Order of overdrive pedals

HAL9000

Just wondering what the collective wisdom is for order of overdrive pedals? I recently replaced my Boss BD2 Blues Driver with a J Rockett Blue Note. The Blue Note is very transparent, adds a certain ‘fatness’ to the sound, but lacks the ‘grit’ of the BD2. So I’ve decided the BD2 is going back on the board. First time I will have had two overdrives on the board, so just wondering if is there a recommended order for stacking drive pedals? Thanks.

Lebarque

Try them both ways round and whatever sounds best to you is the best way for you. Personally, I like higher gain OD's into lower gain.

Fishboy7

It’s a matter of taste really but I’d go:   Fuzzes > Boosts > General purpose ODs/Dist > “Amp-in-a-box” type pedals  

 

Depends how they’re set as well i.e ‘Level up gain down’ into ‘level down gain up’ etc

Roland

The conventional thinking is high gain into low gain. This doesn’t mean that convention is right, but it’s a good starting place.

smudge_lad

I think from what you’ve described, you want to keep the grittiness. If you have the Blue Note after the BD, the Blue Note may “remove” some of the grit that’s being fed into it. I’d go Blue Note first.

However, the BD-2 may then remove some of the fatness from the Blue Note. So, try them both ways and see which you prefer. Since you only have the two, it won’t be too much upheaval to switch them round if necessary 

ICBM

I find it usually works best in descending order of midrange, rather than gain - eg Tube Screamer into Blues Driver, not the other way round.

Corvus

 Blue Note at least the v1 blue that I had was great into other pedals. Flat or mid-pushed screamer style etc all good. Not so much headroom for being pushed itself so I had it before another drive.

HAL9000

Thanks for the replies. I’m probably not going to get the chance to experiment properly  until early next week but will see how I get on then.

soma1975

I always feel the one closest to the amp in the chain will be the master voice that you then tweak with things running into it. 

Jalapeno

Lebarque said:

Try them both ways round and whatever sounds best to you is the best way for you. Personally, I like higher gain OD's into lower gain.

I'm the other way round, prefer to stack the gains starting with lowest gain to highest (though normally Xotic EP Boost into one or two boutique pedals that aren't used in conjunction)

newi123

I'd always gone lowest to highest gain, but recently have had bb preamp into a way huge green rhino (ts) after seeing mike landau use the green rhino as a boost.

Like this alot with bb as core sound and both for boosted solos 

jeroenvanhulsteijn

HAL9000 As I read your description of your drives, it seems you like different things in those drives, but you do plan to use them stacked as well.

My experience with stacking is that you always have to find out what characteristics you like and you don't want to loose when stacking pedals. E.g. some combine a tubescreamer (TS) with a big muff (BM), while the TS complements the BM really well adding some mids and cutting some bass.

In your case you like the grittiness of the Bluesdriver (BD) and transparency and fatness of the Blue Note (BN). 
It could well be that the grittiness of the BD gets lost when used before the BN while stacking. Same goes for the transparency of the BN when used after the BD, as the BD not being totally transparent. In that case the first suggestion would be to place the BD after the BN. Keeps grittiness and keeps transparency as long as possible in the chain.
But if the BN doesnt kill the grittiness of the BD, perhaps you could also place them vice versa and maybe the transparency of the BN helps maintaining the grittiness of the BD.

As usual, it is your ear that will be the decisive factor. But perhaps this gave you some points of view that could help you decide how to set up your chain.

MagicPigDetective

I'm in the same situation with a BD-2W and a Thorpyfx Peacekeeper. The Peacekeeper has a great, transparent low gain tone. The BD-2W is good but sounds far better with the Peacekeeper before it. The BD2-W with the level up and gain down as a sort of clean boost, sounds great before the Peacekeeper, but I prefer the Peacekeeper first. I'm wandering if the Peacekeeper would sound better stacked into one of it's siblings, Gunshot or Warthog.

HAL9000

Well, got the chance to experiment today...

Blues Driver into Blue Note - The Blue Note doesn’t smooth out the BD’s inherent ‘grit’. Just fattens things up a bit and gives you ‘more’.

Blue Note into Blues Driver - Gives a smoother cleaner sound than above (which is not what I expected). 

To to be honest I’ll probably stick with the first option but both are good.