Does Overdrive Order Actually Matter?

You've got a great-sounding pedalboard. You've spent real money on pedals you love and an electric guitar you bond with. And yet something's off, the sound isn't sitting right, the gain feels wrong, or the combinations you try just don't click. Before you reach for your wallet and buy something new, there's a good chance you just need to change the order things are running in. Your pedalboards signal chain.

I know it sounds simple - and it is - but the results are anything but subtle.

I recently ran an experiment that honestly changed how I think about signal chain. I took three pedals; an RC Booster, a Klon clone, and a ProCo Rat and ran them through every combination I could think of. I wasn't expecting what I found.

What I Used

For the overdrives, I went a little indulgent. The RC Booster is one I’ve kept in my arsenal for well over a decade. It’s got a powerful EQ and always makes me sound better. The Klon clone (a pre-lawsuit Behringer Centaur) sits in similar territory. It has less top-end clarity than the RC but adds clipping and some mids in its own way. And then the Rat, which is a different beast entirely. It's a classic distortion (high gain) all the way through.

To make reordering fast and usable I ran everything through an RJM PBC 6X, which lets you rearrange pedals at the push of a button in real time.

What Happens When You Stack Them

Quick note before we get into it: if you never run more than one overdrive at the same time (called, 'stacking overdrives'), order of your overdrives doesn’t matter. There are subtle differences if you're running buffered bypass pedals, but we're not chasing subtle today. We're chasing the stuff that'll move the needle.

This blog / video only applies to guitarists that have more than one overdrive on at a time.

My preferred order

RC into Klon felt like turning the gain knob up on the Klon itself. More clipping, a touch more gain. When you flip them (Klon into RC), some of that clarity comes back and the character of the RC starts to take over more.

Then the Rat changes things. RC into Rat? It just sounds like the Rat. The RC barely registers since the Rat's compression and clipping swallows everything upstream. But Rat into RC? That's where it got interesting. I heard something I can only describe as a fat rat. We’re still getting the Rat's clipping but the RC is shaping the output and you get chunk, clarity, and actual character back. It stopped sounding like flat distortion across the spectrum.

After listening to all the combinations, I liked anything that ended with the RC or the Klon. The further the Rat was from the amp, the more usable everything became.

When the Rat is last

Klon into Rat had the same story; the Rat just overtakes it. Rat into Klon got some clarity back though it still felt a bit muddy for my taste. You could hear more of the individual notes, which was an improvement.

Running every combination with all three pedals, the trend was obvious. Anything that ended with the RC or the Klon sounded better. The Rat last just consumed the whole signal.

Diagram 1 - The setup for this experiment.

The Rule That Explains Signal Chain

Here's the one thing I took from this that applies to every pedal on your board, not just overdrives:

The closer a pedal is to your amp, the more say it has in how your rig sounds.

That's it. When the Rat was last in my chain, it just sounded like a Rat — no matter what came before it, the compression and clipping dominated everything. When the RC was last, it got to shape the final output, and the rig took on more of its character.

Diagram 3 — The influence spectrum

It Goes Beyond Overdrives

This applies to anything. Wondering where to put your octave pedal? Running it closer to the amp gives it more influence over your total sound. Closer to the guitar keeps it more subtle. Same with chorus, phaser, flanger. Look at your favourite guitar player's rig and you'll see them making exactly these decisions. Phaser early in the chain is a classic rock move. Chorus later and more prominent is all over pop.

The options are genuinely endless. But the framework is simple.

Diagram 4 — The rule applied beyond overdrives

Try It Before You Buy It

What struck me most at the end of this whole thing is that we didn't touch the pedals.

Same three boxes, same settings, same amp. Just the order they appeared in the chain resulted in drastic differences.

So before you start shopping for something new, pull your board apart and try a few things in a different order. You might find the sound you've been looking for has been sitting on your board all along.

Happy building,

Grant Klassen

Goodwood Audio