My First Pedalboard!

I was just revisiting @JoshFossgreen 's signal chain, and noticed he has the tuner last. I have my tuner first in the chain. I always thought the tuner was supposed to be first so it’s unaffected by effects. Am I wrong?

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The nice Amazon man brought me this today. When I had the Zoom, I didn’t need a power supply, but now that I’m rebuilding the pedalboard with individual pedals, it’s necessary.
The nice thing is, it fits neatly underneath my board, completely out of sight. I just feed the power cables through the holes in the board and plug them in to the pedals.
Thanks for the recommendation @T_dub

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That’s what I’ve always read, but I guess if all the effects before it are on bypass, it probably doesn’t matter in reality too much?

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Not if you turn them all off. It just makes sense to me to put the tuner first and not have to think about that.

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Yes agreed, and by having it first, it also gives me a quick way to mute the signal to the chain.

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YUP! That’s what I do too

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The thing about the Tuner first, for some people, especially those playing with a passive bass is, that good tuners, like the Boss TU-2, or the TC Electronics PolyTune, among others, is that they are buffered, or can be buffered bypass.
If you have a pedal chain of all Tru Bypass, it is good to have one buffered to eliminate Humm. There is a more electrical explanation for it, but I know without a buffer, you would hear a lot of noise.
If has also been recommended by others that the buffer be the first pedal.
This is the technical reason for having the tuner first.

I actually sold my tuner, I use my Zoom MS-60B, and I have the noise gate as a buffer.

Also notice in Josh’s chain, he doesn’t have an overdrive listed.
I put my OD and Fuzz pedals first, then my Octave pedal.
Since getting the Alpha omega, and it having an EQ, I am going to re-route it first, then the other drive pedals, then the octave, then follow the same path he has. But I don’t have a Synth or delay,
and my WireTap is not a permanent fixture on my board like his looper is, but I can put it in front, if I want to play things thru the effects and dial them in based on a riff, or I can run it at the end to capture something I want to record for later.

Also, I run my Noise Gate first instead of tuner, looped out to San June Compressor - Boss Bass Compressor - Plumes OD and Big Muff Fuzz - back to the noise gate.
This gives me silence when I am not playing, but everything is on.
plus
remember, I use the noise gate because I MOSTLY play with headphones, and often have the bass around my neck, the pedals on, and am typing, or messing with GB settings, and stuff, so the humm and hiss in my ear is very annoying.
If I were playing a few feet from my bass, I might ever notice the humm or hiss, especially if I had a buffered tuner first in the chain, so the noise gate is not mandatory, or even a rule, where the buffered first pedal is more rule of thumb, as I have learned so far.

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Yeah, I have the PolyTune 3 for my tuner.

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Different signal paths for different folks. :stuck_out_tongue: Having the tuner first is good for that reason, if you need to tune with effects still running.

The advantage of running it at the end is you can use it as a master pedalboard mute, in case any delay oscillations or reverbs get out of control and you just need a big red STOP button. The drawback is you have to turn off effects to tune, which I’ve never had an issue with running my board this way - maybe I’d feel different if I was playing with a band with a super super tight set with minimal breaks between songs.

The Chase Bliss Brothers was my gain pedal on that board. You might wanna try running your octave before drive, otherwise most of the drive gets swallowed up in the octave stage (since the octave sound on an analog octave is actually being triggered by the pedal, not directly coming from the input sound). Unless that’s what you’re going for - I know Tim Lefevbre is/was into the Way Huge Pork Loin before the Boss OC-2 octave to send a super compressed signal into the octave, probably helps with tracking on the sustain.

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Yeah, I mainly went drive prior to Octave so I don’t run the Octave in the Noise Gate loop, and It is still a very rough draft pedal board, lots of options.
I usually only slightly drive the signal when playing with the octave so far, not really distorting or fuzzing it out yet, so it has sounded good this way, but will see how it goes when I crank up the drive and add some octave, might need to reverse it then, or come out with some really tweakd sounds???

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Definitely octave before drive for me.

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Erik Arko’s response to a perfect metal pedalboard challenge :slight_smile:

It’s a lot of Darkglass, unsurprisingly, but I can’t really argue. Short and to the point too.

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that’s the same tuner I have (Korg Pitchblack)

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I love that that’s the only non-DG on the board :slight_smile:

Nice Microtubes X tone there. I really love the thing.

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Here’s where I am right now with my pedalboard. I really like the warm vintage sounds and I enjoy the Tech21 BDDI.


I didn’t find it necessary to mount everything on a board yet though.
My next step is to tackle overdrive and distortion. If only there wasn’t so much choice :dizzy_face:
The Fur Coat is there because I wanted it, not that I would need it :joy:

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nice gear you have here :grin: are you happy with the switching Harley Benton PSU ? when I ordered mine I hesitated between one of this range, or a full galvanic isolated PSU (which I choose finally)

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I don’t notice any noise linked to the PSU and at least the 9V-300 mA outputs should be individually isolated if I am to believe the description. The fact that it lacks an ON/OFF switch is a little downside though.
There’s enough noise on the board already when I switch on the Fur Coat or push the OptoComp output level to the max :sweat_smile:
It was the 2020 Bass PreAmp Shootout thread that made me pick the BDDI. Even though I really like the DG pedals, they sound really cold. Still considering them for overdrive/distortion though :thinking:

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just grab an inline switch of azon. or plug it into a small power strip with a switch.

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That’s what I did :wink:

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yeah I have the same lack of power switch on my Power Plant JR PSU, I plan to add one ! great if your switching PSU is quiet !

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