Enter your pedals below by name and type, and the planner returns the conventional signal-chain order for them. Nothing here is a lookup table someone typed by hand: every position, rank and reason comes straight from pedal-chain-planner.js's closed taxonomy of thirty pedal types in fourteen families (see the family pages for what each family does to the signal). Input order is ignored — the same board planned twice, or entered in a different order, always plans the same way.
The conventional order, family by family
Reading the taxonomy's own ranks low to high: a tuner goes first, reading the least-processed signal. A buffer sits near the front, restoring what a long cable and true-bypass pedals cost. Filter types (wah, envelope filter) come early, sweeping the instrument's own harmonic content rather than an already-processed one. A compressor sits before the gain stages, evening out what they receive; a pitch shifter sits there too, since pitch tracking is most reliable on a clean signal. The drive block follows, internally ordered fuzz → overdrive → distortion → boost → preamp, with a noise gate right after it, gating the noise the gain stages actually made. EQ comes next, shaping the finished drive tone. Modulation types (phaser, flanger, chorus, vibrato, rotary, ring modulator — these six tie, with no settled precedence among themselves) sit after the gain stages so the drive cannot compress their sweep back together; tremolo ends that block, since it modulates amplitude rather than pitch or phase. Delay, then reverb, then a volume pedal as a master level, then a looper last of all, so it records exactly what the room hears. A DI closes everything as the hand-off to a desk. Switchers, splitters, expression pedals, MIDI controllers and power supplies are never placed in this order at all — none of them is a link the signal passes through (see the routing, control and power family pages).
Worked example: a six-pedal board
Before the widget below loads, here is exactly what the planner computes for one fixed, invented six-pedal board, so the answer is on the page whether or not JavaScript runs:
| Position | Pedal | Type | Rank | Reason |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Route 9 Tuner | Tuner | 10 | A tuner reads the strongest, least-processed signal, so it goes first; a tuner with a mute output doubles as the chain’s silent-tuning switch. |
| 2 | Steady Comp | Compressor | 40 | A compressor before the gain stages evens out what they are fed, so a drive responds the same way to a quiet note and a loud one. |
| 3 | Halcyon Fuzz | Fuzz | 60 | The drive block runs fuzz → overdrive → distortion → boost → preamp. Fuzz leads it: its input stage is the one that most wants to see the guitar’s pickups. |
| 4 (tie) | Twin Chorus | Chorus | 80 | Modulation after the gain stages keeps the sweep defined, because the drive is no longer compressing the modulated peaks back together. |
| 5 (tie) | Night Owl Phaser | Phaser | 80 | Modulation after the gain stages keeps the sweep defined, because the drive is no longer compressing the modulated peaks back together. |
| 6 | Tidepool Delay | Delay | 100 | Delay repeats a signal that already has its gain and its modulation, so the repeats carry the sound actually played. |
Twin Chorus and Night Owl Phaser tie at rank 80 — modulation has no settled precedence between those two types, so the planner reports the tie (ordered by name for a stable answer) rather than inventing one. No pedal on this particular board is unplaced or unknown, and no warning fires for this exact combination — but four ordinary, defensible alternatives do, because the board contains the pedals each one talks about:
- Move the fuzz ahead of everything, the wah and any buffer included. (affects Halcyon Fuzz): many vintage-voiced fuzz circuits have a low input impedance that interacts with the guitar’s pickups directly, and a tuner, buffer or compressor in front changes that interaction.
- Put the compressor after the gain stages instead of before them. (affects Steady Comp): behind the drive a compressor levels what it produced; in front it feeds the drive a constant level. Both are ordinary, different sounds.
- Put the phaser, flanger or chorus ahead of the gain stages. (affects Twin Chorus, Night Owl Phaser): the older order, giving a thicker, less separated sweep once the drive compresses the modulated peaks back together.
- Move the delay, reverb and modulation to the amp’s effects loop. (affects Twin Chorus, Night Owl Phaser, Tidepool Delay): needs an amp with a loop, and splits the board in two.