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3 hr Summer 1960. Something broke in a Nashville studio and Grady Martin's guitar… GARETH JOSEPH 7 Jul The Timeline MX is finally here, and half the pedalboards in the world are… GARETH JOSEPH 22 Jun Fender spent this year making enemies. But their pedals are getting things… GARETH JOSEPH 21 Jun ok so Paul Gilbert posted his board again (the man genuinely never stops… CHRIS_VELASCO 10 Jun At what point do you think a pedal is no longer a "boutique" pedal? DEVON 10 Jun I spent years thinking I couldn't make the Boss BD-2 sound good. It's the pedal… GARETH JOSEPH 7 Jun Strymon has turned "analog" into a luxury brand again. Their Series A line is… GARETH JOSEPH 4 Jun For over a decade, Eventide sold you the best pedal you couldn't operate. One… GARETH JOSEPH

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The how and the why behind every pedal. Signal chain order, power, what each effect actually does, and the answers to questions you didn't know to ask.

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About Guides

This is the part of the site you keep open in a tab. Guides is the reference shelf: the how-it-works, the where-does-it-go, the why-does-mine-hum. Not opinions, not gear lists. The actual mechanics of how pedals behave, explained so you can stop guessing and start hearing why.

We go deep on the stuff that quietly decides your whole sound. Signal chain order is the big one: where a pedal sits changes what it does, full stop, which is why we've got pieces on whether a flanger goes before or after distortion and a dozen more like it. Then there's the unglamorous backbone, how to power a board without the hum, and the fundamentals that make everything else click, like the real difference between overdrive, distortion, and fuzz.

New to all of this? Start with the different types of pedals explained, then how to set up a pedalboard, and build from there. Already deep in it? There's a guide for the oddly specific question keeping you up at night, and probably one you'll learn something from even when you thought you knew the answer.

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