Guitar Pedal Rig
Signal Chain Order:
Compressor ~ Wah/Vol ~ Distortion ~ EQ ~ Reverb/Modulation ~ Looper
The order of effects in audio does matter but there is no wrong answer because it is an art and your ears have the ultimate final say. Here are some possibly wrong signal chains:
- Reverb before distortion probably won't sound good. Distorted reverb will most likely be messy sounding.
- The looper being last makes sense because you would wan't to loop your guitar with processing on. I could also see it being first because then you can mess with effects with an unprocessed guitar sound being a blank canvas, and now you have two free hands and a free mind to turn the knobs.
- EQ should be towards the end, because other effects will change your EQ (matter of fact maybe I should switch the EQ to be after reverb.)
One way of learning art is realizing it is more about probabilities than yes and no answers. Is using reverb before distortion a wrong answer? No. Does it have a high likelihood of sounding unusual and out-of-fashion compared to music on the radio? Yes.