The REAL Difference Between Series and Parallel Guitar Effects

What practically changes when you run series vs. parallel effects? Will anyone really be able to tell the difference? Are there any tangible benefits? Is parallel worth the extra effort?
Great questions. As always, my answer - It depends.
Every guitar player has a different 'sound' they are trying to achieve. For some, parallel will be the way to get there, for others, nothing could be farther from what they want.
Todays video will give you practical examples and show you what to listen for when starting the decision making process between series and parallel effects. Yes, it is a process, but it's well worth it.
Format:
00:00 - Intro
02:03 - Series Audio Example
03:02 - Parallel wet effects NO Kill Dry
04:05 - Parallel wet effects WITH Kill Dry, No Dry Thru
05:02 - Parallel wet with Kill Dry and Dry Thru
05:42 - Recap on series delay into verb vs parallel delay into verb.
06:16 - Full audio example from series to parallel.
07:00 - What to listen for in series and parallel / pros and cons

[@leandershah1617]

Like how you're playing Shot in the Dark chords and the delay makes it even better

[@jaguarsunburst1570]

Another Great Job Man 🎸🎸🎸

[@ToneCraftFX]

Hey Grant! Great examples and visuals. You’re not able to run the parallel setup with stereo, correct? Would the only solution be a wet/dry/wet system if I wanted a parallel setup while using the stereo features from my delays and reverbs?

[@GoodwoodAudio]

You can definitely do parallel with stereo effects! You would just have to determine where you want to go stereo. If its before you split to parallel you'll need two splitters (one for Left and one for Right). If it's after you split, then you'd send mono to all parallel effects (lets say delay and verb) and then stereo OUT of the delay and verb to 2x Line mixers OR 1x stereo line mixer. Left from delay and verb to one mixer, Right from delay and verb to another mixer.

[@aangtonio5570]

SERIES sounds more natural to me, tbh. If you go to a highly reverberant place (like a great dome) and make some sounds with lots of transients (finger snaps, claps, etc.), you can tell the distinct echoes can actually cause their proper reverb trails as well as the original (dry) sound. It's pretty subtle (because true natural echoes have less volume than regular delay pedal usage as in this video), but perceptible, nonetheless. On the other hand, PARALLEL offers a lot more clarity and control of both effects, getting a studio-like sound quality, so I think it's a better approach when delay and reverb are needed in a quite dense mix, or for making otherworldly soundscapes. Great video, btw! 😎

[@-jank-willson]

what about something that splits your signal into 8, with one going through a fuzz pedal, one going through a overdrive pedal, one going through a chorus, one going through a tremolo, one going through a rat, one going through a klon, one going through a reverb, and one going through a lofi pedal, and then all 8 joining back up together into one signal again at the end, which goes out to the amp?

[@kevmac1230]

You really know your stuff.I can definitely hear the difference but I'm slow on the uptake.I bought a EHX tri parallel mixer that I'm trying slowly to learn using.Hate sounding like the Geezer I am but in my heyday we didn't do much of this kind of technology.It hurts my brain getting old.lol

[@GoodwoodAudio]

It's taken me a lot of experimenting to find what I like in this area of routing. The Tri mixer is a great start though! Here to help with questions if they come up.

[@FakeGlasses]

Do switchers like the pbc 6x allow one to sort of (but not truly) pick series/parallel on the fly? If you setup the insert loop as the wet/dry point, then if you run all your wet effects after it you’ll get series, but if you put a wet effect before the split you’ll hear that without the other wets and get some of that clarity back (though not as much as if you had truly run them parallel, since the ‘dry’ signal is still being sent with the effect into the wet)? I’m thinking use case of putting the delay on the ‘dry’ before the insert point so the delays come through on the dry signal and then going into verb on the wet. Or am I crazy?

[@GoodwoodAudio]

I don't know if I'm 100% following. I'd say the easiest way to do this here is to put your wet effects after the split, (you're correct you can move the split around) and keep your dry amp only dry.. This will still give you a bit of separation since the dry amp isn't getting any wet. If the delay was pre-split, then it would send to the dry AND the wet, giving you (in theory) less separation. Hopefully that helps, but not sure if I'm exactly understanding.

[@marcusstrymon693]

I have 3 stereo fx send outputs on my audio interface.... Meaning with just 3 minutes of setup I can switch from my serial pedalboard config to a 4 way parallel setup. This is stupidly useful. One day I recorded a song with a warble sound on my nightsky. The warble was essential but I did not know how loud i would need it on my final recording - I simply split my signal chain - going from iridium into interface but then going fx out to 100percent wet nightsky. In general, that is what I do quite a lot when recording cause it allows me to mix my pedalboard ex post in the daw. And I do the same with VST - send it to my bigsky, volante or whatever. So good. And having 2 FX loops in parallel comes at hand when for instance using 2 multihead delays in parallel - you can adjust the delay level ex post for both of em. So good.

