Chorus Pedal... in front or fx loop?

[newfiesig]

For those of you with a 25 or 35, do you use your chorus pedal in the loop or in front?

I know modulation is typically supposed to come after dirt, and that the preamp stage is mighty dirty, however convention also states that chorus should come before reverb, however the fx loop sits behind the on board reverb...

 

[doublescale1]

with my MV:35 I have done both - when I first got the amp it was my first amp w/a loop so I got all the cables necessary to do the 4-cord thing and it sounded fine - a chorus or trem or vibe or verb effect with the guitar - cool. Then I began to get tired of fussing with all the long cable runs on stage from the pedal board back to the amp for the loop so I went back to my old school "everything through the front of the amp" way (the way Leo intended) with just one line-out cord feed from the whole pedal board - with this system all the modulation pedals are after the Wah (which is first after the tuner) and OD's, so the final line of pedals are: Chorus, Trem (and a vibe if I need it for the set list), and finally Delay. Either way I always used just a touch of the MV:35 built-in Reverb for each channel. That way sounded just as good. The live recordings of the band confirmed it sounded great too, and the on-stage spaghetti was drastically reduced, set up simplified and all. Also note: I'm in a Classic R&B/Soul/Funk/Blues Rock, 9 piece band so my effect needs are very fundamental - so take this info with that in mind. For large Ambient long-tail reverb layered-up environmental playing, the loop is probably the best way to go. Most of the time I only need a little slapback delay and no reverb if the room is big enough. So try it either way and go with whatever sounds good to you.

 

[Eevil]

Hi,

my chorus did not work in loop - signal level mismatch :mrgreen:

But i did like it more in the front of the amp anyways. Only reverb and delay in loop...

 

[fjk1138]

I guess it depends on how you want to use it. Using only for clean? Put it before the amp. Want to use it for clean and dirty? Put it in the loop.

Personally, I prefer it for cleans only and would add it before the amp. If you are recording, you could always add it to the track after recording it as well.

 

[CoG]

+1 for adding chorus (and reverb) in post if you can. A lot of modern chorus pedals are engineered to sound their best in stereo because so many pedalheads are building space shuttle rigs.

If your pedal didn't work in the loop, check the manual and see if it's got a dip switch hidden inside for different types of loops and however it was set, try it the other way. Boogies, especially Marks, are sometimes nostalgic for line level rack effects with lots of headroom and will hit pedals too hard.