What’s the maximum number of pedals you would tolerate in a chain?

TTBZ

I feel a bit weird abut having much more than 4 or 5 for some reason. I always GAS for pedals but like to keep my board relatively straightforward. 

guitarfishbay

I’ve always stuck to what would fit on my PT2 board. Haven’t ever counted, but since it’s not huge then not that many compared to some boards I’ve seen

Marktigere1

n + 1

Where n = "number of pedals currently on board"

Simple formula but oh so relevant

UnclePsychosis

At home, about ten.

If I were gigging/practicing out and about then the number would be a lot smaller: probably five. Not because of any tone/bypass issues but entirely because of size/weight/hassle issues.

ICBM

I had 13 on a flightcased board at one point - near enough zero hassle because everything was bolted down and with a breakout box so it just needed the lid off, one mains cable and four signal cables connecting, but substantial size and weight. It was a mixture of buffered and mechanical-bypass pedals, and although it didn't sound exactly the same going through it as plugging the guitar straight into the amp, that was of no importance whatsoever - it sounded fine and gave me the sounds I wanted.

not_the_dj

ICBM said:

 and although it didn't sound exactly the same going through it as plugging the guitar straight into the amp, that was of no importance whatsoever - it sounded fine and gave me the sounds I wanted.

That's the key bit for me. I don't bother trying to compare going straight into my amp vs through my pedalboard. The audience I play too also won't get to hear anything other than the signal through the pedals, so I concentrate on those sounds.

dindude

Another trick I do is always have a pedal on, I never run my amp without something in the chain.

 I found that even with a well placed buffer, my clean amp unaffected tone could be fairly flat sounding compared to the various gain stages I add, some of it is perceived volume and if you balance all of your OD pedals then find the clean is too low you have to then adjust the clean and then adjust all of the OD's again. So I use a Diamond compressor as my "clean" tone with very little compression which allows me to volume and tone adjust the base tone and keeps the signal strong. The comp comes out of the chain when I select another gain stage.

ICBM

dindude said:

Another trick I do is always have a pedal on, I never run my amp without something in the chain.

 I found that even with a well placed buffer, my clean amp unaffected tone could be fairly flat sounding compared to the various gain stages I add, some of it is perceived volume and if you balance all of your OD pedals then find the clean is too low you have to then adjust the clean and then adjust all of the OD's again. So I use a Diamond compressor as my "clean" tone with very little compression which allows me to volume and tone adjust the base tone and keeps the signal strong. The comp comes out of the chain when I select another gain stage.

Volume loss is responsible for a lot of perceived 'tone suck', especially when using multiple Boss-type buffers which have very slightly less than unity gain. String half a dozen of them together and there's a noticeable volume drop, but still at the point where you hear that as a loss of tone and not volume - this is odd, but it's a well-known psycho-acoustic effect... with two otherwise identical sounds played back with a small volume difference, the louder one sounds better, not louder.

I was able to prove this with a friend's pedalboard with about a dozen Boss pedals on - he had very obvious tone suck, which I was able to demonstrate using a loop-switcher with level controls on it was purely due to the volume drop. All I did was modify his GE-7 to give a fixed volume boost even with the pedal off, and the tone suck went away completely.

Flanging_Fred

I don't mind a bit of tone suck actually. It compliments my playing suck very nicely.