The conventional advice on how to order the pedals in your signal chain goes something like this:
1. Dynamics/compression
2. Wah/Filter/Octave
3. Dirt (in descending order of gain: fuzz > distortion > overdrive)
4. Modulation (chorus, vibe, tremolo etc.)
5. Time-based effects (delay, reverb)
That’s solid advice that will serve for most conventional sounds and circumstances, but it doesn’t mean you can’t break with convention. Here are four examples where throwing out the ‘correct’ pedal order pays dividends:
1. Reverb/delay before dirt
Placing reverb at the end of the signal chain is a good idea if you want to create a natural sense of space or ambience. But soaking your signal in reverb before it hits your overdrive or distortion is a great way of generating big, thick dirty tones that sound somewhat smeared and chaotic – perfect for grungy stoner rock styles.
Putting delay in front of drive – a short, slapback delay in particular – is also a tried and tested approach. If you think about the old days when ‘delay’ meant a tape echo unit and ‘drive’ was something produced by your cranked amp, this is the way round it had to be. Adding slap echo before your dirt pedals will instantly conjure up T. Rex-style glam rock tones.
This pedalboard, belonging to Mark Webber of Pulp, was used on the band's 2025 world tour.
2. Compression after overdrive
There’s a good reason why you would usually put your compressor before your drive pedals. Compressors work by raising the level of the entire signal then ‘compressing’ (reducing the level of) the loudest peaks, thereby delivering a signal that is more consistent in volume overall.
But by making the quieter bits of the signal louder, you inevitably raise what’s called the ‘noise floor’ of the signal – the hash of unwanted background noise present in any amplified signal.
Drive pedals tend to generate a lot of this unwanted noise so putting drive before compression would seem to be a recipe for hiss. However, used judiciously, some gentle compression after overdrive can be used to imitate the natural sag and compression of a valve amp, particularly useful if you are recording direct or plugging into a sterile-sounding amp modeller.
If you have access to a noise gate that will clamp down on excess background noise when you stop playing, then you can be more cavalier with your compressor settings and explore some super squishy, infinitely sustaining lead sounds.
This pedalboard belongs to Sheryl Crowe's guitarist, Peter Stroud. Note the Boss NS-2 Noise Suppressor pedal, a noise gate used to silence background hiss when you're not playing.
3. Tremolo after reverb
Tremolo and reverb are the oldest guitar effects of all, first appearing as built-in features on amplifiers. But in many Fender amps, the tremolo circuit actually comes after the reverb circuit, meaning that the trem modulates not just the dry signal but the wet reverb ‘tail’ too.
While placing tremolo before reverb creates a smoother effect, reversing the order generates a more pronounced throb. It’s definitely worth experimenting with, whether you’re seeking authentic surf guitar tones or exploring more adventurous sonic territory.
4. Wah anywhere
There is, of course, no such thing as ‘correct’ pedal order. What you do with your pedals is entirely up to you and experimentation is not just advisable but also a lot of fun. This is definitely the case when it comes to wah.
A wah pedal is essentially a resonant band-pass filter that sweeps a narrow band of boost up and down the frequency spectrum. Placed before another effect, it will feed it just that specific, boosted slice of signal. Placed after another effect, it will aggressively filter that effect’s output.
While deploying your wah pedal up front, before your dirt pedals, will give you the most classic, recognisable wah sound, it’s worth experimenting with putting the wah at other points in the signal chain. The results might surprise you!
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