How many pedals is too many?

80 points of contact to go wrong. 19 little cables to flex. Power ripple. Buffers fighting each other. Remembering which one does what in what order. Too many possibilities for combination for this olde farte to comprehend.

Other than that, nowt.

 

Too may knobs. Too many potential failure points.
Why do you want 20 pedals?? Do you have gas?

Start with one pedal - learn to use it properly. Then think about what you feel is missing, and add what you think is essential.
Most well known guitarists have their signature sound (e.g. Santana), more often than not, with one or two pedals.

 

When you look down and realise that you have sunk the price of a mesa boogie into OD pedals, it might be too many.

 

If you include power supply, 120 points of contact to go wrong.
Unless you use batteries. 9V battery x 20 = $$$$$$

 

For the price of 20 pedals, you could buy a really nice valve amp.
Then most of those pedals would be redundant.

 

Go for it, and put LED lights round the board!
why not.

 

More pedals...more potential problems. I've had my night ruined more than once while running just one pedal that happened to malfunction during a gig. As others have said, checking a large pedalboard's worth of cables and power supply connections is a PITA and troubleshooting it during a gig is pretty stressful. I'm honestly not sure what musical scenario could justify 20 pedals. I imagine people do it all the time, but why would ya when so many affordable modeling amps have entire libraries of built-in effects? Big ol' pedalboards can get pretty heavy and awkward to carry and many of the largest sized ones will only carry 10 or so pedals.

You wouldn't want to run that many pedals off batteries and you won't find a single power supply for that many pedals. If you are really talking about 20 pedals, that is like 2-3 separate power supplies worth of pedals.

Just the sheer amount of lights blinking at you from even a medium-sized pedalboard can be really distracting. I've put tape over a bunch of the LEDS on my pedalboard. Seymour Duncan's Vapor Trail Delay is a cornea scorcher and the glow from an MXR 10-band EQ is intense, to say the least.

Trying to navigate that many pedals while playing would be almost impossible without a loop switcher. Even then you'd be spending a lot of mental resources programming the stuff beforehand and tap-dancing on gadgets during the gig, rather than being in the moment and making music. You want to be reacting to your fellow musicians, not stomping around like Mr. Ed.

 

Having invested in a GigRig G2 and having midi switching to HX Stomp/Timeline/Volante then throw in a wah/ep booster/KOT/Sick as

With this I can't think of a sound/amp set up that's not achievable with 7 pedals plus looper and power supply - to be honest I could get most of the way with just the HX stomp.

Costs a ridiculous amount in total but I've reached my desired guitar/amp collection and now my pedals are sorted.

 

I can see a case for OD, boost, delay, wah, reverb, chorus, and phase. But you don’t need all that. My amp has OD and boost and I just use a delay pedal. No one cares that I don’t have the other sounds

 

Always makes me laugh when someone says 'I only have a few pedals I need to use' , then proceed to list about 8.

I guess for me then, the answer is more than one (clean boost into one of my Marshalls or maybe an overdrive pedal if I'm running a clean amp).

 

You have to many effects when you don't use them. And you don't have to use all of them, all of the time.

Pedals I consider important to me.

Chase Tone Secret Preamp, MOOG MF104M, Mayer Vision Wah, 2004 Analogman Wht Dot NKT275 Sunface/Sundial, Mayer Visage Fuzz, EHX Blackfinger, 89 The Guv'nor, Mayer 4644 Drive, Big Muff, Mayer Voodoovibe+ Mayer RM58 Limiter, Cornish 3Q1

I also already have great amps, and don't agree pedals cant make a great amps sound better, and more versatile, but before Id sink a bunch of money in pedals, Id make sure I have what I would consider a Great Amp, and an amp that is known to take pedals well, as I would have pedals planned for the future, but a good amp comes first.

 

I used to love lots of pedals. Then, I decided to just run clean with none and loved it. Also, when I do want to process the signal, I just run it into Ableton Live or Max/MSP now. Any effect I could want or think of without all the extra cables.

 

I just get them for something to do, mostly a bump here & there, my amps were meticulously chosen for their tone.to stand up on their own. why buy amp that you have to put a pedal in front to make it usable, there is a thing on the guitar called a vol & tone knob to manipulate. guess i have an individual amp for each main theme. Most dont even have a loop. But 17, my gosh , anything over that would be just crazy

 

I have a pretty large pedalboard.

The Big Ol’ Board of Sonic Bliss by Fiesta Red posted Feb 8, 2019 at 8:27 AM

One of the pedals is specifically made for harmonica, and is used in conjunction with another (noise reduction/noise gate pedal—which I use with my guitars, too).

A couple of the pedals are only used for specific songs, so they could be removed if need be...but I have room and I like the effect, so why should I?

Truth be told, I could get away with a tuner, an overdrive and a boost, but I like the faux-Leslie, wah, phase shifter, fuzz and delay...so I’ll keep them.

 

It depends if you have them all connected at the same time, or in separate rigs, or some spares somewhere.

How many of you put all your clothes on at the same time? Play your guitars at the same time? Those with multiple cars, do you hitch them together when you go out for a drive?

 

Guitarmoron ... Well mechanically, nothing wrong with 20 pedals ...

Oh! Guitar pedals ... ah ... x4 is enough for me.

 

Lucky you have 4 feet!