Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer

Re:Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer by phronimos on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @08:18PM (#47160559)

Interesting factoid: modern guitar effects typically have their input jacks on the right-hand side, and output jacks on the left. In this article's guitar rig diagram, the jacks are reversed, but this is accurate: back then, for whatever reason the jacks were reversed on each of these pedals. Modern reissues of the round-enclosure Fuzz Face pedals preserve this pattern despite the reversal of industry trends.

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Re:Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer by mock-possum on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @09:35PM (#47161093)

It does seem weird, I’d expect signal to flow from left to right, as English is written, as a number line is drawn, from -x to 0 to +x

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Re:Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer by john-radio on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @11:14PM (#47161767)

the ergonomic advantage of left-to-right is that most players use right-handed guitars, so the guitar's cord comes out the right side of your body, and it's most ergonomic for it to be directed straight away from you to the right side of your pedal board, not criss-crossing in front of you towards the left side of your board.

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Re:Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer by dmurray on Thursday February 26, 2026 @02:57AM (#47163209)

And Hendrix played the guitar left-handed, so the other way made more sense for him.

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Re:Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer by xcf_seetan on Thursday February 26, 2026 @01:39PM (#47170186)

>criss-crossing in front of you towards the left side of your board. No need to criss-cross the cable in front of you, you can connect the cable to the guitar on the right side and the cable will go behind you and emerge on the left side, into the pedal board/fx processor.

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Re:Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer by shermantanktop on Wednesday February 25, 2026 @10:21PM (#47161400)

With your cable in your right hand, it is easier to plug into the right side of a pedal. If you were to try to do the equivalent with your left, the guitar neck would be a little bit in the way as well.

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Re:Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer by schwartzworld on Thursday February 26, 2026 @10:21AM (#47167266)

But you have to plug cables into both sides... Also you set your pedals up before you actually start playing.

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Re:Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer by shermantanktop on Saturday February 28, 2026 @04:41PM (#47200591)

Typical modern practice would be to have a pedal board with all interconnects and power set up and fixed. Hendrix didn’t do that, but EVH did. And now the internet is full of people posting their pedalboards (P&W people especially).

But you still have to plug in from the right with the guitar cord, and from the left for the card to the amp. So I dunno, my theory may be bogus. But this pattern got established very early on, by the late 60s st the latest.

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Re:Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer by craigmcnamara on Thursday February 26, 2026 @01:04AM (#47162451)

I was immediately bothered by the picture because of these facts.

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Re:Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer by hyperbolablabla on Thursday February 26, 2026 @09:27AM (#47166573)

A factoid is a fact commonly thought to be true, but is actually false.

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Re:Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer by phronimos on Thursday February 26, 2026 @01:55PM (#47170411)

There are two definitions of the word according to Merriam-Webster. The second one is used accurately here.

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