[@shuapple5126]

Hi Grant! Which buffered split and line mixer did you use for the parallel signal chain? If I want to run delay and reverb in parallel but also in stereo, do I need two line mixers or is there a dual line mixer that can take care of the job? And if such dual line mixer exists, is there one with summation functio as well (or am I asking too much? Lol). Finally, if I have RJM, do I need these mixers or splitters or can RJM take care of that?

[@GoodwoodAudio]

Hey! Depends which RJM product you have. If you have the PBC10, it will do all of this for you! If not, we can build all of this into one box no problem. This is a common request actually! [e-mail] if you want to chat further.

[@donovanwillis370]

@@GoodwoodAudio the RJM 6x doesnt have the line mixer correct? Can you still set your wet effect up in paralell?

[@GoodwoodAudio]

@@donovanwillis370 correct - no line mixer. The only way to do this is to run another piece of hardware to allow parallel. You could put these in a single loop (all parallel fx) but you can't put them in separate loops and still have them in parallel. If they are midi controlled though, you could get away with turning them on and off via midi as if they were in their own loop! We make this type of hardware through our custom shop. Happy to chat - [e-mail]!

[@donovanwillis370]

@@GoodwoodAudio sent email today actually

[@Jmacc5150]

Do you need to run both fx in kill dry? Couldn’t you just kill dry the delay for example and keep the dry signal running through the reverb?

[@GoodwoodAudio]

that could be an option. There are pros and cons to this approach though. The big one being mix level on the effect that has dry passing through. Instead of just adjusting the amount of reverb you will be reducing reverb AND adding more dry... not the end of the world, but has downsides.

[@marcuslewitzki4610]

What about running stereo wet in parallel in a W/D/W rig? I get the whole using a line mixer that has stereo capabilities but should the signal be split BEFORE the dry effect pedals in order to get a clean signal through the wet effect pedals or should the splitter be AFTER the dry effects as to color the signal going to the wet effects?

[@GoodwoodAudio]

Great question. You can do either! Some people love clean into wet, others don't. I think splitting after overdrives is more common these days because you get the sustain / consistency of your delays / verbs getting the gain which is what you'd be used to hearing in a series rig. It's a completely different (sometimes shocking) sound having your parallel effects getting clean guitar only. Worth the experiment though to find out what you like.

[@marcuslewitzki4610]

@@GoodwoodAudio Thanks for the answer. And since I'd need a splitter anyway for a W/D/W setup it's simple enough to just swap its placement and try it out.

[@GoodwoodAudio]

@@marcuslewitzki4610 exactly!

[@786itube]

Great video - Thanks. I have the EHX Tri-Parallel mixer which has been a complete game changer. I will not go back to series as parallel is far more versatile. By the way, the EHX mixer allows for series chains to still be assigned to any of three channels if one still insists on using series

[@GoodwoodAudio]

nice!

[@alvinlacabra826]

My board is a mono setup (Series) i want to make my board into parallel. In order to do that what should i'll be add to my board? is Custom Junction is good? please let me know your recommendation. Thank you.

[@GoodwoodAudio]

Depends how many FX you want to run in parallel. Only 2? More? A few things to consider here.

[@jameshalbert181]

I like the reverb in parallel. It lets the dry signal cut through the reverb without getting washed out. JHS has a buffered splitter and a summing would these be a good choice to do this?

[@GoodwoodAudio]

The splitter would be although I always recommend getting a mute put on the dry output which not many companies offer. But if you don't need that, then yes! DON'T get a summing pedal though. Summing is different than a line mixer and won't work properly. Always happy to chat options over email! [e-mail]

[@mikepflueger9525]

@@GoodwoodAudio what's the issue with using the JHS sum pedal to recombine parallel signal paths? Could there be phasing problem?

[@GoodwoodAudio]

@@mikepflueger9525 not phasing...the lines will load eachother down (get quieter). Summing (from the same stereo pedal) will work fine with a summing pedal but as soon as you try and sum a signal from two different sources (like mixing two signals from two different pedals) you need to mix (A virtual earth mixer) which is a different approach although they do seem very similar.

[@mikepflueger9525]

@@GoodwoodAudio thanks for the response. So if I understand correctly, the issue is rooted in varying output impedances between two different pedals? If two different pedals with the same exact output impedance are used does this circumvent the loading issue?

