Pardon me if this has already been asked - but I have not found anything via search.
From what I see the commonalities of all presets are:
compression, drives, amp + cab then time based effects
Are people commonly using the amps at the beginning/middle or end of their grids/signal chain?
Has anyone figured out the major differences between placement?
What are your thoughts and experiences for placing these blocks in different combinations.
Thank you in advance
Technically, there is no right or wrong way for a signal chain but most use a similar format for the basics. In addition to what you indicated above (e.g. compression, drives, amp + cab then time based effects) I usually add/or use the gate first, sometimes EQ (low/hi cuts) before the amp and after the cab. There is nothing wrong with experimentation as you have a whole signal grid that can be modified within seconds to suit different tastes.
this closely mimics a studio recording approach, and seems to be fairly common.
However, to recreate a pedalboard setup you can experiment with putting fx blocks BEFORE the amps, I do that frequently and it sounds fine. It’ll sum them to mono, but you may find the EQ-filtering of doing it this way makes it quite usable too.
Other than it being widely recommended to put pitch-shifting fx FIRST in your chain, the rest of it is ripe for experimentation; try it all and see what you like best
I agree with both replies. Just think about what each block is doing to the sounds created by the blocks preceding it. Running time-based FX after the amp is generally “cleaner”. If you put your reverb before a distorted amp, you’ll have distorted reverb. Not wrong and in some cases, just right, but not as commonly desired.