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Best effects chain order

H

hallo

May 1, 2007
222
0
Staffs, UK
www.blakcan.com
#1
Hey I'm currently looking to change the order of my chain, I play in an indie/rock band where the bass lines can be quite dominent. at the moment the chain is:
Boss TU-2-->EHX White Finger-->EHX Bass Micro Synth-->Ibanez DE7 Delay-->EHX LPB-1-->Ibanez PD7 Phat-Hed-->EHX Big Muff--> EHX Small Clone--->EHX BassBalls

I'm currently considering moving the Bass Balls to before the white finger. The Muff & Bassballs are hardly used but i do want to incorporate them more so, especially the Big Muff.

Any ideas?
 
#2
If it was me, I would go:

Muff -->tuner -->Balls -->Finger --> Synth -->Clone -->LPB1 -->PhatHed -->delay

Muff first so it can interact w/ your pickups
Tuner second so you only have to switch off the Muff for a clean tone into the tuner
Balls third so it's before the compressor
Compressor next because the following items probably don't need compression
Synth and Clone might work best without a lot of boost or distortion at the input
Boost next so it can drive the PhatHed
Delay last so the trailing repeats are smooth and don't get munged by the other fx (although that can sound cool too).
 
#10
fatbob said:
bongo (or others who may know), can you elaborate on what you mean by the muff "interacting" with the pickups? How would it be different if the muff were say after an ABY box?
Thanks
Click to expand...

With a passive bass, there is a dynamic electrical relationship between the coils of your pickups and the transistors in the Muff (and some other fuzzes too). A preamp (either on an active bass or in the circuit of another pedal) or a buffer (technically equal to a preamp in some ways, but also used for non-true-bypass footswitches like in Boss/MXR/DOD/Ibanez etc.) will interrupt the relationship between the pickup coils and the fuzz guts.

What that means is that Muffs will work with active basses and anywhere in your pedal chain, but that sort of fuzz may work better with nothing but a cable between it and a passive pickup. By "work better" I mean it may be able to produce a wider range of nuanced sound, with more dynamics, and it will also "clean up" (become less distorted) if you roll back the volume knob on your bass.

Because this is contingent on the particular instrument used, the particular fuzz used, and who knows how many other factors, YMMV big time. But that's the basic idea of what I was talking about. :)

If your A/B/Y pedal is "true bypass", odds are decent that you'll have a good connection to the pickups, but even with TBP there can be a change to the overall electronic relationships.
 
#17
Ive never had any problems with my tuner sucking any tone, in fact with the pedals I use the only problem Ive encountered on losing tone is when a battery is on its way out. Anyway to get back to original suggestion by bongomainia; Ive used your suggested setup for a couple of sessions now and Ive got some great tones out of the Muff especially with my '51 p-bass and having the bassballs before the compression has made it a more useful effects, all in all thanks.
 

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