# How many pedals are too many?



## aC2rs (Jul 9, 2007)

OK, maybe not how many pedals are too many, but, how many pedals _strung together_ are too many?

I'm not a big pedal player and normally just have 1 or 2, and a maximum of 3 pedals connected at one time.
If I want a different effect I just swap pedals in and out and keep things simple.

I have recently been trying different effects and have a rapidly growing collection of pedals. I'm now thinking of building a pedal board to keep them organized and quickly moving everything between my rigs.

However, every time a pedal is added into the signal path another cable is added, and two more 1/4" jacks are added. At some point this adds up and will adversely affect the signal/sound quality.

What are your thoughts/experience on the maximum number of pedals before the signal starts to deteriorate noticeably, and, how do you get around it when you use more pedals?


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## High/Deaf (Aug 19, 2009)

There are a few other factors involved, like how many of those pedals are buffered and how good are the interconnects? A well placed buffered pedal or two will help with passive tone suck.

Anyways, I prefer smaller boards, mostly because the places I usually play don't have the space for huge boards. My largest board has 8 pedals, two of which are buffered and the other 6 are true bypass. That's fewer than some people have in their bottom row. So it's definitely a YMMV situation.


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## bzrkrage (Mar 20, 2011)

Something like these?

















Sent from my other brain.


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## KapnKrunch (Jul 13, 2016)

Thx. Bzrk. Best laff so far today.

Looks like some of those guys are too chubby to leap to safety. "The Gear Trap"

You know your in trouble when you start identifying the pedals!


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## Cups (Jan 5, 2010)

Don't worry about tone suck. 

Too many pedals is where it becomes a distraction to your playing/performance


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## DaddyDog (Apr 21, 2017)

aC2rs said:


> At some point this adds up and will adversely affect the signal/sound quality.


I highly recommend you speak to Mike Vegas at Nice Rack Canada. If you're in the Toronto area, book some time with him. He's on Carlaw Avenue. His knowledge of this stuff blows me away. He builds systems used by major touring bands like Metric and Blue Rodeo, and systems used by movie soundtrack musicians.


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## Hammerhands (Dec 19, 2016)

Consider something like a Loopmaster true-bypass loop switcher or maybe a Boss ES-5 or ES-8.

Having a long chain doesn't seem to bother most people. I find that some pedals that are not true-bypass pedals suck the life out of the sound if they are on or off. The general wisdom is that it is a matter of having the right pedals with the right buffers in the right positions.

Take your favourite guitar and a couple of pedals down to The Guitar Shop and plug the guitar directly into the Vintage 1965 Twin Reverb. Get a nice huge, expansive sound out of it. Now plug in a pedal.


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## Alex (Feb 11, 2006)

A looper will make a difference. I like thegigrig stuff.

I agree with @High/Deaf and prefer a smaller board. Mine is too big and I think I may reconfigure to a smaller footprint.


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## Robert1950 (Jan 21, 2006)

If you can't reach any pedal with your foot,....


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Every pedal in series adds just the teensiest bit of hiss. One at a time, it can be negligible to inaudible. But it can add up. One of the things that true bypass and TB loop-selectors were meant to address is cumulative noise. Where electronically-switched pedals are always in-circuit (even when the effect is not "on", TB pedals are effectively removed from circuit when bypassed. If we're talking about 3 or 4, then the difference in noise between the one and the other may be negligible. Once we move up into 8 or more, the difference may be quite audible.

TB loop-selectors - whether stompswitch or relay-based - can effectively turn an e-switched pedal into a TB pedal, by completely bypassing the circuit. The trouble is that one is obliged to run cables to and from the pedal to the loop selector. And even though the pedal is bypassed, the cumulative cable length going to and from all those pedals can degrade tone. If everything is properly buffered it won't, but then how many of us skimp on buffering.

I hope to be posting a video in the next week or so, of an alternate pedal-selector system. Many (though not all) e-switched pedals are amenable to remote switching, as I illustrate in this nugget from 5 years ago: 



 I was given a bunch of pedals as a birthday gift, so I decided to mod many of them to use that remote-switching, and put together a selector unit with 6 momentary switches that can be assigned to any pedal using a single thin cable. Since the audio signal is not running back and forth to the selector unit, there's a) no worries about the quality of the cable used, and b) the pedals can be placed together with the shortest possible audio patch cables between them.

Note that this ONLY works on e-switched pedals, and only for those which use a momentary to short out a connection to ground. Some e-switched pedals use a different momentary connection. I'll provide more technical info when I'm done.

In the meantime, my stance is that the definition of "too many pedals" is a function of whether or not one has a sound-guy to operate them for you. Plenty of big-name players will have cabs on casters with drawers of pedals. But the player themselves only provides instructions to the sound-guy, or else has some sort of combo selector on stage, and doesn't do any tap-dancing on pedals themselves. Ideally, if there are no impediments to getting the tone you want when you want, then there's no such thing as "too many". But all control is obliged to be in your feet, then once you have to think too hard about hitting the right button or reaching too far over, it's too many.

