Tone Trace: Rig Analyzer

The only guitar rig analyzer that audits your whole signal chain — not just your pedal chain. Layout planners arrange your pedalboard. Pedal-chain tools score the order of a single line of pedals. Tone Trace is the pedalboard planner that analyzes the complete rig: splitters, amps, FX loops, passive Y-cables, MIDI routing, sidechain detection — the full signal chain your gear actually has. Build your guitar rig the way it sits in real life — guitar → pedalboard → splitters → amps → FX loops → parallel branches — and Tone Trace runs the diagnostic checks a working guitar tech would, against verified manufacturer specs. You get a Health Score (0–100) with sub-scores across buffer health, impedance compatibility, pedal order violations, and noise risk. Tap any sub-score to see what's contributing and why. WHAT MAKES IT A RIG ANALYZER, NOT A PEDAL-CHAIN ANALYZER - Amps as first-class nodes — input impedance, FX loop config (series / parallel / stereo), additional inputs, stereo handling. - Splitters and passive Y-cables — source-loading rules, dual-amp ground-loop detection, nested fan-outs. - Real FX loops — Send → loop pedals → Return modeled as actual topology, not flattened into a sequence. - MIDI lane — controller routing over TRS / TRRS / DIN5 connectors, thru-port chaining, timing-jitter analysis. - Sidechain — detection paths, key inputs, gate routing. - Pedalboard canvas — spatial 2D pedalboard planner and drag-and-drop chain builder. Zoom, pan, drag pedals to reposition. SIGNAL CHAIN & PEDALBOARD HEALTH ANALYSIS Tone Trace checks every leg of your signal chain against a ruleset drawn from real rig engineering: buffer placement (the #1 cause of tone suck on stompbox boards), impedance mismatches, pedal order violations (with sonic consequences so you can decide if breaking a rule is intentional), noise risk from daisy-chain power and gain staging, and MIDI routing — TRS/TRRS mismatches, DIN5 adapter needs, thru chain length warnings. ARTIST RIG LIBRARY — FREE Browse, search, and study all 56 annotated guitar rig topologies for free: Gilmour, Edge, Lifeson, Iommi, May, Santana, Young, Morello, Greenwood, Frusciante. See how signal-chain rules and pedal order apply — and how the greats break them on purpose. Load any rig up to 5 pedals straight into your own builder at no cost; loading the bigger rigs (more than 5 pedals) into your builder is where Tone Trace Pro comes in. PRO FEATURES Signal Map — visual flow diagram of the entire guitar rig with impedance values at each node. Troubleshoot Wizard — start with a symptom ("My fuzz sounds thin," "There's a high-pitched whine when I tap the tuner") and the wizard walks the rig graph to surface root causes with fix steps. Set Lists — per-song pedal-setting notes attached to a specific rig. Additional walkthroughs — guided lessons on rig and signal-chain concepts (gain staging, true bypass vs buffered, 4-cable method). Several walkthroughs are free; more unlock with Pro. Tone Trace doesn't simulate your tone or generate audio. It analyzes the structure of your guitar rig and tells you whether your signal chain is working with your gear or fighting it. Core analysis, set lists and the full artist rig library are free. Signal Map, the Troubleshoot Wizard, set list export, extra walkthroughs, saving more than one rig, and loading rigs of more than 5 pedals into your builder require Tone Trace Pro. PEDAL DATABASE 2,000+ guitar effects pedals and rack gear across 200+ brands, with verified per-pedal specs sourced from manufacturer documentation — no guesses, no defaults. Don't see your pedal? We research and add new gear with every update.