Guitar Pedal Order: The Right Order for Your Effects Pedals

As part of the Six String Sensei Absolute One Stop Guide to the Guitar Pedal Board we take an in-depth look into the correct order for guitar effects pedals.

Last Updated: September 17, 2026.

In our main feature on the guitar pedal board it was mentioned that we had left out two important aspects of setting up a board, these were:

1. Effects pedal order
2. True bypass vs. buffered pedals

Well, let’s get into the topic of pedal order. It doesn’t matter whether you set up your pedals on a board or on the floor, pedal order is still very important. Like many other web and magazine articles on this subject, let’s begin with a disclaimer: There is really no right way of doing things. You can get as creative in the pedal order as you want. But, there are general rules and guidelines to go by that will yield good results because they have been proven to be effective.

For starters, let’s divide the vast array of guitar pedals into four different groups based on their job:

1. Dynamic pedals
2. Distortion and overdrive pedals
3. Modulation pedals
4. Time-based effects

Generally Accepted Best Order for Guitar Pedals

Now, let’s simply spoil the fun and give you the guidelines right away. Generally, you want this order:

1. Wahs, compressors and filters first (dynamic)
2. Distortion and overdrive next
3. Chorus, flanger and phaser effects near the end
4. Delay, reverb pedal, and tremolo at the tail end

Here is a diagram that shows the general order of pedals:

Now that you know the general consensus on proper guitar pedal order, let’s look into more detail as to why. Keep in mind, there are some exceptions, but we’ll get to that.

Dynamic pedals first in line

Near the beginning we said wahs, compressors and filters. While there are arguments as to which of those actually goes first, let me tell you that for the most part, it’s up to you. It really depends on what sound you are looking for. As an example, while many people prefer the wah first in the chain, I actually like to put a buffer pedal and a compressor before it. My Strat is overly bright into my Fulltone Clyde Wah, and a compressor right before the wah tames that a lot. However, I have other wahs that sound fine first in chain. Additionally, while this article recommends you put the wah before the distortion pedals, many guitarists prefer to set those up the other way around. That’s why I keep stressing these are guidelines, not rules written in stone.

The most obvious dynamic pedal is a compressor. While wahs and envelope filters are a little different and in fact are filters rather than dynamic pedals, it’s still safe to bundle them up in this first “dynamic” category. They are generally OK no matter their order as long as they are at the beginning of the chain. At this point it really all depends on which models of these pedals you actually have and how well they go together with the other pedals on your board.

Compressors are a bit like amplifiers. They compress peaks in the signal but also amplify the quiet parts. What that means is that if you place a compressor after a noisy pedal you’re going to end up amplifying that noise. That’s not very good, is it? So logically, a compressor after a distortion pedal is not a very good idea.

But of course, there are exceptions. A compressor can also help tame the upper dynamics, not just the lower amplitude signal. Therefore a compressor can also be placed towards the of the chain, and after overdrives, much like a studio recording compressor. In fact, you could have a compressor at the beginning of the chain and another towards the end serving as a limiter or for overall compression.

There is one more type of pedal that should also go at the beginning. This would be pitch-effect pedals. These could be octavers, pitch-shifters and other such harmonizing pedals. The reason they should go towards the beginning is because they generally track better when they get a signal with less effects. Keep in mind, a compressor before a pitch-shifter can sometimes improve tracking.

Last, but most certainly not least, we have to talk about fuzz pedals. More often than not, these go towards the beginning. The reason is that many fuzz pedals that are based on vintage circuits simply don’t sound that great unless they see the guitar directly. For this reason, find out what you have first. If it’s a vintage-style fuzz that uses a germanium transistor, it’s best to have it before everything. Possibly even before the wah. On the other hand, if you have a 4-transistor fuzz pedal like an Electro-Harmonix Big Muff, or one of the many variants, you can even get away with putting that after the overdrives if you’d like.