I might point out that some pro players have multiples of the same pedal, where that pedal has no means for presets, but is capable of delivering a variety of sounds. Each copy of the pedal is set for a particular sound. Whether that provides more convenience by not requiring the player to futz around, or provides inconvenience by having a bigger spread of pedals to attend to, is another matter.


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## Budda (May 29, 2007)

How many is too many?

You'll know when you get there.


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## Alex (Feb 11, 2006)

mhammer said:


> Every pedal in series adds just the teensiest bit of hiss. One at a time, it can be negligible to inaudible. But it can add up. One of the things that true bypass and TB loop-selectors were meant to address is cumulative noise. Where electronically-switched pedals are always in-circuit (even when the effect is not "on", TB pedals are effectively removed from circuit when bypassed. If we're talking about 3 or 4, then the difference in noise between the one and the other may be negligible. Once we move up into 8 or more, the difference may be quite audible.
> 
> TB loop-selectors - whether stompswitch or relay-based - can effectively turn an e-switched pedal into a TB pedal, by completely bypassing the circuit. The trouble is that one is obliged to run cables to and from the pedal to the loop selector. And even though the pedal is bypassed, the cumulative cable length going to and from all those pedals can degrade tone. If everything is properly buffered it won't, but then how many of us skimp on buffering.
> 
> ...


Thx for this. Are you a fan of solder free cables? What is the general consensus or your views on solder vs solder free in relation to tone?


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## High/Deaf (Aug 19, 2009)

mhammer said:


> In the meantime, my stance is that the definition of "too many pedals" is a function of whether or not one has a sound-guy to operate them for you. Plenty of big-name players will have cabs on casters with drawers of pedals. But the player themselves only provides instructions to the sound-guy, or else has some sort of combo selector on stage, and doesn't do any tap-dancing on pedals themselves. Ideally, if there are no impediments to getting the tone you want when you want, then there's no such thing as "too many". But all control is obliged to be in your feet, then once you have to think too hard about hitting the right button or reaching too far over, it's too many.


Great stuff, Mark, but I would say it is usually the guitar tech and not the FOH 'soundman' that is operating the pedals off-stage.

The FOH guy is too busy worrying about what the other 19,999 sound experts in the room are thinking.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Alex said:


> Thx for this. Are you a fan of solder free cables? What is the general consensus or your views on solder vs solder free in relation to tone?


I'm not a fan nor dismissive of them. I do think, however, that they require some skill to apply, and not everyone is always up to the task.

The cable itself is short enough that quality is almost a moot issue. The difference between, say, 50pf/ft and 35pf/ft is moot when the cables are often less than a foot. So, I'm not of the view that the cable used with solder-free systems has any audible impact on tone unless there is a LOT of it involved. On the other hand, whether the cable is high-end or dollar-store crap is entirely separate from the quality of the connection made by crimping/screwing on the plug. I feel more secure in knowing that a wire is soldered in place, but that doesn't mean that a good connection_ isn't_ one, even if there is no solder involved.

Let the record show that solder-free cables have been used for years, nay decades, in the realm of ribbon cables for computers. And keep in mind that a missing bit or handshake in the digital realm can be more catastrophic than a teensy bit of signal or bandwidth in the analog domain. So if pinched solder-free cables are good enough for your IBM-PC or Commodore 64, they're good enough for pedalboards.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

High/Deaf said:


> Great stuff, Mark, but I would say it is usually the guitar tech and not the FOH 'soundman' that is operating the pedals off-stage.
> 
> The FOH guy is too busy worrying about what the other 19,999 sound experts in the room are thinking.


Yeah, I suppose it is the guitar tech. I was struggling to figure out what to call them.


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## Steadfastly (Nov 14, 2008)

For me it would be two or three. I might add a pedal to some of the top FX units but I would doubt it.


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## NorlinNorm (Dec 31, 2016)

aC2rs said:


> OK, maybe not how many pedals are too many, but, how many pedals _strung together_ are too many?
> 
> I'm not a big pedal player and normally just have 1 or 2, and a maximum of 3 pedals connected at one time.
> If I want a different effect I just swap pedals in and out and keep things simple.
> ...


Never too many Pedals...Haha


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## Business (Jul 30, 2013)

Are you Kevin Shields?
OR
Are you in a band that relies on many sonic textures?
OR
Are you in a cover band that covers a wide variety of styles?

If the answer to all 3 above statements is "no", you probably don't need more than 4-5 pedals on your board
FWIW, the pro guitar players that have my favorite tones use only about 3-4 effects each.


