The Ol' Compressors position in the chain question

Travisthedog

I can find the can o worms gif

Trying a comp again - can't remember where in the chain it's supposed to go

Sorry for the old question !

mike_l

When I had one it was always right after my wah.

I didn't use it much though.

richardhomer

First/after your tuner is the 'accepted' place.

The general rule is that as they lift quiet signals, they emphasise any noise from any pedal which comes before them in the chain.

samzadgan

Depends how you use it.

My advice only helps if you leave it on all the time.

This is my experience:
Pre-dirt: pushes dirt pedal slightly and dirt pedals shine through

Post-dirt: dulls the sound too much for my liking and the true sound of the dirt pedals didn't come through

Post-wah: kills the peaks of the wah and ends up taking the edge off. I use CAE wah and like the red setting, with compressor after it, i had to use the yellow and even then it wasn't wah enough.

Beginning of the chain: tried and true...the best position for me, it just doesn't detract from any of the other pedals and sounds more subtle then other positions.

dogload

I've always been of the  'first in the chain' brigade, but lately I've been putting it after my Tonebender clone. The fuzz works better that way.

Cirrus

First for me, since I use it to push overdrive sustain - it'd sound strange to have distorted pick attack merging to clean sustain all at the same volume.

I mean, sometimes strange is good, but not all the time.

EricTheWeary

The other guitarist in my band uses his after drives by the look of it ( although before phaser and delay). I think that covered two things : clean funky playing ( so the drives weren't in use anyway) and big swells/ sustain. So, he can have a very sustained/ edge of feedback Santana ish type tone at any volume level. He doesn't use this a lot but it's quite effective when he does.

Branshen

I use a subtle compressor immediately after my drive pedals. The reason for this is it allows me to control the amount of drive I get with my guitar volume pot, you lose this ability somewhat with the compressor squeezing the signal before the drive pedal. In addition to that, it smooths out the levels afterwards irregardless of the combination of drive pedals that I activate.

With the compressor after drive, the dynamics of my playing still comes through because depending on how hard I pick my strings, I can control how much break up I get.

With regards to noise, i have had no problems but this could be because I don't max out my compression, it's there to slightly limit and even out my signal only.

You should try it both ways, I don't know if you play with your volume pot or not or how you use your drive pedals. I imagine that if you're playing metal or rock, compressor before drive would be better. Imo, if you're playing blues, compressor after drive gives you more freedom with regards to expression.

Beexter

I always run mine 1st in line after the guitar (unless I'm using a fuzz, in which case the fuzz jumps to the head of the queue with comp 2nd). Have found it works best for me there. Having said that, it took quite a bit of experimenting before I found the right comp for me that didn't dull everything down (in my case, the Xotic SP is my comp of choice - love it!)

I only tend to use a comp on clean parts and turn it off when using dirt.

There's no right or wrong, whatever works best for you is the way to go.