Routing

The routing family does not touch tone at all: a DI (direct injection) box hands the signal off to a mixing desk or a recording interface, and switchers and splitters redirect the signal between different paths — multiple amps, multiple loops of other pedals, or a mix of both — rather than processing the sound that passes through them. All three types answer the question of where the signal goes, not what it sounds like once it gets there.

The types in this family

• DI (rank 140): A DI is the hand-off to a desk or an interface, so it sits after everything the chain does.
• Splitter / ABY (rank — not in the chain): A splitter divides the chain into paths rather than sitting inside one, so it is placed by the paths it creates and not by a rank.
• Switcher (rank — not in the chain): A switcher routes loops rather than occupying one point in the chain; it goes around the pedals it switches, so no single position is the right answer.

Where it sits in the chain, and why

A DI sits at the very end of everything else the board does, because its job is the hand-off to whatever comes after the pedalboard entirely — a desk, an interface, a second amp — and it should receive the fully finished signal. Switchers and splitters, by contrast, are not a link in the chain in the ordinary sense at all: a switcher routes entire loops of other pedals rather than occupying one position among them, and a splitter divides the signal into separate paths rather than sitting inside a single one. Both are placed according to the paths they create on a specific board, not according to a rank the way an audio-processing pedal is.

Power notes

A passive DI box needs no power at all; an active DI, built to handle a hotter signal or provide phantom-power isolation, needs a small amount, comparable to a buffer’s draw. Switchers and splitters vary more by design — a simple passive splitter needs nothing, while a switcher with relay-based loop switching and MIDI control draws meaningfully more, similar to a control-family device. None of this is a substitute for the individual unit’s own rating.

General guidance for the family, never a specification for any individual pedal — always confirm voltage, polarity, current draw and isolation from the maker’s own documentation before wiring a real board.

Every rank and reason above is quoted straight from pedal-chain-planner.js's PEDAL_TYPES — the same taxonomy this site's chain planner runs and docs/gearwarrior-pedals-contract.md documents. No second table.