DC-5 effects loop - hummmm

[wwwald]

Hello all,

Until now, I've always played with all my guitar FX gear in front of the amp, before the preamp. I'm currently experimenting with 4 cable methods in order to improve my sound. Now, I know I "shouldn't" put distortion effects in the FX loop, but as I said, I'm experimenting.
What I notice: any distortion effect put in there with too much "drive" causes a continuous hum. Can anyone explain me what exactly causes this?

Also, should I be looking into hacking this amp to make the FX loop serial, instead of parallel? What exactly is the disadvantage of a parallel loop for this setup?

Thanks a bunch,
wwwald

 

[MJ Slaughter]

I can't explain why the hum but it seems that quality cables in the loop are important. Cheap cables, in my experience, can cause it to be a little noisy so an OD/dist in the loop wouldn't surprise me at all that there could be hum. If it persists with any effects I'd swap out the fx loop's tube and see if that makes a difference.

Yes, you need to mod your loop to serial. I have a DC-10 and a Boss GT-10 running 4CM and it sounds good as long as your fx chain is correct. Before modding my loop I tried running my Rocktron Xpression in the loop and the effects where always weak to the point that I didn't want to use them. I can't explain the why so much but the mod is so easy to do and put back if for some odd reason you don't like it but I've never heard anyone say they reverted back to their parallel loop.

There are many posts here about why serial works better. You might search for those if you want more detail.

 

[Old BF Shred]

+1 on good cables.....cheap ones end up costing you more in the long run!

But running distortion in the loop is always going to be problematic. OD and dist. boxes are designed for "instrument level" (output of guitar or mic) input, not "line level" (post pre amp stages). The level from the loop send is too strong for the distortion's high-gain input. The distortion will be too sensitive for this and greatly increase any normal noise in the amp (including hum) that you would otherwise barely hear.

You'll always get better results with the dist/OD between guitar and amp.

Good luck!