- 0:34 – 4 pedals, clean
- 0:53 – 4 pedals, clean chords
- 1:21 – 4 pedals, overdrive lead
- 1:31 – 4 pedals, overdrive chords
- 1:47 – 8 pedals, clean
- 2:04 – 8 pedals, clean chords
- 2:30 – 8 pedals, overdrive lead
- 2:40 – 8 pedals, overdrive chords
- 2:55 – 12 pedals, clean
- 3:13 – 12 pedals, clean chords
- 3:40 – 12 pedals, overdrive lead
- 3:51 – 12 pedals, overdrive chords
- 4:08 – 16 pedals, clean
- 4:26 – 16 pedals, clean chords
- 4:52 – 16 pedals, overdrive lead
- 5:13 – 16 pedals, overdrive chords
- 5:32 – everything on for a bit of fun!
4 Pedals
4 pedal signal chain: 4 pedals: Fender The Bends Compressor > Keeley D&M Drive > T-Rex Tremster > Walrus Audio Fathom Reverb
This is the starting point. As previously noted, there are 4 snippets of playing; clean picking, clean chords, distorted picking and distorted chords. As this is step one, we’ll essentially be treating this as our control test, so to speak. When we reach the end of the experiment, we’ll compare it to this chain and see what the difference is!
For reference, we’ll be taking some analytic EQ readings; this will hopefully expose any differences in frequency response that our ears can’t detect. Here are the readings for the 4 pedal signal chain:
8 Pedals
8 pedal signal chain: Fender The Bends Compressor > Origin Cali76 Paradiso > Mythos Golden Fleeze Fuzz > Keeley D&M Drive > MXR Uni-Vibe > T-Rex Tremster > Walrus Audio Fathom Reverb > GFI System Clockwork Delay V2
Our first impression is that there’s no notable difference, at least to our ears. There’s almost a hint of extra fizz to the sound, but at this stage it’s difficul to say whether that’s the placebo effect or not!
Upon closer inspection, we feintly noticed a slight emphasis on the midrange frequencies. The sound was a tad more ‘honky’ so to speak, albeit a very minor difference. Let’s take a look at the EQ readings:
These readings seem to confirm the presence of a slight midrange boost. This is most likely as a result of buffered bypass circuitry, whereby pedals that are bypassed are designed to boost the signal going through them prevent loss of quality. Ironically in this case, it seems to have slightly coloured the tone rather than preserve it.
12 Pedals
12 pedal signal chain: Fender The Bends Compressor > Xotic EP Booster > Origin Cali76 Paradiso > Mythos Golden Fleeze Fuzz > Way Huge Russian Pickle > Keeley D&M Drive > MXR Uni-Vibe > Walrus Audio Julia Chorus/Vibrato > T-Rex Tremster > Walrus Audio Fathom Reverb > GFI System Clockwork Delay V2 > Tone City Tiny Spring
Again, we’ll start by saying that the noticeable difference here was extremely minor. When we listened more closely, we percieved a feint loss in top-end sparkle, as well as some ‘body’ lost in the lows & low mids. Let’s see if the EQ analysis confirmed this:
For the most part, this does seem to be the case. A slight loss of top-end clarity, plus a shrinking in the low and low-mid frequences (20-200Hz). While it does show up for the clean playing, it’s more evident with the distorted samples. So what happened when we added 4 more?
16 Pedals
16 pedals: Fender The Bends Compressor > Xotic EP Booster > MXR Dyna Comp Mini > Origin Cali76 Paradiso > Mythos Golden Fleeze Fuzz > Way Huge Russian Pickle > Keeley D&M Drive > JHS Angry Charlie > MXR Uni-Vibe > Mooer Trelicopter > Walrus Audio Julia Chorus/Vibrato > T-Rex Tremster > Walrus Audio Fathom Reverb > GFI System Clockwork Delay V2 > Tone City Tiny Spring > Alexander Pedals Quadrant Delay
With the addition of 4 extra pedals, we see the trend change slightly. There’s a slight reduction in top-end clarity, as we saw before, and at this point, we also noticed that the signal was slightly more timid in strength and volume. Over to you, EQ:
Again, the EQ seemed to confirm a slight loss in signal strength and top-end clarity. But it also picked up on something that we didn’t notice; an apparent boost in the low and low-mid frequencies. This is more apparent with the distorted samples, but it’s unexpected nonetheless. Again, this is likely to be due to buffered circuitry in the mixture pedals that we used.
Conclusion
The evidence we’ve compiled using video, analytic EQ and our own ears seems to show some interesting and unexpected results. In the grand scheme of things, however, we think it’s safe to say that the difference was negligeble. Many of the differences were picked up by the EQ that we didn’t perceive, which speaks volumes in many ways; these are differences that the average player simply wouldn’t notice.
Despite the arguably negligeble difference that was made to our guitar signal, our conclusion has to come back to our original hypothesis:
Having more effects in your chain weakens your signal volume and quality.
From what we can tell, the number of pedals in your chain doesn’t necessarily weaken your signal, but we can objectively say that it does affect it in a number of ways. We noticed a gradual (albeit feint) decline in volume and punchiness, as well as a softening of the top-end, but by the end of it we saw an increase in low-end presence.
Lessons learned
While we were able to come to some sort of conclusion, conducting this experiment was a learning curve in terms of process. Consistency was key in getting reliable results, so with the benefit of hindsight, we realised that we could achieve better results using different methods:
- Record loops rather than play for each chain; that way, we’ll get maximum consistency throughout the experiment
- Taking EQ analytic screeshots at the same timed points in the recordings – again, this will ensure consistency
- Elaborate on the other variables mentioned earlier in the article; bypass, FX loops etc.
We may well experiment with these points in the future to see if we can dig a little deeper – thanks for reading, folks!
What do you think about the results of this test? Leave a comment and share your thoughts!