 Hello everyone and welcome to Blackstar Potential. My name is Lee Fuge and I'm here today with MGRmusic.com and in this video we're going to be talking about pedals. More specifically, the order you guys should run your pedals in to get the best sound from your Blackstar amp. The amp I'm going to be using in this video is the Blackstar Studio 10 6L6 because I've got some of the pedals going into the front end and some into the effects loop. If you don't have an amp with an effects loop that's okay. These principles can still apply, you just have to run everything into the front end. But don't forget before we get started using pedals is entirely subjective. So the order you put these in is really just down to your own preferences. This video is just designed to give you some tips and tricks to get started with. So you've got a bunch of pedals, you've got your Blackstar amp, here's how to connect it all together and get some great tones. So I'm going to be talking about a couple of different effects types today. So over here I've got a bunch of pedals on top of the amp. I've got a clean boost, an overdrive, a modulation pedal, a delay pedal and a reverb. So currently the way this is set up is the clean boost and the overdrive are going into the front of the amp and the modulation delay and reverb are going into the loop. There's a reason for this which we will talk about when we get to that section of the video. So let's start by looking at the gain section of my pedal board. So that is the clean boost and the overdrive. Now I've set this up with the clean boost right at the front of the chain and the reason I've done that is because I want it to boost my input signal. So my guitar is going straight into the amp currently with nothing on. So here's how that sounds. So it's a very, very clean but dry tone. So I'm not using the amp reverb for this either and I've got the tone control of the amp set straight up the middle as well. I want the sound to be as neutral as possible. So the clean boost's purpose here is to boost my input signal. Now I've got the clean boost set quite low. All I want here is a subtle volume lift and just to push the preamp just slightly. I just want to bring a little bit of coloration into my tone. So you can hear as I was switching that clean boost on and off it was just pushing the amp a little bit more. It was adding a little bit of brightness because this does have a top boost as well but it wasn't bringing any drive in. Now personally I love a clean boost at the start of the chain just to add a little bit of sparkle to the guitar just lifts up the input signal just a touch more. This is great because all the pedals you put in your chain will react to each other. So the way I set this up which is this way is my clean boost will now interact with my overdrive. So because the clean boost is boosting the input signal that will hit the overdrive pedal a little harder as well. It would give me a completely different drive texture. Now if I turn the overdrive pedal on what I'm going to hear is just a bit of overdrive. So I'm not boosting this currently I'm just putting the overdrive into the clean amp. So as expected it gives us a little bit of break up. Now I've obviously got this set very very low just for a hint of break up there. Now if I want more gain there's two things I could do. I could either run the pedal with more gain so I could turn this up like so. Well the other thing I could do is keep the gain low but use a clean boost. So I'm going to now use the boost here to hit the front of the pedal harder. So this is going to give me a little bit more drive because I'm pushing the front end of the overdrive. So running a boost into an overdrive is a very very common use for this kind of setup. Now the other way we can do this is we can flip these two pedals around so the boost comes second to the drive. So let's take a look at that. Okay so now I've reversed those two pedals so the overdrive is first and the boost is second. So what can we expect from this setup? Well individually the pedals are going to do the same thing. If I run just the overdrive it's going to give me overdrive and if I run just the boost it's going to give me a clean boost. The interesting thing here is the way they work together. Now because the boost is now after the overdrive we're not going to get any additional gain from the overdrive pedal but we are going to get is volume. This is great if you're playing with a cranked amp because the boost will actually give the amp more preamp distortion. Obviously at the volume I'm recording this that we're not going to get too much of that but a gig volume you would definitely get it. So if I turn the overdrive on and then I add the clean boost in what we're going to hear is a louder version of the same signal because the boost is after the overdrive it's also going to bring a little bit of its own EQ to this as well. So like I said this has a top boost so it's going to get a little bit brighter. If you're using a clean boost which doesn't impart any of its own EQ then obviously it's just going to make your existing signal louder. So you can hear that volume lift there. This is great for guitar solos because sometimes you