effects loop mod for mark iii

[holy-diver]

Is there a such thing? I find the loop to not work very well with a lot of pedals and effect units.

 

[CoG]

It doesn't, no.

I was told by MB that it's just the way they had to do it in 1985. It's one of those "whaddaya want from a 25-year-old-amp" things. Allegedly if you plug in Ibanez pedals from 1983 it'll work great.

He said you could probably tweak the loop to work better with individual effects, but for something that works better across the board you'd have to build a whole new circuit with at least a return level control, probably a send level control, and a buffer stage... "or just buy a Mark IVB."

 

[okgb]

It's basically just breaking into the circuit to " insert "
effects between the preamp and pwr amp , the easiest
and for a long time most common way , without modding
you could make an outboard " level conversion " box
like the dumbilator or vox make one for a while
controling , lowering the level into stomp boxes and
some gain to recover and drive the pwr amp again
could be tube or s.s. , you can make it work if you want to

 

[CoG]

If you use a fairly high-end processor where you can control both input and output level you'll get better results.

Even our drummer could hear the differences with all the delay pedals I tried and thought they sounded better out front for live. Seriously, no one is gonna hear the difference between delay out front and delay in the loop in a live mix. For recording, anything you'd put in the loop you can just add after.

okgb's right, there's always something you can pour money and time into building, but if you really need heavy fx you might also wanna just consider using a more modern amp that was meant to be used that way.

 

[fishyfishfish]

You could get it modded OR... use the line out into a delay and another small amp for a semi-wet dry rig.
I usually take a backup to a gig anyway (Small little Fender or F-30) and works pretty good.