Distortion and Overdrive Near the Middle

Distortion and overdrive units usually go after the dynamic pedals because they change the harmonic content of whatever comes before them. They overdrive, and therefore amplify, the sound that comes before them. Good dynamic pedals such as a Keeley Compressor or an Empress ParaEQ are quiet pedals that don’t color the signal or add noise. When you feed one of these into a good distortion pedal you help fatten up the resulting distortion sound and you don’t have to worry about amplified noise for the most part. Any small amount of noise would be masked by the distortion itself. Obviously, very high gain pedals will be a bit noisier.

When it comes to how the compressor interacts with overdrive or distortion, you will commonly find that many guitarists use compression for cleans, and to a lesser degree for overdrive. But most guitarists seem to prefer turning off the compressor for high gain distortion, because these pedals already compress the tone quite a lot.

Like I said earlier, some guitarists love putting the wah after the distortion pedal. Some will put a distortion pedal before the wah and then an overdrive after the wah. If you turn on the distortion pedal that’s before the wah you’ll get a much more pronounced and dirty wah sound. You can then use the overdrive that’s after the wah, such as an Ibanez TS808, BOSS SD-1 or MXR Duke of Tone for example, to boost that tone further. However, if you want to go back to a slighty cleaner distorted wah, just turn off the distortion pedal that’s before it and increase the amount of distortion in the overdrive pedal that’s after the wah. I know, it can get confusing.

As you can see, the possibilities are endless. I personally run a wah, then a low gain overdrive such as a Greer Lightspeed and then follow with a higher gain distortion like a Friedman BE-OD. On more complex setups, my preference is to go with three overdrives after the wah, from low to high in the amount of gain. I used to run the low gain overdrive after the distortion to help boost it without adding additional compression. But lately, it just makes sense to me to go from low to high. It’s easy to remember that sequence. One good example would be to go from a BOSS SD-1, into a BOSS BD-2W Blues Driver set a little hotter, and then into a JHS Hard Drive or Empress Heavy Menace for the screaming high gain tones. Another great example would be a Greer Lightspeed into a BE-OD Deluxe. The BE-OD Deluxe carries a mid-gain circuit and high gain circuit in that order, but you can only use one at a time.

Modulation Modules

Modulation pedals tend to affect the guitar signal overall – In other words, as a whole. They will take your entire sound and process it and mold it to whatever the pedal is designed to do. For this reason they tend to work better after the distortion pedals. While there are some occasions where a flanger or chorus before a distortion pedal can yield cool results, the consensus seems to be that they are best after distortion. For this very reason, like the time-based effects, modulation pedals tend to work well in the amplifier’s effects loop, after the preamp – which is usually responsible for distortion applied in the amp.

Common modulation pedals are flanger, chorus and phaser pedals.  Many people consider tremolos to be modulation pedals. However, due to the fact they alter then guitar signal’s level or amplitude at whatever rate you set it to and not the tone itself, I consider it more of a time-based effect like a delay. Tremolos are usually set to work with a song’s tempo, just like a delay. But, it really doesn’t matter too much what it is, it still belongs near the end of the chain somewhere. If you put the tremolo before the reverb, then the volume cutoffs will still allow reverberation between the tremolo pulses. If you put the tremolo AFTER the reverb, then the tremolo will eat up the reverberation between pulses for a more pronounced and obvious tremolo effect. As you can see, it’s up to you to decide what you want to hear.

There is one very common exception to the modulation rule, and it’s the vibe pedals. A vibe (from Uni-Vibe) is very similar to a chorus pedal and a cousin to the vibrato pedal. It’s extremely common to see the vibes placed at the beginning of the chain, before fuzz or distortion. Personally like my Strymon UltraViolet vibe after compression and after my fuzz, but before overdrives and distortion.

Time-Based Effects and Reverb Ambiance

These effects, generally delay and reverb, work better at the end of the chain. They also affect the entire signal and sometimes very dramatically. If they are placed before a distortion pedal, the result can often be a jumbled up mess that can be hard to describe as music. This is the reason why when you connect a pedalboard to an amp’s front input and run the distortion in the amp, the sound becomes a muddy mess if the delay and reverb are on. If you input your delay and reverb into the front of the amp as opposed to using the amp’s effects loop, it is usually better to use a pedal for distortion instead of the amp’s preamp distortion. Obviously, if you are driving a small amp really hard and getting power amp distortion, or even speaker breakup, the results can be dramatically different. So everything you learn here must be brought to the real world and tested in your given situation to see what works best for you. Not to mention, there are certain genres of guitar music that rely on feeding reverb into a distortion or fuzz. Shoegaze is a classic example.

