Compression before or after overdrive?

I run my compressor in front of my overdrive.

 

what i think is do what works for you! there aren't any Guitar Police.

 

i prefer it after drive

 

Whatever you prefer sound-wise.
I prefer after. Also with amps that have onboard compression, if enabled you're running it after.

 

I’ve tried it both ways with my rig and I definitely like it better before my dirt pedals. There’s no wrong or right so do what sounds best to you. Rock on!

 

B 4

 

Comp>OD
If you have it after, you could run into noise issues. I prefer compressing the raw guitar signal - evening out my erratic pick attack, and also adding sustain. Then shape my tone with the other pedals on my board.

 

After

Running it before removes the touch sensitivity of the OD, because it can't hear your touch.

 

I disagree respectfully. it depends on how you set your compressor. I prefer to use the compressor to lightly smooth out my pick attack. If you have the compression set high, then I could see how that could loose some of your picking character. A good quality OD pedal in my opinion is one that can vary the amount of gain output by either changing your pick attack or working your guitar’s volume knob.
Sorry if I sound like a cork sniffing tube roller.

 

I use comp first to limit peaks some for my situation, but sometimes I do like the OD first for a more natural sensitivity to pick attack
.

 

We completely agree on this, I guess we just use different amounts of compression.

 

It took me some trial and error too. Seems logical to have it afterwards, but in reality I liked it in front (White Horse):

 

My main board has two, one before dirt and one after dirt cause IM A COMPRESSOR FREAK!

 

I always put mine before my drives, and a clean boost after my drives.

I find the compression after drive doesn’t work like I like, and amplifies a lot of noise from the drive. Hiss, etc.

 

I’ve liked it both ways. For a long time I liked conservative compression after a low-gain-settings ProCo Rat 2 (into a clean SS amp) because I could access the clean-to-dirty range by my pick attack and the compressor after the Rat seemed to simulate a bit of tube output stage sagginess/non-linearity. I didn’t have moose issues like that, either.

But I have also had good luck with the compressor first, letting the compressor’s performance influence where I set the distortion’s gain (the ceiling imposed by the comp allowed me to set the gain slightly higher, which could be a cool sound sometimes). I kind of like the compressor first these days; I like having it affect my edge of breakup, and I like having my pick attack trigger dirt level and compression response.

 

Totally depends on what OD and what comp you're running together. I have comp after dirt on two boards (Rothwell LS after Bearfoot Arctic White fuzz on one and Boss CP-1X after Boss SD-1 on another) because I like having the attack with added sustain that I get with these particular pedals arranged this way.

 

I only use comp when playing clean, OD pedal off.

 

Dirty sounds are already plenty compressed. I never use them together so it doesnt matter

 

This.