Help on signal path

[Mgregory623]

Just wondering if anyone has any thoughts and comments on the best best signal path. The pedals I have are a crybaby, digitech drop, digitech whammy, ibanez tubescreamer, boss digital reverb and delay, rc20 looper, and of course helix. I was thinking of running the reverb and tubescreamer through the effects loop on the helix. I know the helix does most of what my pedals do but I already have them so might as well incorporate them.

[HonestOpinion]

... I was thinking of running the reverb and tubescreamer through the effects loop on the helix. I know the helix does most of what my pedals do but I already have them so might as well incorporate them.

 

You may find ultimately that you don't need these pedals, or only really want to use the Tubescreamer, but if you decide to use them both, ideally you would run each of them through a different FX Loop.  Place the FX Loop 1 block with the Tubescreamer before the Helix amp model and place the FX Loop 2 with the reverb after the Helix amp model at the end of your effect chain.

 

If you need more detail on where to place the Tubescreamer and the reverb in relation to the rest of your effects here are a couple of good links for how to set your effects order, as always use your ears to determine what you like best but these are good general guidelines.  If you were using a physical amp often the best place for reverb/echo and many mod effects is in the effect loop which is why you put them after the Helix amp model (or ideally between a preamp and power amp block but let's not go there).

 

http://music.tutsplus.com/tutorials/effects-chain-order--audio-6003

 

http://www.rolandus.com/blog/2013/03/06/how-to-chain-your-guitar-effects-pedals/

[tommasi]

That largely depends on what other effects you plan on adding from the helix. Normally you'd have the crybaby upfront, then the pitch shifters, then tube screamer (or you could have the pitch shifters after the TS, according to taste). You could run them in front of the helix unless you need some compressors or early EQ. somewhere in there.

 

I personally would lose the rev&delay, which can be replaced by what the helix has to offer, but in case, I'd put rev/dly and loop station at the end of the chain in an FX loop. I can't imagine any effect I'd put AFTER the loop station, but then I'm not very experimental.