Question regarding signal chain..

texasflood · Mar 13th 2014

Hey all.
I have a somewhat basic question for the KPA.
I have locked the wah effect in slot A (off when pedal in heel position). I am controlling the KPA with my FCB1010 (U4K chip).

Does it matter in what order the effects are placed in the signalchain (within the stomp section) soundwise ?

On my FCB1010 I have the labels A, B, C, X and MOD. Having the wah locked at slot A does not match my labels on the FCB1010.

As I see it I have two choises :
1.
I keep the wah effect locked at slot A and instead labelling my FCB to control slot B, C, D, X and MOD.

2.
I lock the wah effect to slot D. I can then control the already labelled slots A, B, C, X and MOD on my FCB.

Normally I would place the wah effect at the start in an analog signal chain.
For me it all comes down to whether the sound is affected on which order the types of effects are placed (withing the stomp section that is).

Chers
Carsten

Ingolf · Mar 13th 2014

Of course it matters in which slot the stomps are placed, because the stomps pre amp are serial, so A goes to B, then the signal goes to C, goes to D, then goes to stack.
I would leave the wah in slot one an re- label the FCB.

meambobbo · Mar 13th 2014

Ingolf is right. Some effects have some lee-way though. For instance, it shouldn't matter what order you place EQ's. But compressor, distortion effects absolutely matter. Chorus/mod I believe matters - at least it certainly makes a difference whether they are pre or post distortion.

best thing is to try it out on a few of your busier patches.

Ingolf · Mar 13th 2014

Well, EQ placement also matters, mostly when Dynamic FX or Distortion FX are used. Pre or post means a lot of difference here.

viabcroce · Mar 13th 2014

Sure.
Also, using EQ before and after amp/distortion makes for an extremely versatile system sound-wise.

meambobbo · Mar 14th 2014

yes, thanks for clarifying - i'm a huge fan of pre and post EQ and they certainly have a vastly different effect. What I meant was that if you have EQ A and EQ B adjacent to each other, it doesn't matter if you go A - B or B - A.

Comparatively, if you have Distortion effect C and Compressor D, C - D is different than D - C.

viabcroce · Mar 14th 2014

mattt67 · Mar 14th 2014

By the way, should I place the wah first, or the compressor before the wah?
Thanks

viabcroce · Mar 14th 2014

I'd go for the wah first. Basically in order to mimic classic setup, and to allow a good functioning of options like the auto-wah, which is based on amplitude.

Apart from this, I can't think of special reasons. Maybe someone else will chime in with other ideas

texasflood · Mar 14th 2014

OK I guess I will relabel the FCB and keep the wah at slot A.

Thanks a bunch for the replies.

/Carsten

meambobbo · Mar 15th 2014

Matt, don't think in terms of "should" - a lot of people get in trouble because they think they won't sound good unless they conform to some unwritten set of rules. Try it both ways and stick with the one you prefer.

As far as what to expect, I have to imagine that a compressor is going to somewhat flatten the frequency domain of the signal. wah is the opposite - it works by filtering out frequencies. which means wah then compressor is going to lessen the effect of the wah on the tone, whereas compressor then wah would have a more prominent wah effect. try it out and let me know if I'm wrong.

for those of you who don't know, there are some very awesome ways the KPA allows you to move around stomp effects. Besides just the copy/paste buttons you can use to quickly copy one effect to another, there's the "move" function, you can do by holding the Stomps button.

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