Newby thoughts about pedal sidechaining....

[vandy12]

Is it in general a fact electricity will have less opportunity to be noisy or cause a problem if the distance between
two points in the circuit is shorter rather than longer? Does an inch or two here and there really make a difference?

Has anyone ever made combo pedals like a compressor/reverb or a chorus/fuzz in one pedal? I guess you could easily
do this in a standard pedal link, but if it was a pedal combo and you didn't have to connect two pedals together and
the wiring was very short, wouldn't it make this kind of pedal sound better than a pedal chained together?
A pedal with sidechaining capability? Like have a compressor sidechaining a fuzz or chorus sidechaining
a reverb etc. in one pedal so you could blend each of the sounds differently to experiment with different sounds?
I just glanced at my rat. Not a real rat...you know..The Rat. It's got volume, filter, distortion. But no compression.
No overdrive. I hear you--hook one in!! Get out the 1/4 inch and stop obsessing about stupid things!! HA!!
Probably a million pedals out there like this huh?

I've got my Beavis board almost done. Again I am new at this and I looked at the circuit and thought I can do this.
Soldering those wires on that tiny constricted 3 PDT switch was not easy for me. I hope the welds are OK. It is starting to look cool
but if it doesn't work...well I'll get it to work somehow. The parts are pretty cheap. I'm also welding on the back
of these terminals that are kind of like spade terminals but look like little mushroom heads.
I rub them with sandpaper and put on some rosin flux but they are not easy to weld to.

I drilled a hole in the lid and when I put the dial in it bumped a part on the bottom. Rookie. I think my hole for the
LED is too big too. I got some LED holders but even in the holder I think the hole is too big. I was thinking about using
some silicone to seal it in. Have to fill in the gap.

[Marcos - Munky]

Has anyone ever made combo pedals like a compressor/reverb or a chorus/fuzz in one pedal?

Yep.

if it was a pedal combo and you didn't have to connect two pedals together and
the wiring was very short, wouldn't it make this kind of pedal sound better than a pedal chained together?

No. It'll sound exactly the same. I mean, if we don't take into account things like very high gain distortion where the wiring does matter a lot or else it will oscillate (but won't affect the sound quality). A few inches/centimeters of wire won't add enough resistance (or capacitance, if the wires are in parallel) to make an audible difference. Unless you're somebody like Eric Johnson, who claims can hear a minimal change on the signal path 

Pedal combos aren't made to sound better than a couple of chained pedals. They're made to be more practical. Think about this (not so) hypothetical situation: you need a overdrive, a chorus and a delay. What's better, to use 3 different pedals or a single one? Keep in mind that 3 different pedals need cables between them, which can fail right before you start a 2 hour set, and also needs some time to connect them if you don't have a pedalboard, while the single pedal just requires to have power and to be connected to your guitar and amp.

Soldering those wires on that tiny constricted 3 PDT switch was not easy for me.

Don't think too much on that. Sooner or later you'll be soldering two points way closer than two 3pdt lugs. It's just a matter of getting experience. I remember the mess I made when I tried to solder my first IC

I drilled a hole in the lid and when I put the dial in it bumped a part on the bottom. Rookie. I think my hole for the
LED is too big too. I got some LED holders but even in the holder I think the hole is too big. I was thinking about using
some silicone to seal it in. Have to fill in the gap.

You can use washers to hide the bigger hole. Or fill it with something like jb weld and drill the hole again.

[Mark Hammer]

Wire length/distance CAN matter, when there are high frequencies, high gains, or when capacitance is an issue.  But a lot of that is really more a matter of layout, and the obligation for better layout that longer distances require.

Electrons take time to travel and do what they do.  When we're dealing with >1ghz frequencies, distance-to-be-travelled can make a difference.  But for content below 20khz (and guitar content is often well below 10khz), extra inches here and there don't make any difference.

I find many complaints about dysfunctional switches really stem from poor soldering and the over-application of heat.  Some of us get our switches direct from the factory, with nice shiny lugs having a thirst for solder.  The rest of us buy a bunch of switches  from a supplier, that sit in our parts drawer until we "get around" to them.  They may look sort of shiny, but have a bit of tarnish on the lugs.  That, in turn, gets in the way of forming a nice solder joint quickly, before any excess heat starts to affect the inside of the switch.  I like to keep a utility knife or similar sharp edge handy to scrape the surface of the lugs, and make them hungrier for solder.  A bottle of liquid flux, and the application of a droplet here or there with a toothpick, can make the solder flow smootly and quickly, and keep heat to a minimum.  It's also a good idea to wait a little bit between soldering each lug, so that things can cool down.

[Elektrojänis]

Pedal combos aren't made to sound better than a couple of chained pedals. They're made to be more practical. Think about this (not so) hypothetical situation: you need a overdrive, a chorus and a delay. What's better, to use 3 different pedals or a single one? Keep in mind that 3 different pedals need cables between them, which can fail right before you start a 2 hour set, and also needs some time to connect them if you don't have a pedalboard, while the single pedal just requires to have power and to be connected to your guitar and amp.

Another practicality factor is that if you always use certain effects together, it will be easier to use whan playing if they are on the same stomp switch. If your lead tone always consists of overdrive, chorus and a delay, it will be a lot easier to just kick all that on from a single stomp switch rather than tap dancing all three separately every time you take a solo. (And the same again when you end the solo.)