals is bound to ruin your tone. With that said, there are numerous effect pedal layouts out there and you won't really find the 'best' one. The order we are going to show you today is a great starting point which you can use to build upon later. Let's dig in.

Tuners

Before we get to 'real' effects pedals, we need to mention tuners. If you have a guitar tuner in form of a pedal, that is the very first thing you want to connect to your guitar. Tuners need raw instrument signal in order to give you proper readings.

Wah Pedals

Wah pedals are most commonly placed at the beginning of the signal chain. The reason for this is the fact that wah pedals boost specific portions of the frequency range, so it is best to feed them with a clean signal from the guitar. Keep in mind that this isn't a rule, but rather a recommendation. There are players who keep the wah-wah later on in the chain.

Distortion/Overdrive

Up next we have distortion, overdrive or fuzz pedals. In general, any kind of pedal that distorts the signal such as the Boss DS-1X or Ibanez TS-9 just to name a few. You want to have them before modulation and especially before temporal pedals like reverb or delays.

The reasoning is fairly simple. If you put a distortion/overdrive near the beginning of the chain, the pedal will apply the gain boost to a pretty clean signal. However, if you pass the signal through a chorus, or delay - both of which copy the signal, the pedal will apply the same gain boost to the entire thing. The result will be a mess that is hard to control.

Naturally, how true this statement is will depend on the specific brand and model of pedals you are using. However, more often than not, the result will be exactly as we have described above.

Modulation

After the gain pedals, we meet the modulation department. These are your choruses, flangers and similar. As we have already explained, you'd definitely want to have these after distortion or overdrive pedals. Let's take a chorus as an example. This pedal multiplies the signal that is being fed into it and creates an illusion that there is more than one guitar being played. If you feed it a clean signal, that's what it will multiply. Same goes for distorted, high gain signal.

Temporal Pedals

Last but not the least, we have temporal pedals. This is where all of your delays, echoes and reverbs come in. The general rule of thumb is to have temporal pedals at the very end of the signal chain. If we look at delays, for example, these pedals copy the signal and release each copy with a certain amount of delay as well as volume correction. Imagine if you've put such a complex pedal at the beginning of the chain and then applied every other effect afterward? It would be pure chaos. Same goes for reverbs and echoes.

Other Effects

Other effects pedals such as compressors, level pedals and similar, can be placed in various locations in the signal chain. As a matter of fact, saying that a compressor must go here or there would be a huge mistake on our part. These effects will be pedalboard specific and their placement will depend on the type as well as the number of your pedals.

Best Advice You Will Get About Effects Pedals Order And Layout

If you search the web, you will find many guides on how to setup your guitar effects pedals. Most of these will claim that their system is the right one and that doing things differently is just wrong. This is as far away from the truth as it gets. Notice how we said that the layout you see above is just our recommendation? The truth is that there is no perfect order of guitar pedals and no single right way to do it.

Our layout is a basic one that offers a great foundation you can build upon. The only real way to find a good order of effects pedals for yourself is to experiment and experiment some more. That is literally the only way. Only know which pedals you have and how they work with each other. Sure, there are some suggestions you should stick to, but nothing is really set in stone.

Final Thoughts

As we reach the end of our guide, we’d like to thank you for sticking with us. We hope that you have learned something new today and that this guide gave you enough information to understand the basics of guitar effects signal chains. If you find it difficult to figure out something with the gear you already have, start simple and start slow. Add the pedals one by one until you find the layout that fits. On top of that, many popular guitar players constantly change the order of their guitar effects pedals. In other words, don’t take this as a definitive job, but rather something that evolves over time. 

The power of screamer- The Ibanez Tube Screamer!

I wanna talk a bit about voodoo child... yea, like the hundredth time! But this time I am not talking about Jimi Hendrix’s voodoo child but its cover by the legend Stevie Ray Vaughan; a genius musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. In spite of a short-lived mainstream career spanning seven years, he is widely considered one of the most influential electric guitarists in the history of music, and one of the most important figures in the revival of blues in the 1980s.

About that song again; you know what? You may know to sing its lyrics throw the feel and shred the tabs; but I am kinda sure you don’t know how to sound like it! Ha? Gotcha! Anyways enough of show off, Let me tell you how you get that classic sound used by Trey Anastasio (Phish), Gary Clark Jr., The Edge (U2), Noel Gallagher (Oasis), Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth), Buddy Guy, Kirk Hammett (Metallica)... I know it’s pretty long list... Greg Howe, Joan Jett, John Mayer... You still want me to continue?  I better tell you the grand solution instead; Its Ibanez tube screamer; better known as Ibanez TS9.

Tube Screamer is an overdrive/distortion pedal that is mild compared to many, but allows the true sound of the guitar and player's technique to come through. The most popular use of a tube screamer is to push a tube amp to make it overdrive more, but they sound good through almost anything.

The first Tube Screamer was the green TS-808 overdrive pro in the late '70s. It was preceded by the Orange "Overdrive" and green "Overdrive-II" which came in narrower boxes without the battery cover, and the reddish "Overdrive-II" which had a box very similar to the TS-808. The lighter green OD-855 Overdrive-II is also in the TS-808 style box and has a circuit which is similar to the 808 - the board part numbers only differ by one digit. The overdrive and OD-II had a different, much more distorted, fuzzy circuit close to a Big Muff.