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## bzrkrage (Mar 20, 2011)

Ok, well...... Wah, tuner, fuzz, noisegate/loop, compressor,Overdrive x 2 or distortion, EQ, modulation (multi or Chorus, phaser, Vibe, tremolo), delay & reverb.
11 - 14 is all of them.
8 probably is more usable.
5 is gig-able.


So 27???? Oh, & then there's different styles of the same pedal....there's the (fade into the void)



"Best mediocre guitarist in Calgary!"


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## NorlinNorm (Dec 31, 2016)

NorlinNorm said:


> Never too many Pedals...Haha


I rarely ever hook up all my Pedals at once, I prefer 5-6 at a time and add or deduct accordingly to mood!


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## davetcan (Feb 27, 2006)

I don't understand the question ................


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## knight_yyz (Mar 14, 2015)

I'm not sure if it has been pointed out but if the pedal is digital it is probably drawing 50 milliamps, but analogue pedals can be juice hogs so you can't daisy chain them or your power supply will not power the pedals. And plus one for a looper. I grabbed one and there is a lot less noise than putting all the pedals in one loop.


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## Dorian2 (Jun 9, 2015)

mhammer said:


> I'm not a fan nor dismissive of them. I do think, however, that they require some skill to apply, and not everyone is always up to the task.
> 
> The cable itself is short enough that quality is almost a moot issue. The difference between, say, 50pf/ft and 35pf/ft is moot when the cables are often less than a foot. So, I'm not of the view that the cable used with solder-free systems has any audible impact on tone unless there is a LOT of it involved. On the other hand, whether the cable is high-end or dollar-store crap is entirely separate from the quality of the connection made by crimping/screwing on the plug. I feel more secure in knowing that a wire is soldered in place, but that doesn't mean that a good connection_ isn't_ one, even if there is no solder involved.
> 
> Let the record show that solder-free cables have been used for years, nay decades, in the realm of ribbon cables for computers. And keep in mind that a missing bit or handshake in the digital realm can be more catastrophic than a teensy bit of signal or bandwidth in the analog domain. So if pinched solder-free cables are good enough for your IBM-PC or Commodore 64, they're good enough for pedalboards.


As a former Netwoek Admin/Computer Geek (sortofbutnotintheclassicalsense), I found your quip about IBM PC and Commodore 64 quite revealing of your old school sensibilities. Nice parallel on how things change but always seem to stay the same.....but I digress. 

I'm at the same place I was when I was 15 right now, tuner - Dual OD-Delay-EQ. That's where my sound has been crafted from day 1 pretty much. I'm a bit of a tweaker, so it's a good thing I keep my board as limited as possible. More time to play.


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## vadsy (Dec 2, 2010)

knight_yyz said:


> I'm not sure if it has been pointed out but if the pedal is digital it is probably drawing 50 milliamps, but analogue pedals can be juice hogs so you can't daisy chain them or your power supply will not power the pedals. And plus one for a looper. I grabbed one and there is a lot less noise than putting all the pedals in one loop.


I think it's the other way around. Digital pedals require a lot of power while analog usually stay pretty low on draw.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

knight_yyz said:


> I'm not sure if it has been pointed out but if the pedal is digital it is probably drawing 50 milliamps, but analogue pedals can be juice hogs so you can't daisy chain them or your power supply will not power the pedals. And plus one for a looper. I grabbed one and there is a lot less noise than putting all the pedals in one loop.



Quite the reverse. A great many analog pedals draw but a few milliamps. The status LED may draw more current than the rest of the circuit. I know the bottom plate on many analog pedals may *say* to use a 9V/300ma supply, but the pedal itself is likely drawing 15ma and probably much less.. It's the digital pedals that often draw upwards of 80ma each. That's why so many power bricks had to change from providing max 100ma per output to more than that. Perhaps you meant to type the one when you typed the other?

And while analog pedals - with only a few exceptions - can be easily and safely daisy-chained to a single wall-wart or power-brick output, digital pedals often interact in ugly ways when two or more are sharing the same supply, regardless of how much current the supply can provide.


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## knight_yyz (Mar 14, 2015)

Yup, got it backwards


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

You get half credit for knowing they don't have the same current draw. 

I can't begin to count the number of times I've been thinking one thing and typed in the opposite words to what I was thinking. It's part of why I find the human mind so fascinating.


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## Judas68fr (Feb 5, 2013)

I love pedals but narrowed down to the ones I really need (8, one of them being a tuner). I then rotate them on my board. It's a PT Jr, and all of them fit on it, but depending on the gig, I would only take a few, to avoid distraction and also because it's always a plus to have a lighter rig. I've had gigs where I needed all 8 pedals, but most of the times I'm carrying between 3 and 5 (including the tuner, again).


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## NorlinNorm (Dec 31, 2016)

Are you Kevin Shields?
OR
Are you in a band that relies on many sonic textures?
OR
Are you in a cover band that covers a wide variety of styles?

If the answer to all 3 above statements is "no", you probably don't need more than 4-5 pedals on your board
FWIW, the pro guitar players that have my favorite tones use only about 3-4 effects each.

Sorry, but I totally disagree!
I love Pedals as much as I love amps and guitars, however, most Pedals are affordable therefore I have many!
Actually, I have many amps & guitars too...haha

There are no Rules if you enjoy playing a 100 Pedals knock your self out!...and enjoy yourself!


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## 4345567 (Jun 26, 2008)

__________


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## aC2rs (Jul 9, 2007)

Thanks to everyone for your responses.

In my case I have 10 pedals at the moment that I would like to use in a single loop. 
Most of them are analogue and some are true bypass. 

My next step will be to lay them out and see what actually happens when they are all connected at the same time and take it from there.
Hopefully I can get it to work with minimal negative effects.


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## DaddyDog (Apr 21, 2017)

Is there a way to measure how it affects the signal? My ears don't work as well some days. Seems to be directly related to alcohol intake.


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## georgemg (Jul 17, 2011)

aC2rs said:


> What are your thoughts/experience on the maximum number of pedals before the signal starts to deteriorate noticeably, and, how do you get around it when you use more pedals?





mhammer said:


> If we're talking about 3 or 4, then the difference in noise between the one and the other may be negligible.


Generally I'd agree with mhammer that with 3 or 4 pedals you probably wouldn't notice a significant impact on your sound, but I would add certain pedals just don't play all that well with others. I had a Sobbat Drivebreaker that equally sucked the top and bottom out of the tone all by itself - pretty noisy too. It was even worse when other pedals were plugged in along with it. I ended up getting rid of that pedal, but the only way I would have kept it would have been to use a pedal loop selector similar to what was already mentioned.

Depending on what pedals you have, it might be worthwhile to experiment with them and see if any are causing issues. What I did when I was putting together my pedalboard was compare the base sound with no pedals to that of the individual pedals and groups of pedals. You can use your ear or even better record yourself to verify. It's a bit of a chore but the best way to find out for sure.

If you do want to use a lot of pedals, the easiest way to do that and not have to worry about the sound degradation is to use a loop selector. It's not the only way though. I've had good results using all true bypass pedals (10 of them) with a good quality standalone buffer. They do need to be 'true bypass' for that to work though, and not 'true hardwire' or 'true hardwire relay'. Some pedals I tried that used those bypass methods did affect the sound (to me at least). Sometimes isolating one or a few pedals on their own loop may be all that is needed.


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

No, you make a fair point. If a pedal applies a gain of 300 or more, as an example, to whatever comes into the input jack, it is amplifying whatever noise is coming in with the guitar signal by the same amount. Some pedals are designed to take care of that, while others not so much. And, of course, sticking a compressor after a high-gain pedal will invite even more noise, since the compressor will interpret the residual hiss from the high-gain pedal as a decaying string that needs a big help from bumping up the gain. But, high-gain pedals aside, most well-designed pedals will be designed to contribute negligible noise.

Some digital pedals can generate ungodly noise if they share a common power line with other digital pedals. It is becoming rarer these days as designers anticipate such issues. But note that high-frequency clock pulses in digital pedals can travel along power lines. On their own, they are so high up, you can't hear them. But when two or more such clock pulses are close in frequency, they interact much like a ring modulator and yield sum and difference signals. So, two 5mhz clocks might be within .1% of each other. That's pretty damn close, but it is also a difference of 5khz. You certainly won't hear their sum, but you WILL hear their difference. The end result is that even though the individual pedals seem dead quiet, if they share a power line, you might hear a surprising amount of noise. One of the reasons why a) more power bricks are providing outputs that deliver up more than 100ma, and b) more power bricks are taking steps to isolate the individual outputs and prevent such noisy interactions.

I will also note that sometimes loop selectors can make it easier to live with a LOT of pedals. Remember that the loop selector doesn't really care what is in between the send and receive jack. It doesn't care if you have one pedal or 10 in there. The same single stompswitch shuts off or engages the _entire_ loop. So instead of having to step over here and there and waaaayyy over there to change a sound, one step does it.


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## High/Deaf (Aug 19, 2009)

aC2rs said:


> My next step will be to lay them out and see what actually happens when they are all connected at the same time and take it from there.
> Hopefully I can get it to work with minimal negative effects.


I think it would be a good test to string them all together, all powered up and listen to that. And then move the input or output cable to the middle of the string of pedals to try just one half or other and see if you notice a difference in bypassed tone. If you do, try breaking it into 1/3 sections. That way you should be able to tell if all the pedals are fine as is or where the break point is for too much interaction or tone suck.


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