Question for pedalboard users:

[Jack Hanson]

Lots of you guys are into pedalboards. Does anybody use two (or more) overdrive pedals on the same board? Or any other effect, such as delay? Or whatever. If so, why?

[Brett Lanier]

Yup, i use two reverbs. One before the delay and one after. The biggest reason is for getting heavy reverb sounds without hearing the artifacts that happen from turning one pedal up too much. A bonus is being able to put the verb before or after the delay on the fly. Also sometimes run a reverb into an overdrive for a different type of sound.

[Jon Light]

Two dirt pedals (actually, my compressor at the front of the board also can dial in some dirt, so three). My Zendrive OD is such a different flavor than the Big Muff fuzz that there's no redundancy. I use the Muff very sparingly, only on one or two songs in a gig, but there's nothing like it. Otherwise, I get the milder drive from the OD and the light clipping of the comp.

[Darvin Willhoite]

I used to have a Maxon Overdrive, and a PROCO Rat, on the same pedalboard. The coiled cables is where I connected a volume pedal.

[Bob Hoffnar]

I use 3 in a way. The chase bliss brothers which is 2 overdrive/fuzz/boost pedals put together and a Sarno Earth Drive. Distortion and overdrive pedals are so distinctive and specialized these days it is impossible to do everything with just one. That is if you are interested in that sort of sonic variation.

Btw: I often use 2 at once and for some musical situations I use all 3.

[Mike Bacciarini]

I use an Ibanez Tube Screamer Mini. For me, the use and choice of FX is song dependent. My FX rack is like a palette that I have at my disposal, for building the songs our band does.

[Tony Prior]

Two OD peds ? sure, why not ? They are not used at the same time and are used for different tones and different songs.

[Erv Niehaus]

Mike,
It looks like you're heavy into organ effects.
Erv

[Bob Watson]

I use a Tone City Bad Horse overdrive pedal ( a clone of the Klon pedal ) for a boost pedal or light overdrive, and a Hotone Skyline Grass pedal for heavier overdrive. The Grass pedal is supposed to sound like a Dumble Overdrive Special amp. I use it when I want a Les Paul through a Marshall style tone and I use the Bad Horse for either a little edgy volume boost or a lighter bluesy tone, with a little breakup. They both sound different but if I had to pick one over the other it would be the Bad Horse. its the only overdrive pedal I've ever used that sounds good when I play 3ds. I usually avoid playing 3ds when using any kind of distortion or overdrive pedal, but they sound good with the Bad Horse. It'll get into a mild distortion type tone when the gain is all the way up too. Both of these pedals are very reasonably priced, but they sound great to me and they get good reviews.

[Dave Mudgett]

I have 3 or 4 boards set up for different purposes at any given time. One big one with a lot of effects mostly for the surf band, and 2-3 small ones (generally 5 or 6 pedals) set up for other stuff. The big one generally has a tuner, volume pedal, wah, compressor and/or something else for clean gain, Klon KTR, fuzz (I have a few that rotate), vibrato (not tremelo, that's on the amps I use this with), reverb, and delay. The small ones have a tuner, compressor or some other type of clean gain, one or two overdrive or distortion devices, reverb, and delay. One of them has a Keeley Dynatrem, which has both trem and vibrato, as well as a clean gain boost.

[Gabriel Edell]

I only use one OD pedal for my steel and I don't have a pedalboard for it yet (my project for 2020 is to build one into a briefcase).

But on my 6-string pedalboard I have two OD pedals - a Fulltone OCD for lower gain stuff and a Wampler Pinnacle for high-gain shredding. I'm running into a fairly clean amp.

But wait, there's more! I also have a Pigtronix Philosopher's Tone compressor that has built-in OD. AND I have a ZVex Super-Hard-On boost (the one on the top right with the American flag on it) that I can use to push the amp into overdriving. So I basically have four OD options. As my wife likes to say "It's not done until it's over-done".

[Ed Pettersen]

Definitely an OD for base sounds and a fuzz for heavier stuff. I also too have one delay before reverb and another after when I want the delay to be less "smeary". One of the reverbs I use has an effects loop and I often run another light OD and delay (for reverse) in that loop. The OD gives the reverb a touch more character for lack of a better term.

I do swap things out occasionally depending on the situation/studio/gig and can easily see two OD's being handy.

[Asa Brosius]

I've used an earth drive before the VP for years- just got bumped for a jrocket blue note tour- excellent range for pedal steel specifically, great sounds and eq options- highly recommended. Now eathdrive is after the VP- makes the degree of overdrive vp controlled, so VP sustained notes get fuzzy. Both are often on simultaneously. Two delays as well- a memory lane jr for subtle tap-tempo basics, and a tc flashback mini for noticeable effects, because it's programmable and tiny.
To the 'why' question- I think it's fun, two of a similar pedal allows more options,(important for a studio situation), and quicker control than tweaking knobs all night, especially handy if you're playing the same show night after night. However, ultimately it's a question of whether or not it makes sense for the material.

[Fred Treece]

As this excellent article explains, they’re all slangy variations on the theme of crunching your clean audio signal.
https://www.sweetwater.com/insync/boost ... ifference/

Why would you use two at the same time? More variation. I have a clean channel with a switchable drive control on my Mesa Boogie’s single input. I run a Boss OD-1 in front of that input, which gives me four different tonal options, including overdriving an already clipped signal.

If you only have a single channel with no drive control switch, you could do the same thing with multiple pedals, plus you could experiment with the signal chain order.

I have experimented with Edge-type short and long delays. Kinda fun, but somewhat genre-specific. Never thought about stacking reverbs, but it’s an interesting idea.

[Erv Niehaus]

I have a Tube Works reverb with 12 springs.
You can either use it as a dual channel rig, with 6 springs per channel, or chain link the two sets of springs together for a sound like you've never heard before!
Erv

[Mike Bacciarini]

Besides using my Tube Screamer for the David Lindley/Jackson Browne stuff, I use a touch of it with the POG (root, -1)for a violin/cello thing.

[Gordon Hartin]

I go Steel to the Bottom row of pedals, to the volume pedal, to the top row of pedals.

Gordon