GAIN STACKING PEDALS

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Knowing how effects relate to one another in a gain stack is vital, as it’s different from how they usually work independently. The payoff is massive. Plus, it gives you an excuse to dust off your old, unused dirt pedals.

In a gain-stack scenario, your pedals’ level controls produce different results. Turning up the volume in the first pedal won’t actually increase it, but it will affect the second pedal’s gain. The second pedal dictates the stack’s volume. That considered, you may want to treat the second pedal as a boost and bring it in for certain parts, like solos.

Gain stacking, or the stacking of gain pedals, is a method many guitarists use to create their ultimate and unique guitar sound.

Black Arts Toneworks Priestess

Digitech FREQOUT

Many guitar effects affect the gain of your signal, with gain being the amount of amplification of your guitar signal within a system. Gain is not the same as volume, volume is the final output level of the signal. When you connect multiple guitar effects – which affect the gain of your signal – in succession, you are doing gain stacking. You stack different gain levels with the aim of creating a controlled distorted sound.

Gain stacking has a number of advantages. First of all, you can often get a very musical overdrive at lower volumes. When you set the gain on several ‘stacked’ pedals low, a very nice ‘edge-of-breakup’ sound is created.

Old Blood Noise Excess

FLAMMA FV03

You can get much higher distortion levels from your pedals through clever combinations of pedals. Metal guitarists sometimes want to connect a Tube Screamer to an already heavily overdriven amplifier, which gives them even more distortion. Small changes in pedal combination or sequence can make big differences. This is useful if you play both Hendrix’s and Led Zeppelin’s music, for example.

Next to overdrive and distortion pedals you can also use preamps for this , boosts, or other effects that affect the gain of your signal.

LYR Guitar effect pedal

Joyo Metal Tone High Gain

Your amplifier is itself an ‘effect’ that influences the gain of your signal. In order for these stacked effects to sound good, you’ll need to use them slightly differently than when you’re using them individually.

Start from your loudest sound and work backwards because beyond a certain signal level, your amp is likely to just distort and compress rather than actually get louder.

JOYO Deluxe Crunch High Gain

Clean Amp

When you have set your (tube) amplifier in such a way that it almost starts to overload, this means that there is little headroom. Any small increase in volume can no longer be processed by the amplifier.

Earthquaker Devices Special Cranker

Diezel Herbert

Too much volume will cause extra distortion and more compression. If you turn on some gain pedals in this situation, this will cause the overload to go to maximum and create a muddy sound with a lot of compression. It is therefore advisable to set your amplifier fairly clean so that there is enough room for the pedals.

Spaceman Redstone

Mojo Hand FX Iron Bell Fuzz

Wampler Pantheon

Look for pedals that add to the tone you already have. If your existing overdrive is dark, consider adding a boost to bring out the high end. If you like the overdriven tone you have, try adding a low-gain dirt box to the equation to provide subtle enhancement of the grit.

The easiest way is to start with a (clean) boost and an overdrive. Place the boost before the overdrive and the volume of the boost will amplify the degree of overdrive of the overdrive. If you place the boost behind the overdrive, the boost will only increase the total volume. I assume that you are using a clean amplifier with sufficient headroom.

Caline CP-511 Enchanted Tone

Joyo High Gain OD

There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to the order of pedals in gain stacking, it’s just a matter of experimenting and using your ears. An almost infinite combination of pedals is possible. In general, the pedal connected last in the chain will have the most effect on your final signal. The pedal (or pedals) you connect to it changes the sound of this pedal.

EQ

The most difficult thing about gain stacking is not so much the volume of the signal but the EQ. For example, if you use two pedals that are similar in timbre, there is a good chance that you will get a huge boost in that frequency range and that does not sound pleasant. It is therefore important to combine complementary pedals or to use one or more transparent or clean boosts. Furthermore, adding an EQ pedal last in the chain can also help further colorize the sound to your liking.

Revv G3 Purple Channel

JOYO Deluxe Crunch High Gain

Boost In Boost

A boost pedal provides more volume in your signal. When you combine two boost pedals and turn up the volume on the first boost pedal in the chain, you will hear the second boost pedal start to overdrive slowly.

The resulting overdrive resembles the overdrive of a tube amplifier, especially if you opt for a boost with a transistor circuit. You get a little bit of compression and an overdrive that responds particularly well to volume differences in your playing. Play the strings hard and you get the full distortion, play softly and you have an almost clean sound.

KHDK Dark Blood

Consider Your Amp

You can also perform tone stacking using one pedal and your amp’s drive. Many famous guitarists have done this (often with a Tube Screamer and a Fender or Marshall amp involved) to raise the tonal stakes for a solo. A tube amp on the edge of breakup is a great sound to add a drive to.

Keeley Filaments High Gain

Wampler Dual Fusion

By combining these gain stages: firstly the pedal circuit, secondly the pre-amp tubes, and finally the power tubes – you are able to push the amp in such a way that you achieve overdrive without it sounding harsh, fizzy, or nothing like your original signal.

A variation on the basic gain-staging technique above is to combine multiple pedals to achieve a more nuanced and richer tone than a single pedal can produce. Rather than cranking the volume knob on a single pedal, you can carefully manage the volume and drive of each pedal in your chain.

Old Blood Noise Endeavors Sunlight

EarthQuaker Devices Sunn Life

A key benefit is that you can extract masses of distortion from stacked pedals without anything sounding woolly, and using pedals with particular EQ profiles (or with very tweakable EQ sections) can help to sculpt your sound to fit what you are aiming for.

Recommended Gain Stacking Pedals

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The Data Corrupter is a monophonic analog harmonizing PLL with modulation. It takes your input signal and brutally amplifies it into a crushing square wave fuzz tone that is then multiplied, divided and modulated to create a wild, yet repeatable, three-voice guitar synthesizer.

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Source Audio One Series Kingmaker

The Kingmaker Fuzz features a compact enclosure, but inside this purple powerhouse live the sizzling tones of over 50 years of fuzz and overdrive technology. On its own the Kingmaker features three killer fuzz engines.

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JHS Mini Foot Fuzz V2

Though this little purple guy may have a toy-like appearance, you will quickly realize the sounds that come from this box are no child’s play. From gated, low-gain splat to almost infinite sustaining buzz, the Mini Foot Fuzz V2 covers a lot of ground with very little fuss and a whole lot of attitude.

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EarthQuaker Devices Rainbow Machine

This one is for experimenters, adventurists, and noisemakers. Totally not for purists and/or tone hounds. There are no “natural sounds” that come from this box. It takes modern DSP and uses it as a tool of future past to create real-time pitch shifting using digital oscillators.

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Suhr Riot Distortion

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