This is normal, and in fact it’s part of an age-old debate/discussion. Do you put your wah before or after your dirt? One thing that the EHX admin didn’t mention is that some combinations of wah and distortion actually don’t work because of impedance problems with older pedals. This is mainly a problem with old Cry Babies. I don’t think that any of the EHX pedals are susceptible to this, but they [strong]MIGHT [/strong]be depending on the fuzz.

The best way, and really the only way I think, is to just try it out yourself and decide what you like best. Not only does it sound different depending on the order, but HOW different it sounds depending on the order also depends on the wah and the distortion. If I put my EHX Cock Fight Plus before my Big Muff with lots of gain, I can barely tell when I turn it on. If I put it before my Hot Tubes, Soul Food, or Germanium Big Muff with mild distortion, I can get that classic distortion going into an overdriven tube amp sound. If I put my Cock Fight Plus after my Big Muff, it’s almost TOO much wah. It’s VERY synth-like. If I set my Cock Fight Plus to “vocal” and use the built-in distortion BEFORE the wah, I can get clear formant-type “wah”. If I do the same but switch the distortion AFTER the vocal wah, I can barely tell that it’s on, and that’s with the built-in distortion.

So, the best thing is to just try it out and see what works best for you. Here’s a video of how bad it can be: