The order in which guitar pedals should be placed on your pedalboard is a hotly contested topic, with most players having a strong opinion on what should go where. That said, a couple of rules are pretty much universal. For example, pitch shifters, volume pedals and wahs tend to go first, with drive pedals coming after.

Before you connect up all your pedals, make sure you have a plan – it’ll save you a lot of time. Set up your pedals without a board and decide on the order you like best. If your pedal board has more than one row, put your most frequently used pedals in the front row for easy access and help to avoid those impromptu tapdancing performances.

As a general rule of thumb, it’s ideal to place the “broad stroke” effects that have the most dramatic or dominant impact on your sound toward the front of the signal chain while placing the “narrow stroke” effects that refine details toward the end, although there are many exceptions to this concept.

Filters and EQ — wah, auto-wah, graphic, and parametric EQ Compressor — FET, opto, VCA, tube, or digital Boost — clean boost and/or buffer Gain — overdrive, distortion, fuzz, etc. Noise Gate — placed at this point in the signal chain because gain pedals are usually the noisiest