Not every pedal changes your tone. Utility pedals keep you in tune, control your volume, help you practice and keep things quiet. They're often the most-used pedals on a board.
Tuner
Put the tuner first in your chain, straight after the guitar. It gets the cleanest, strongest signal, so it reads faster and more accurately. Most pedal tuners mute your output while engaged, so you can tune silently between songs. Make it a habit: stomp, tune, stomp.
Volume pedal
Where you put it changes what it does:
- Before your drive: it works like your guitar's volume knob. Backing it off also cleans up the drive, since less signal hits the drive.
- After your drive: it's a master volume. The drive stays exactly as dirty; only the loudness changes. For fades, many players put it after the drive but before delay and reverb, so the tails keep ringing after you pull the volume down.
Rocking it from silent to full on each note gives "volume swells", a violin-like attack that sounds great into delay.
Looper
A looper records a phrase and plays it back on repeat. For practice it's gold: record a chord progression, then solo over it, or record a riff and check your timing against it. Start small: a four-bar loop in a key you know.
Noise gate
A noise gate cuts your signal when it drops below a set level, silencing hiss and hum between phrases. That's especially useful with high-gain sounds.
- Placement: usually after your drives, where the noise is created. Some gates have extra jacks so they can listen to your guitar before the drive and mute after it, which tracks more accurately. Keep it before delay and reverb, or it will chop off your tails.
- Threshold: start low and raise it until the hiss disappears when you stop playing. If sustained notes get cut off early, back it off.
A/B boxes and buffers
An A/B box switches one signal between two places, like two amps or two signal chains. An A/B/Y box can also send to both at once.
A buffer strengthens your signal so it can drive long cables and many pedals without losing high end. If your board sounds duller with everything bypassed than plugging straight into the amp, a buffer near the start of the chain often fixes it.