Guitar players never seem to tire of trying out new toys. But when you have more than one stompbox between your guitar and amp, you might wonder what the optimal order might be when adding, say, a wah pedal. Truth is, placing the wah before a fuzz or overdrive pedal will sound quite different than placing it after – you really have to try it both ways to see which works best for you.
Remember, a distortion device can add a great deal of harmonic content to the signal, so any filter-type effects (wah, phase, flange, envelope filter, etc.) will sound much more intense when they follow a distortion. Placing the filter-style effect before the filter smooths out the effect and makes it less prominent. Also keep in mind that a wah can add a big boost in signal level, and may overload any pedals that follow it.
Jimi Hendrix always put his Vox Wah-Wah pedal in front of his Arbiter Fuzz Face, and in most cases, this produces the a great overall sound (hey, if it was good enough for Jimi…), but that doesn’t mean you can’t reverse the order.
Many players feel you should always place any time-based effects, like a delay or chorus pedal, last in the chain. Thus you might try the following order: Guitar > Wah > Fuzz > Delay > Amp. Or not…it depends on what you want to hear. The good news is that you really can’t damage pedals by connecting them in the “wrong” order. Just keep the volume down on your amp until you know how loud the result is going to be!