[@GoodwoodAudio]

@@mikepflueger9525 Great question. Haven't tested this but I don't think it's going to help. you need the summing module itself to have a reference voltage of 0V. Generally this would mean having an internal split supply of a +/- voltage powering the internal mixer. You can message JHS and ask if it can be used for mixing different signals, but I have a feeling it will be a 'no'. I would LOVE to be proved wrong here though.

[@SL-zw7ts]

Hi Grant, i am a bit confuse with kill dry and 100% wet..should they run side by side or either one only...

[@GoodwoodAudio]

the short answer... if you're running parallel effects, Kill dry is best, if you're running series, I'd leave it in normal mode and let some dry pass through all the wet effects.

[@MatthewSwasta]

I want only the wet side of a stereo delay to have the reverb. I don't have a Timeline (which has it's own effects loop). How is this possible, in the simplest way possible?

[@GoodwoodAudio]

If I understand correctly you want the repeats of the delay to feed the reverb, but not the DRY portion of your guitar signal? Firstly... the delay would have to have kill dry as an option. Secondly, you'd most likely want to split your signal before it hits your delay and send that to a dry output (as shown in this vid). If you don't have this, your signal will sound pretty rough / have no clarity / only washed out delay and verb trails. Does that make sense? In short... Split your signal before your delay, send to delay input and dry amp input. Turn delay onto kill dry, feed the reverb inputs with delay outputs.

[@MatthewSwasta]

@@GoodwoodAudio Thanks for the tips...I think I have something figured out with some older gear that might intrigue a few people. Thinking of making a rudimentary video about it. I don't really have any good video gear though. If it works out I'll ping you and get your thoughts. Thanks again...

[@notnotquirona6766]

is that right you can help. It’s been on my head. How to set with 2amps I want that ping pong delay.

[@GoodwoodAudio]

Assuming you're not wanting Wet Dry Wet but more that you're going after a ping pong delay with everything in series (the most common way to wire everything up) then you'd want to get a delay that first can do ping pong sounds (as an example the Boss DD5 is a well known one). YOu can plug your dry effects into the input of the DD5 and then each output of the DD5 goes to one amp. Left output to an amp and right output to an amp. Let me know if that makes sense and if you have any questions.

[@Msef0rAnna]

I think you missed using an amp with fx loop. Running the wet effects kill dry into the fx loop with a linemixer, make all the difference for me.

[@GoodwoodAudio]

it's a great way to do it! I've done separate videos on FX loops, but you're right, it would work in this instance as well and would sound great!

[@YourGuy_Jay]

how should I do this? thanks for the idea

[@nedim_guitar]

So, basically, I should use parallel on my 15 pedal board. I can split my signal and put some pedals in my switcher and others parallel to it. I think I'll have to experiment a bit.

[@GoodwoodAudio]

experimenting is the best way! Some people love the sound of parallel, others don't. We recently added a feature to our custom junctions that allow you to do both. Parallel or series by hitting a button. makes experimenting a lot easier.

[@-jank-willson]

what about something that splits your signal into 8, with one going through a fuzz pedal, one going through a overdrive pedal, one going through a chorus, one going through a tremolo, one going through a rat, one going through a klon, one going through a reverb, and one going through a lofi pedal, and then all 8 joining back up together into one signal again at the end, which goes out to the amp?

[@marcospintor1333]

Nice lighting 😂😂😂

[@GoodwoodAudio]

oh man. It's been ages since I've seen that vid... what was I thinking!! (learning as we go).

[@michaelcraig9449]

Stuff is really getting complicated..Overwhelming. I like youtube a lot, sure wish there was someone to actually ask questions too, when it gets confusing. Since there is not, I still do not understand this stuff.

[@GoodwoodAudio]

This stuff does get complicated I agree. Not necessary for everyone though! Just fun to talk about possibilities. Feel free to ask any questions here! happy to help where I can.

[@erictripton]

Or just buy a used Yamaha Magicstomp LOL

[@GoodwoodAudio]

If that covers what you need it to and you love the sound, I totally agree!

[@erictripton]

@@GoodwoodAudio 8 delays in parallel inside a pedal, I would say more than covers it.

[@GoodwoodAudio]

@@erictripton nice! but what if you need a 9th... haha

[@erictripton]

@@GoodwoodAudio thats for the delay that runs above one's head maybe? LOL. If you have never tried one, I highly suggest it. If you use DAW, you can replicate it using 8 bus FX with a digital delay that has modulation.

[@GoodwoodAudio]

@@erictripton nice! have never tried it. Will keep it on my radar.