Pedal position switcher idea - would this work?

[Guitar Goober]

Hi everyone,

New user here. Just getting into the world of building pedals, thought this might be a cool first project. I posted this over on TheGearPage too, but thought that I might get some more technical advice here.

Backstory: I recently watched the episode of That Pedal Show where Dan and Mick interviewed Tore from TC Electronic. He mentioned that when using one of the Nova series pedals, your signal goes through AD/DA conversion even in bypass. I run a Nova Modulator in the effects loop of my amp, and have noticed a slight difference between when it's in the chain and when it's not. I was toying with the idea of putting it in a true bypass looper when I thought "it'd be very cool if I could change the position of the Nova Mod in my signal chain with a flick of a switch too." This would allow running it before/after drive.

I had a search around, and I found switchers that swap the position of two pedals at a single point in your signal chain (e.g., boost -> drive / drive -> boost), but couldn't see one that moved a single pedal between two positions in your signal chain.

This is the sort of thing I was looking for:


And this is what I envision such a switcher looking like:

A toggle switch is used to choose the position of the pedal in the signal chain, a footswitch to bypass it completely, and an LED indicator for the bypass.

Modifying a wiring diagram for a true bypass looper, I came up with the following idea:


From what I understand, having a common ground between pedals in front of the amp and those in the effects loop can cause noise issues. So, in this diagram I use the 4PDT switch to also change which side the ground of the pedal in the send/return loop is connected to.

My questions are:
1. Would this work as I think it should?
2. Will this keep the ground isolated between the pedals in front and the effects loop?
3. Is switching the ground like this correct/safe?

Thanks in advance