Pedal Order: Our Work is not in Vain

Alright. So I bet you saw the title of this post and thought, “Oh crap. Another pedal order blog post from some punk. He thinks he knows something. I bet he thinks he can teach me something. How DARE he.” I’m here to rewrite your opinion of pedal order posts. Because frankly, I don’t care one second how you order your pedals. Thanks to a friend of mine, I now put my drives before my volume; but if you put your drives at the end of your chain I’ll still be more concerned with how intensely you worship and love the Creator. So let’s start with a verse.


“Therefore, my dear brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the Lord’s work, knowing that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” -1 Cor. 15:58

Our Labor is not in Vain

I use the above Scripture in the context of lead guitar because I’m very well aware of how bothersome, tiresome, and just plain time-consuming the upkeep of pedals, guitars, and pedalboard reorder could be. Sometimes people touch the gain knobs on my Fireant and I don’t have a picture to return them to their former glory. Oh! What about when you show up late to Sunday morning practice and no sound comes out of your setup (Is it your solderless cables? Is it your vintage Ibanez tube screamer giving out? Maybe it’s just hot…)? That’s always fun. This verse is an unbelievable encouragement to me when I’m ready to give up on music, God, and worship. Our labor in the Lord is not in vain. Brothers- we don’t play lead guitar for no reason. We play and struggle and empty our pockets so that we may decrease and He may increase. How immeasurable the honor that God has given us, that we may carry His name and lift Him up!

Pedal Order

So, as I aforementioned, I’m not too concerned with your pedal order. This is just the way I do things:

Compression- VERY FIRST. No buts, if, ands, or ors.

Drives- Start with the lowest gain pedal, which for me is the EHX Soul Food. I use this as a clean tone enhancer with just the slightest bit of clipping. Next is my Fulltone OCD, which when runs after my Soul Food gets a sick overdriven clip. Third and lastly is my Tortuga FX Fireant. It has three levels of clipping (distortion, overdrive, germanium) and the option to select between two gain levels. I rarely use the Fireant.

Octave- This is the effect I’m most flexible about. I think octave generators (particularly the Micro POG) sound incredible after drives, in delay fx loops, or frankly at the end of the entire chain. Put it anywhere, my friends.

Volume- I use (believe it or not) the Ernie Ball VP Jr. And if you wanted me to get more stereotypical, I got it JHS modded*. It’s nothing special. I wouldn’t particularly recommend it, and I also wouldn’t trash it. But if you’ve got money, buy any given Goodrich pedal steel volume pedal.

Modulation- I like to put envelope filters, tremolo, wah, and rotary here. When I swell my signal in, which is often, I don’t like the way envelope filters and (auto)wah affects my tone before the volume pedal. When they are after the volume pedal, they are less pronounced and obnoxious. As for trem, stutter, and rotary, I like the warmth of the sound after my volume pedal.

Delay- Ummmmmm…. I don’t have much to say about delay signal. If you put it after all the above effects, the effects get delayed. Oh and for all of you who use two delays, I personally would put the lesser of the two in front of the larger one. For instance, I would put the EHX Memory Boy before my Strymon Timeline.

Delay (FX Loop)- I put choruses, phasers, and flangers in my Strymon Timeline FX Loop. It’s also cool to put octaves here. One time I was recording a slide pedal steel sound and decided to put a high gain in the FX loop, and it blew me away. Last, and most important, do not- I repeat DO NOT put an auto-wah in the FX loop. The wah will make the delay start self-oscillating and screaming. You, as I, very clearly do not want this. Neither does the rest of the praise team.

In between my delay and reverb I have a This1smyne mute switch. Everybody needs one. It's incredibly cool. Here, buy one: http://this1smyne.com/shop/ms-mini-stutta-pedal/

Reverb- Last but not least, put your reverb LAST in the chain if you’re using delay. Seriously. I am not flexible on this. If you are using any sort of delay, at all, do not put your reverb beforehand. If your reverb has an FX loop, by all means use it. Otherwise, seriously make this your last effect.


Thanks y’all. Have a Happy New Year.


* A word about JHS pedals. I have had incredibly poor communication and experience with this company. When I got my Ernie Ball modded, it was sent back to me with a broken string. I sent it back well over two weeks ago and have not even received confirmation that they have my pedal. On the website, they say the pedal takes only a week to do the MOD, never mind a simple STRING REPLACEMENT. Because of this poor communication, I am not a big fan of JHS and this blog will reflect that.