Please help me maximize my Earthquaker experience

[farewellcaptain]

Hey, everybody. My name's Mark. Thanks in advance for reading. I'm new. And I've got the Earthquaker bug something fierce. I'm up to five EQD pedals on my board - Tone Reaper, Rainbow Machine, Sea Machine, Grand Orbiter and the Dispatch Master. Was wondering if some of you would be willing to provide some input on how best to maximize my experience, sonically speaking (with the caveat that, of course, every setup is different, just need to experiment, etc.).

Here's how I ran everything last night:

Gibson SG (P90s)--Tone Reaper--Rainbow Machine--SolidGoldFx Buffer--Budda BudWah--Catalinbread Dirty Little Secret--Heavy Electronics Highway 77 Distortion--Sea Machine--Grand Orbiter--MXR Carbon Copy--Dispatch Master--Fairfield Barbershop--Fender Twin

My from guitar/to amp cables are more than 20 feet long, so I was having some signal loss without a buffer (use an a/b/y switch to keep my TU-2 out of the chain)...hence the SolidGoldFx. Power the TR and the wah with batteries. The rest are powered by a 1-spot or my pedal board (which is powered itself by the 1-spot). I don't use the effects loop on my board because, frankly and embarrasingly, I don't really know how.

Everything sounds...pretty good. Really good, at times. But I'm still chasing that fucking dragon. Wondering if I should consider powering everything differently, ordering things differently (especially putting the Barbershop at the end - should it go before the modulation effects?)...that kind of thing. Any suggestions would be most appreciated.

Also, on a side note, whenever I turn the level up on my TR past 12:00, it really darkens and gets muddy. Is that the typical experience?

Thanks again. Cheers.

[devideva]

I would pull all the mods and put them in the effect loop, including the delay. I would put dirty secret first, highway, then reaper, barber, no buffer with all those overdrives.

If the tone gets darker past noon it's probably because at that point youre boosting your tone. Fiddle with the knobs more, or use another one of tyour boxes and mix your tone better.