Pedalboards (like our Doppler Pedalboard) are intended to serve as a resource for the performer, so they can comfortably access their effects at the same time that they can transport them easily and safely.

Pedalboards are among the most precious assets of musicians since they contain the different effects that allow them to achieve their desired sound simply and safely. 

Namely, they are worth learning about in order to get the most out of them on stage and save a lot of time connecting and attaching effects to power or amplifiers.

Why a pedalboard?

Pedalboards offer many benefits, among the most important being the ability to protect effects from any physical damage or site conditions by keeping them attached to a frame. Models like the pedalboards with gig bags do this since they take advantage of interior space to install the power supply and hide all the wiring.

But, it must be taken into account that the order of the effects will also have a lot to do with the efficiency of this distribution, and it is related to the connections between them. The pedalboards include in their documentation information on how to connect the pedals efficiently, but here the explanations regarding the order of the effects are spared so that the installation task is simple.

Order of the effects

Although this aspect becomes more specific to each player, it is possible to optimize the connections of the effects to obtain the maximum performance of each one and avoid strange noises or loss in gain.

Dynamic effects

The effects in charge of controlling the intensity of the instrument sounds will be the first to be considered and before this, the pitch and volume. The effects that belong to this family are fuzz, overdrive and distortion in general. The order in which these effects are connected to each other will depend on each person’s taste, but all within this stage, since it is the one that will add more character to the sound and will control the tones as well as the gain delivery to face the other stages.

Modulation effects

Modulations are all those effects that manipulate copies of the input signal on itself with all kinds of frequency or amplitude filters. The pedals that are part of this family are the phaser, flanger, YA, chorus, and pitch. At this stage is where the nuance of the instrument’s sound is obtained, where a complex signal that is personalized is achieved.

Time effects

Time effects are all those that use time parameters for their execution, among these are considered delay and reverberations that produce the final shape of the sound, added to the fact that they generate different signals in consideration of the incoming ones, something that results in very characteristic sounds and capable of being used in stereo spaces. 

However, there are effects on the market that combine aspects of modulations as a function of time, this makes them time effects, so they will also be considered in the final stage of the chain of effects.

So, it’s very tempting to use time effects in the modulation chain to get even more complex sounds, but this could backfire, but if any experiment results in something useful will be considered a good one, so ideally you’ll want to start at the search for one’s own sound.

The size of the pedalboard will depend on the number of effects to be used, with the largest ones having a capacity of up to 12 pedals, so at some point, you will find yourself needing to be more selective with the effects.