F-50 Effects Loop Questions

[Lt_Core]

I was reading the manual last night and noticed this under the Master volume's description:

"SECOND: They act as Effect Send controls for each Mode in the Effects Loop. As with many of the controls on the F-Series, the best results for balance and tone are usually found in the medium range of this control."

Why did they do that? Can someone explain that in English? Medium range so the Master should be around midnight? That will kill your ears...LOL!

"For the best results...Set the mix of your effect to 100% wet. Then dial in the amount of effect that you wish to hear, starting at 10% with the FX LOOP MIX control. The drier (closer to 10%) signal you use, the better your tone should be. This parallel type FX Loop allows the amplifier to retain its purity with the smallest amount of degradation due to possible effect impedance mismatching."

I've always ran the FX loop wet at the max 90%. What about you guys?

I'm also going to experiment this weekend (2 gigs) with not attenuating as much, dropping the masters a bit and hitting it with a boost or low-gain pedal like my Barber LTD to help cook the tubes a bit to reach decent distortion levels. I'm finding that pulling back the volume in the FX loop with an MXR EQ pedal is just crushing the dynamics of my clean channel. Add gain/volume to achieve tone, rather than subtracting from it. My new thought for the day It may totally bomb. I'll have to see.

 

[plumptone]

I have no idea why they did that, but there's no doubt that the amp sounds incredible *if* you can get the masters up that high. I'm approaching 12 o'clock on the clean channel in gig situations, but generally channel 2 never makes it much past 10 o'clock.

The difference in the amount of signal being sent to the effects send is noticeable to me, and frankly I like it, because I prefer my crunch sound to be slightly less affected when I engage my loop effects - or stated another way, I like my clean sounds to have a more pronounced effect on them when they are engaged.

With respect to the FX loop mix control, I've played around with it a lot. If you are only running one thing in the loop (like a processor or something along those lines) it's useful to be able to run the send from the unit at 100% wet and then dial up the loop from 10% until you fing the sweet spot, but in practical terms, for me anyway, it doesn't work because I'm running several things in the loop, and not all of them have an effects level control. I run a rack digital reverb, a digital delay pedal and a stereo chorus pedal. The only way to get them to work together right is for me to use it with the FX loop mix control turned full on. I don't think it messes too much with my tone.

I would never attenuate the signal on this amp. For rehearsal I just turn the volume down - it sounds great to me. Live, I like to be able to open it up. I do run an MXR dynacom in front, and this can be useful if you want to drive the amp hard in two ways. (1) I can use it to add compression and hit the preamp hard by dialling up the volume control on the pedal; (2) I can drive the amp hard and turn DOWN the volume control on the pedal. It's definitely interesting to play around with this.

My new favorite thing to do is run a setreo set up with the F-50 as the master and a DC-3 on the other side. Sounds awesome.

 

[Lt_Core]

I would never attenuate the signal on this amp. For rehearsal I just turn the volume down - it sounds great to me. Live, I like to be able to open it up. I do run an MXR dynacom in front, and this can be useful if you want to drive the amp hard in two ways. (1) I can use it to add compression and hit the preamp hard by dialling up the volume control on the pedal; (2) I can drive the amp hard and turn DOWN the volume control on the pedal. It's definitely interesting to play around with this.

Very interesting....so, you use a compressor to pull back the volume just a bit? I have the Barber Tone Press, which is a great compressor. It has a blend knob where I can blend in the amount of sustain. Would be perfect for this application, I bet.

http://www.barberelectronics.com/tonepress.htm

We really try to keep our stage volume to a minimum. We're all going to in-ear monitors in the next month, as well. That **** F-50 is so loud. Hard to believe since it's a relatively small combo.

 

[ashjn]

I run the loop at 90% as well...