just want your guitar to jump out in the mix. A clean boost after your drive section will definitely give you that lift. If you're going to be applying this principle with multiple overdrive pedals then check out the video on the Blackstar YouTube channel where I talk about gain staging. This is basically a principle of how you can make each gain pedal cascade into the next one and in that video I talk about a couple of different types of drive and the way you can use them in order with each other starting with the lowest gain at the front end like a clean boost up to the highest gain at the end like a full distortion or a fuzz. But remember with fuzz certain fuzz is like to be at the front of the chain certain fuzz is like to be anywhere else you want to put them. So again this is all subjective and it's a lot of trial and error. Personally for me I prefer a clean boost right at the start into my overdrives but that's just the way I like it because it just adds that sparkle. So as you can see I've now reset that so the clean boost is at the front just because like I said that's the way I prefer the sound. Now let's talk about the modulation and time base section. So I've got a multi modulation pedal here which can do anything from a chorus to a phaser to a rotary speaker. So I'm going to use it on a rotary setting just for example but obviously this applies to any modulation sound. That goes into a delay and that goes into a reverb. These effects are all running into the loop of the amp so what that means for the signal flow is my guitar goes into my drive section which is my clean boost and my overdrive. That thing goes into the amp which hits the amp's preamp circuit. The preamp circuit does its job which is apply the drive from the preamp tubes and the tone section so obviously the tone stack of the EQ. That then goes to the power amp. But the effects loop sits between these two things so after these two pedals have gone through the preamp stage they then come out of the effects loop send which comes into here that then passes through these two pedals and it goes back into the FX loop return and then it hits the power amp. So there's also a video where I talk in much more depth about why you would want to use the effects loop of your amp but in short if you're using modulation and time based effects many players prefer the sound of them after the preamp. This means that the preamp circuit of the amp isn't going to affect the tone or the gain structure of your modulation pedals. This is especially true if you're running things like a reverb or a delay because if you're running a reverb at the front of the chain let's imagine your guitar's going into the reverb which is then going into the amp which is already distorted because the amp is distorted you're then adding distortion to the reverb signal. What you really want to do is you want to add reverb to the distortion signal so you're putting the distorted sound into a space not putting the space into distortion. So let's start off by talking about modulation so the first thing I'm going to do is just play with a rotary speaker style simulator so I'll just kick that on. This is going through the loop like I said so what we're going to hear is the preamp of the amp plus these pedals in the front into the modulation effect which is in the effects loop which then goes back to the power amp. So with the modulation in that position I get a very clean sounding modulation even when I add gain at the front end from the boost section the modulation is still uncolored by the preamp of the amplifier. If the modulation was running into the front and the amp was distorted this doesn't apply so much if the amp is clean but if the amp was distorted I'm obviously hitting the distorted sound with a pre-modulated sound because I'm modulating the guitar signal and then going into the driven amp. Obviously if you run your amp clean that doesn't really matter so much you can get away with putting whatever you want in the front. The effects loop is especially useful when you're using a driven amp. So next up we'll look at the delay so I'll turn the delay on obviously in the loop this is going to give me a very clean repeat. So with the delay in the loop we get a real pristine sounding delay sound even when I added all the drive at the front end the repeats are still crystal clear. Same is true for reverb so if I turn the reverb on I'm now applying reverb after the preamp section. So what that does is it puts my tone in a space before I hit the power amp section. This like I said is great if you're using a distorted amp because you don't want to put the space into the distortion sound you want to put the distortion sound into the space. Now let's talk about why I've run these pedals in this order. So you can really run these things anywhere you want. It doesn't really make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things like I said it's all subjective and it's all about what inspires you to play better. But I've got these in this specific order modulation delay reverb for a reason. The reason I've gone with is consistency of tone. So the way I see this is I want my clean signal to be affected by my drive section. This