Around 1982 until 1985 the Ibanez pedals were repackaged and the 9-series of effects were made. The most popular was the TS-9 tube screamer, which is almost the same as the TS-808 internally. Externally the on/off switch grew to fill about 1/3 of the effect. The main change in the TS-9 circuit is in the output section. This caused the tube screamer to be a bit brighter and less "smooth". The Edge from U2 uses a TS9 for most of his overdrive tones, as do countless other famous rock and blues players. In later years the TS-9s were put together with other op-amp chips, instead of the JRC-4558 which is called for in the schematics. Some of these sound BAD, especially the JRC 2043DD chips. Many used the Toshiba TA75558 which was continued on the reissue. If you have an original TS9 with the 2043 chip, our 808 mods will make a huge difference in tone. 

In about 1993, Ibanez started to make the TS-9 again due to popular demand. This "reissue" is just about identical to the last "original" TS-9s in sound, circuitry, and appearance. They even used the old manual dated 1981 to confuse us more! The IC chip they use in the reissue is the same as some later original TS-9s, the Toshiba TA75558. They are a higher tech chip that will work well in higher tech equipment (where you want a low noise op amp) but are not the best for a tube screamer.

In late 2002 the largest change to the TS9 ever took place. Maxon (actually Nisshin Onpa, the manufacturer or Maxon pedals) is no longer making the TS9 and TS9DX pedals for Ibanez. Ibanez is now having another company make them. The new TS9s are now easy to distinguish. The new circuit board is of slightly cheaper construction, and no longer says MAXON, now it says Ibanez. You will also see IBANEZ cast into the case if you pull back the foam a bit near the battery, the older ones said MAXON there. The battery covers also have IBANEZ on them instead of Maxon. The battery covers had never been changed since the original TS-808. 

You can tell an early TS9 by the green coated resistors inside. But 1980 TS808 that has mostly tan coated resistors and a few green ones so they were not consistent. Some late originals used the brown coated resistors also, so check the date codes on the electrolytic can capacitors.

In late summer of 1998 the TS9DX Turbo Tube Screamer was made available for those who want more volume, distortion, and low end. It is the same as the TS9 but has an added knob which has four MODE positions. Each position adds low end, increases volume, and actually decreases distortion.

Here is something for the pedal geeks like me. (IQ level 9000 required)

Although the circuit design details of the legendary Tube Screamer^® overdrive pedal have been extensively analyzed and documented in the past, the key aspect of its design, which is primarily responsible for the signature overdrive sound, has remained unrevealed. This key aspect consists of a subtlety in the clipping circuit employed by the legend.

Operational Amplifier based inverting amplifiers with back-to-back diodes in the negative feedback path are common clipping circuits which are regularly utilized in overdrive and distortion effect designs. When the output voltage exceeds the forward-voltage drop of the diodes (about 0.3 V for germanium diodes and 0.5 V for silicon diodes), the diodes turn on gradually and softly clip the output waveform symmetrically as shown in Figure 2. This is exactly what is expected from this circuit.

However, when the same circuit is modified so that the input voltage is applied to the noninverting input of the operational amplifier (i.e. the circuit is converted to operational amplifier based noninverting amplifier) something strange happens. It turned out that the output waveform of the noninverting clipper consists of two components: (1) the amplified and clipped version of the input waveform.  (2) Plus the unamplified input waveform. That is, the noninverting clipper adds (or mixes) the original input signal to the amplified and clipped input signal. The amplified component is softly clipped at the forward-voltage drop of the diodes, whereas the combined components are clipped hardly at positive and negative supply rails in rail-to-rail operational amplifiers or at a level lower than the positive and negative supply rails in non-rail-to-rail operational amplifiers.

Inserting a 47nF capacitor in series with the resistor R1 forms a pre-clipping first-order high-pass filter with a cutoff frequency of 720.484 Hz (R1= 4.7 KΩ). This filter causes phase shift between the unamplified input waveform and its amplified and clipped version, which results in the output of crooked waveform.

Mixing the input signal with the output signal of the clipper preserves the original dynamics of the input signal which otherwise would get lost at the threshold of clipping. Preserving original dynamics of the input signal avoids muddiness and vastly improves clarity and responsiveness. This subtle feature constitutes the heart of Tube Screamer^®’s legendary sound and feel.

Post-clipping equalization circuit contains another subtle detail: the exact cutoff frequency of the first-order high-pass shelving filter is linearly dependent on its gain (i.e. boost/cut gain in dB) parameter (with slightly different slopes for boost and cut segments). This is called progressivity of the parameters and it is an inherent feature of almost all great sounding analogue equalization gear.

The pedal was popularized by Stevie Ray Vaughan. Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio implements two TS9 Tube Screamers in his rig. It is widely used in genres as diverse as country, blues and metal. The Tube Screamer has since spawned many clones and modified versions.

 Possible modifications include use of mismatched, or different diodes (for example, a silicon and a germanium device), or more than two diodes in various arrangements, or modified tone circuits. It is also used by the majority of metal guitarists before the lead channel of the high gain amps to make distortion more focused and to cut the low end. Notable modifiers of the pedal include Robert Keeley of Keeley Electronics and Steve McKinley of Tube Screamer Mods.com

The Tube Screamer series of distortion/overdrive boxes from Ibanez has a reputation that has led them to pass into musical urban myth. Helped along with Stevie Ray's use of them, the TS 808 and TS 9 have been sought after and traded up to astronomical prices. The other members of the TS family, the TS-10, the TS-5 and the TS-9 reissue have had a more troubled reception.

All the members of the TS family share a common technical design, with the similarities vastly overwhelming the differences. The TS series seems to be at its best when driving the input to a tube amplifier - that is, a triode grid connected to ground through a resistance of about 1M. All the TS series are capable of making their own distortion, but by itself, this distortion is much less interesting that what you get into a tube amp input.

R.I.P. Stephen "Stevie" Ray Vaughan (October 3, 1954 – August 27, 1990)