Another way of looking at time-based effects is as ambiance effects. Imagine bringing your guitar and amp into a cave, or maybe a large auditorium. You play in there and your sound bounces off the walls and comes back at you modified. You’ll hear the echoes of the room. Now imagine that’s the job of your delay and reverb pedals. They mostly should give you the sound of a room, big or small, in the form of reverb or echoes. Then logically, they must come in last, just like the room, auditorium (or cave) hears your sound last before feeding it back to you.

These days pedal manufacturers know this and provide pedals that have stereo outputs. These stereo-output pedals are usually the choruses, delays and reverbs because they know they will likely be last in the chain before you feed the signal to two separate amps for a stereo sound. If you link pedals with stereo inputs and outputs that’s even better. You’re not forced to put the chorus last, or the delay last just because one of them may have stereo outputs but no stereo inputs. With stereo inputs and outputs you could feed a stereo chorus into a stereo delay and then into a stereo reverb. Or you could switch them around to your heart’s content. But beware, not all pedals that have stereo inputs are actually true stereo. I’ve found a couple of pedals actually sum your stereo signal back to mono before outputting another stereo signal. There is a plethora of stereo time-based effects to choose from. You could do something like run a Stryfecta – Strymon Mobius, into a TimeLine (or TimeLine MX), into a BigSky (or BigSky MX). Another option would be to run an Eventide H9 Gen 2 for modulation, into a Source Audio Nemesis Delay ADT, and feed that into a Source Audio Ventris, all in true-stereo.

Amplifier Effects Loop

I briefly touched on the effects loop earlier in this article, but let me elaborate a little more.

Guitar amplifiers usually have two amplifier sections: The first section is the preamp, which takes your guitar signal and amplifies it slightly and shapes it to make it ready for the power amp. The power amp then takes that signal and amplifies it loudly to then send it out the speakers. In between the preamp and power amp there is a series of circuits that essentially mold the preamp-amplified signal. These are the equalizer controls you see so commonly in amps. In this middle section you will also find any amplifier onboard effects such as tremolo, delay and reverb. Well, in this middle section, after the preamp and EQ, many amps have an effects loop as well. This effects loop is nothing more than an output and an input so you can patch the pre-amped signal back out of the amp into more effects pedals or an effects rack, and then feed it back into the amp before it’s hit by the power amp and out the speakers.

There are many reasons for using the effects loop (although some guitarists do not like it at all), but the main reason is because often you’ll want to use an amplifier’s preamp distortion. If you connect all your pedals before the preamp, the preamp distortion will likely make a mess out of your sound. However, if you patch certain pedals into the effects loop, you can take advantage of the amp’s preamp distortion and use your pedals for final effects before the signal is amplified to come out your speaker cabinet.

I have a few amps whose preamp distortion I love. Some examples are the Mesa Mark V:35 and the Friedman JJ Jr. I like to take advantage of the amp’s preamp distortion, therefore I usually plug my modulation and time-based effects into the effects loop. Keep in mind that some pedals don’t like being in the effects loop. These are rare, but it’s important you are aware of that possibility. Additionally, some pedals and amp effects loops simply don’t match up well due to differences in circuit levels. This could be due to the differences between instrument and line level effects loops or the fact that some are series loops while others are parallel loops.

One more thing to keep in mind is A/D/A conversion. What I’m talking about here is analog to digital to analog conversion. This happens because most modern modulation and time-based effects are digital. The signal needs to be converted from analog to digital, then back to analog again. Some of these units keep an analog dry-through signal untouched and pass it along. So the ADA conversion only shows up in how much wet signal you add. However, some digital effects do not offer an analog dry-through and the entire signal passes through the ADA converters. The reason I mention this is because some high distortion amps respond a little negatively to ADA signal with no analog dry-through. Many guitarists will say they can’t notice a difference. However, on some setups I can definitely hear the difference.

Guitar Pedal Order Exceptions

Some pedals don’t have a fixed spot.  These you can experiment with, although some models tend to have general guidelines as to where they should be placed.

EQ pedals: Equalizer pedals are very often placed right after distortion and before modulation effects. This is a lot like an amplifier’s EQ section, as it sits after the preamp and before any onboard modulation effects and the power amp. In some cases though, it can be used before overdrives to help shape the signal before it is overdriven. In this location, it can also be used to boost the signal going into the overdrives, or as a mid boost to help increase break-up. EQ can also work to help boost low output guitar pickups.

Tuner: This is arguably the most important pedal on your board. Given it makes no sound, you have to think about practicality in regards to placement. Most guitarists put it towards the beginning of the pedal board. The main reason for this is that you’re not affecting the signal before it with pedals you have on often. If you have pedals before the tuner, you may have to turn them off before tuning. I say “may” because a compressor or an EQ tend to not affect a tuning pedal negatively, but an overdrive can.

The are other practical things to consider. If your tuner pedal includes a buffer, you many have to place it after your fuzz. In which case, you’ll need to turn off the fuzz to tune. On the other hand, that same buffer can be used to help drive the signal chain throughout the pedalboard when the other pedals, assuming they are true-bypass pedals, are off.

There is one good reason to put a tuner after overdrives. Most tuners mute the signal. A tuner after overdrives can serve as a handy way to mute a noisy signal chain coming from hot overdrive or distortion pedals. You would still need to turn those guys off in order to tune, but throughout a set, the tuner can act as a practical mute switch.

Some tuners can be set to true-bypass. These could potentially be used anywhere in the chain, but placing one of those before a fuzz could make it so that you can tune with zero problems even if the fuzz is on.

Volume pedals: This is another pedal that can be placed in various locations. The most common location seems to be after all your dry effects, but right before modulation, delay and reverb. This is because you can keep a steady and full volume signal feeding into all your dry effects pedals before the signal is then affected by the volume pedal. Placing the delay and reverb after the volume pedal allows the tails of your sound to carry on when you turn the volume down. If you want to be able to completely and utterly shut your guitar up so that you can’t even hear the tails of delay and reverb, then place the volume pedal after those units.

Tremolo pedals: A tremolo is sort of like an automatic volume pedal that affects the sound much like a strobe to make it sound choppy and staggered. A tremolo tends to sound better near the end of the chain, and in my opinion, better if it’s right at the end so it can chop up reverb so that the quiet parts of the tremolo pulses are completely quiet. However, one thing you could do is place the tremolo before the reverb and delay and simply not run them at the same time. Doing that will allow you to every once in a while have the strange effect of reverb in between the tremolo bursts – best of both worlds. And even if you like to run your tremolo into a reverb and run them both at the same time, that’s fine too. It’s just that the tremolo sound will be less pronounced that way.

Looper pedals: In the simplest of terms, loopers record your guitar signal and play it back on repeat. This allows you to play on top of your original passage to allow for an effect that sounds like you have two guitars playing at once. These pedals can go before or after delays and reverb. If you place one before time-based effects, you can make it so that the passages blend into each other a bit more smoothly. But, depending on the sound you are after you might want to have the looper after the time-based effects in order to record those as well. All that said, I feel a looper should generally be at the very end, even after reverb.

Below are a few alternatives for wah placement.

Conclusion

There are many other guitar effect pedals that can provide very complex sound arrangements. I can’t cover them all in one article. Generally the biggest defining factor is how a specific effect interacts with distortion. By using your ears you can test a pedal in various locations and decide which works best for you.

You should use the guidelines provided in this feature as rules of thumb, but please feel free to experiment. Chances are, you’ll find something that you like that defines your sound. Have fun experimenting!

As mentioned in Part 1 and at the start of this article, there is still one last thing related to pedalboards that we need to discuss: Buffered vs true-bypass pedals.

Still Need a Pedalboard?

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To get your guitar pedals in order, you’re still going to need a pedal board. I’ll recommend one I actually like. This one allows you to change its size as your pedal collection increases: