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.
So, I agree with everything here Comp>Drive>(Optional Modulation)>Amp but where I have been experimenting is placing the cabinet at the end of the chain Amp>(Optional Modulation)>Time Based>Cabinet. The rational has been this is more like putting your time based effects in the effects loop of a traditional amp.
Some of this was in response to many people putting a low pass filter starting at about 5K at the output to make things sound more “amplilke” since most guitar speakers tend to roll off at 5kish. I realized that by putting the cab module at the end of the signal chain I accomplishes that task more accurately. It’s not a significant difference, and certainly not better or worse, just subject to the sound you are after. What I do find is this seems to work very well, without using any additional DSP and just smooths the top and bottom of the time based effects.
Definitely worth trying, it could be just the ticket for some situations…
I always had it Drive-Comp-Amp-Cab until I read this thread… never realised that was non-standard. Still kept that order for crunch tones as it sounds more “open” to me, but for my full distortion tones I’ve now switched to Comp-Drive-Amp-Cab. Funnily enough, I had to actually reduce the compressor mix in the latter scenario as it seems to hit much harder positioned before the drive pedal!
Fortunately, changing the order in the signal chain and A/Bing settings is dramatically easier with the QC than with physical devices. Scene mode is your friend here with seamless A/B possibilities.
An overdriven / distorted signal is already compressed (because overdrive, distortion, or any other form of clipping basically chops of your transient peaks and therefore reduces the dynamic range), that could be why you have the impression that the comp hits harder if the raw signal is fed into it.