Signal chain
Pedalboard signal chain order: the convention, and the reasons
There is a usual order for pedals. It is a convention, not a rule, and every part of it has a reason you can hear by dragging a pedal somewhere else.
The convention
The short version
Instrument, then the pedals that need to hear the instrument clearly (a tuner, a pitch or octave pedal, a wah, a compressor), then the pedals that distort (overdrive, fuzz), then the ones that colour the result (EQ, phaser, chorus, flanger, tremolo), then the ones that repeat it in time (delay, then reverb), then the amplifier and its speaker.
That is the convention. It is what most boards look like and it is a good place to start, but it is a habit and not a law of physics, and the guide this page relies on says so itself: GuitarPlayer’s guide to pedal order (by Alex Lynham, last updated 25 March 2026, read 2026-09-28) calls pedal order “a hotly contested topic” and says of its own rules that “even these conventions aren’t set in stone”.
Why order matters at all
Because most pedals are not interchangeable steps. A filter followed by a delay gives the same result as the delay followed by the filter. But a pedal that clips, or one that reacts to level, gives a result that depends on exactly what arrives at its input, so whatever comes before it changes what it does. An overdrive fed a delay’s repeats clips the note and its echoes together, as one signal. A delay fed an overdrive repeats a note that has already been clipped. Same pedals, same settings, different sound.
Does the order change the sound? Measured
- The same two pedals with the same settings, in the two possible orders, rendered from the same second of the plucked string: 74.9% of the output samples differed, by as much as 0.647 of full scale. [as described]
Rendered in an OfflineAudioContext at 48,000 Hz in Chrome/154.0.8037.58, 2026-09-29 01:07 UTC. The test is work the page’s builder ran, not something your browser does when you open this page.
The general principle
The guide puts it in one sentence: “effects that add harmonic content work well towards the start of a chain, while those that manipulate frequencies in the signal – i.e. modulation pedals – are better placed towards the end.” Distortion makes harmonics; a phaser or a flanger carves notches into whatever harmonics it is given. Carving first and distorting afterwards mostly fills the notches back in.
Pedal by pedal
The order, pedal by pedal
All 15 pedals, in the order this board’s default uses. Where the guide gives a pedal a place, that is the place and the quotation is the guide’s. Where it does not, the position is this board’s choice and the reason given is one you can test on the board.
Tuner
It measures a period, and every pedal changes the waveform. First in line it is given the instrument and nothing else.
Position: this board’s own default. The guide does not place this pedal.
Noise gate
Here it decides on the instrument’s own level. The other usual place is after the drive pedals, where it closes on the hiss they amplify. Try both: they are different gates.
Position: this board’s own default. The guide does not place this pedal.
Octave
The guide puts pitch shifters first, and says pedals that must follow a note need “a clear, strong signal”. This one counts cycles, and distortion gives it more to miscount.
Position: the convention, as the guide gives it.
Wah
The guide puts the wah early, “in front of the drive block”. There it chooses what the drive is given. After a fuzz it sweeps across the fuzz’s harmonics, which the guide also describes.
Position: the convention, as the guide gives it.
Compressor
The guide gives two places: the very start, or the very end. Early, it evens out what every later pedal receives. After a drive, its make-up gain lifts the drive’s hiss with everything else.
Position: the convention, as the guide gives it.
Overdrive
The guide: “Overdrive should come early in your chain.” It is a curve, and what it does depends on the level and the spectrum of what reaches it, so everything before it matters and everything after it is applied to the result.
Position: the convention, as the guide gives it.
Fuzz
The guide says fuzz belongs at the very beginning or very early, because many fuzz circuits expect a pickup’s impedance. That reason does not exist in a browser. The guide also notes that players stack fuzz after other drives for a thicker sound, which is this order.
Position: the convention, as the guide gives it.
EQ
After the drives it shapes the distorted sound. Before them it would change which part of the signal distorts. Both are in use; the guide does not give the EQ a place.
Position: this board’s own default. The guide does not place this pedal.
Phaser
The guide says phasers and flangers “benefit from coming after an overdrive or fuzz”. A notch has more to remove from a signal that distortion has filled with harmonics.
Position: the convention, as the guide gives it.
Chorus
With the modulation, after the drive. Before a drive, the chorus’s two slightly different pitches are distorted together, and the drive produces the beating between them as tones of its own.
Position: the convention, as the guide gives it.
Flanger
With the phaser, and for the same reason: a comb needs a full spectrum to be heard.
Position: the convention, as the guide gives it.
Tremolo
The guide places modulation towards the end. After the drive, tremolo moves the level of the finished sound. Before it, tremolo moves how hard the drive is hit.
Position: the convention, as the guide gives it.
Delay
The guide: delays come after the drive block “in 99% of cases”. Before a drive, the repeats and the notes played over them are clipped together.
Position: the convention, as the guide gives it.
Reverb
The guide: reverb “usually comes at the end of a chain”, where it covers everything before it, as a room would.
Position: the convention, as the guide gives it.
Cabinet
A speaker is the last thing in a guitar’s signal path. Everything else is heard through it.
Position: this board’s own default. The guide does not place this pedal.
Source for the convention: GuitarPlayer’s guide to pedal order, read 2026-09-28. EQ placement: Wikibooks, “Guitar/Effects Pedals” (revision 4531572), read 2026-09-28.
Method
What is computed, and what is read.
Computed here, nothing fetched
Every sound on these pages is computed in your browser by the Web Audio API: 9 of the 15 pedals are graphs of the engine’s standard nodes, 5 are AudioWorklet processors, the wah is both, and the 3 test signals are synthesized sample by sample. No recording is loaded and no data feed is read. The one request the board’s own scripts make is for their AudioWorklet module, a file on labs.llc; the pitch detector is the one the Tuner uses.
Every effect was rendered offline with a known signal and measured: 73 of 73 checks came out as described. Nothing was tested on a real instrument or audio interface, only one browser was used, and nobody listened: the tests measure numbers, not tone. The method, the table of checks and what the latency figures mean are on the about page.
Sources
The W3C Web Audio API 1.1 and Media Capture and Streams specifications (W3C Document License); RFC 9110 and RFC 3986 for the share link’s fragment; GuitarPlayer’s guide to pedal order, quoted briefly; Wikibooks, “Guitar/Effects Pedals”; and each effect’s English Wikipedia article at a named revision (CC BY-SA). All read 2026-09-28; none is fetched by the page.
What happens to what you play
Audio from your input goes into the audio graph and out to your output device, and nowhere else: it is not recorded, stored or sent. Presets and the board as you left it stay in this browser’s local storage. A share link carries the board after the #, which browsers do not send to servers.