gives me all the drive tones I need that then goes into my amp's preamp which gives me the amp tone that I'm looking for. So my tone comes from a combination of this section of the pedalboard and the amplifier. Then I see this section as like an additional layer. So the things I want to add to my tone to enhance it or to change it slightly. The modulation I have here because I find that this is the best place in my opinion for modulation to go. I've already set my tone up with the right amount of drive or the right amount of boost. Now I want to add something to it. So I might want to add chorus to my clean tone or phaser to my distorted tone. It's great because I'm coming straight out of the distorted preamp into my modulation. So I'm getting that instant sort of connection between the drive and the modulation. Then my modulation tone is great. I now want to add delay. I could add the delay before this but then I'd be adding modulation to the repeats of the delay. So what I'm doing here is I'm modulating my tone then adding delay. So I get the modulated tone with the delay repeats. If I did this the other way around the delay repeats would also be subjected to the modulation. If you're using a modulation effect that does affect pitch like a chorus for instance it can get a bit messy because you're not only getting the chorusing and the sort of the detailing effect on the main note but you're also going to get in all the subsequent delay trails. I'd rather the delay trails be crystal clear. Then from the delay I run into my reverb and again the reason I do this is just consistency. My delay and my delay trails are then put into a space rather than taking a space and putting it into a delay because what's going to happen that way is I'm going to put my guitar into this big open space if I'm using a whole reverb, hit that with a delay. The main note is going to get delayed but then also the space around that note is going to get delayed because of the delay algorithm. So I'm going to show you how I would cascade through the three of these. I'm going to set my modulation just to a straight up chorus sound so I'll start off by playing clean. I'll actually use the clean boost as well just because I like that sound. Add the modulation, I'll add the delay and then I'll add the reverb at the end. Now personally in my own playing I probably wouldn't play with modulation delay and reverb on all together but obviously that gives you an idea of the sort of tones you can expect and how they cascade into each other. Now let's quickly look at what happens if we mix those up a bit. All right so you can see I've now mixed these up so I've got delay first, then reverb, then modulation. So now what's going to happen is my guitar is going to go through the preamp, all the gain is going to be added, all the tone that I want, then I'm going to come out of the effects loop into the delay. On its own like the gain section each pedal on its own individually will just do what it's meant to do so you won't hear a difference pedal to pedal if you just have one of them on. The big difference will be when you start mixing them. So if I start mixing them I'm going to be adding delay to my signal which is fine then I'm going to put that into a space which is the reverb so that is going to function like it should in a normal situation. My delay hits my reverb my delay repeats go into that big space. Great. Then my space is going to hit my modulation so this is where it starts to get a bit weird because now I've got delay repeats being added into the reverb space but then the reverb space is also going to be hit by modulation so the note gets modulated and the space gets modulated. So I'm going to use a chorus here as well just to demonstrate this point. So while that wasn't a bad tone it was a different tone so as you can see which ever order I run these in I get different textures and different flavors from each pedal. So obviously when you guys are building your own pedal boards and combining this with your black star amps you can see that the order of the pedals is very important to you crafting your own sound so please experiment with that experiment with the effects loop if you have one experiment with different orders of different pedals in the front end the loop and all throughout your entire signal chain and really fine tune that tone. Thank you guys so much for watching I hope you've enjoyed this video let us know down below in the comments what signal chain you guys are using are you going straight into the front or are you using the loop and what pedals have you got in the chain as well let us know down below in the comments and like I said in the video don't forget to go check out the other videos in this kind of mini tone series on the black star youtube channel there's a video about pedal gain staging and a video about the effects loop of the amplifier so these are very useful if you're just getting started with this as well and if you're looking for a guitar teacher don't forget to head over to mgrmusic.com and check out the guitar teacher database there are teachers all over the country waiting to help take you guys to that next level thanks so much for watching and I'll see you soon