Which FX into the FX Loop and which FX into the Pre-Amp?

[Drache713]

I currently have a wah, chorus, flanger, phaser, tremolo, delay, and reverb units (I may add a pitch shifter/harmonist soon too) for FX. Now I understand this is subjective to taste and opinion, and correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the general consensus that the wah goes straight into the amp and the rest of the pedals (pitch shifter, chorus, flanger, phaser, tremolo, delay, and reverb) go into the FX loop?

[Two hands31]

Usually your wah and drive (OD/Distortion/Compression(?)) pedals go before the amp, and your ambience (reverb/delay) pedals go in the loop, and the modulation (chorus, flange, etc) are up to you.

[Globbits]

I've always found that modulation works best in the FX loop, but that's probably just the cuircitry in my amp.

It won't hurt your amp wherever you put anything, so experiment and see what sounds you can get!

[7 Dying Trees]

Any gain boosting devices to overdrive the preamp such as distortion overdrive wah etc should go in the signal path before any other devices, as your aim is to distort the signal.

Then all modulation, ambience effects are best placed in the FX loop. This is so that they will not add as much noise to your signal. Basically, anything that increases gain should always come before the preamp to minimise the noise it produces. After all the main signal amplification/distortion has been completed, then add other effects, as any noise they add will NOT be amlified throughout the rest of the signal chain (well, not as much as if you were to put them before the amplification stages)