FX order and loop advice needed

[golf4ever27]

I have been reading and have seen how helpful you guys are with helping people with this, so I thought I'd give it a shot. I am a total noob at fx and am still learning my Mark IV.

I have a Mark IV short head, into a Marshall Cab. I have a peavey EQ rack unit. Here are the effect pedals I have, in the order I have them right now(which was a guess on my part). KH Wah, Boss Metal Zone MT2, Ibanez Tube Screamer, Digitech Digidelay, Digitech Chorus Factory, and Boss Compression Sustainer CS3.

I love the natural tone of the amp, as I have been playing through the amp only for the past 9 months since I got it. I am looking for slightly more gain from the rythym 2 channel, and I can't dial it in with the MT2, which I have been running through the Rythym 1 channel.

Also, I have no clue how to get things to work in the effects loop. I have tried to run the EQ through the fx loop, and can't get it to work. When I run it between the guitar and the amp, it works, but doesn't sound that great. I'm trying to learn how to maximize what I have, get rid of what I don't need, and learn how all of this works so I can figure these things out for myself later on.

If it matters, I play mostly metal, huge Metallica fan, and love their tone. I realize I don't have all of the equipment to get their exact tone, nor could I if I did, but I want a similar tone that I like. Thanks for the help, I really appreciate it.

 

[elvis]

First you need to figure out if you have a serial or parallel FX loop. If you put an EQ in the FX loop and it is parallel, it will do almost nothing, as at least half the signal will be routed in parallel with the EQ signal inside the amp. If you have a way to dial in more WET in the FX loop, or more FX return volume, then it will help. Many tube amps (and most Boogies) are designed with a parallel FX loop because they don't do a good job of matching the FX loop impedance with that of external pedals, so the sound gets degraded. By forcing some of the signal to be directly thru the amp, it retains some if its integrity, but you're still mixing it with whatever degraded signal you sent thru the lop and into your external processors. To add to that problem, digital FX generally have a tiny bit of process delay, called "latency". This means that the signal, even when barely affected by processing, leaves the processor a few milliseconds late, due to the time it takes for the DSP to do calculations. Mixing this with a straight undelayed parallel path signal causes a filter effect called "comb filtering". Some frequencies line up and others don't due to the constant delay time, so the sound gets kind of flange-y. It's terrible. The one exception is ANALOG processors, which do not have processing delays. SO analog chorus or flange in a parallel loop is just fine.

As a rule, you can use a delay, as that will be moving the signal in time anyway. Flange, chorus, pitch shift, and other FX get more dicey in a parallel loop.

The loop is important, though. Gain-based effects, like OD, and filter-based FX, like Wah, are generally preferred in front of the amp. However, time and modulation FX, like Delay, Chorus, etc, tend to be degraded by overdrive and distortion, so they tend to work better after the gain stages and preamp, thus the FX loop.

Because of this, many people have their amps modded to make the loop 100% serial. In addition, you may want to buffer and/or transfromer-isolate the FX loop path so that the tone is not degraded by impedance mismatch and ground loops.

 

[Turumbar82]

My suggestion would be first wah, compressor, tubescreamer, metalzone, to amplifier... loop effects send to chorus, then delay, back to the loop effects return.

Personally i wouldn't use a an external rack EQ when there is already a GEQ on the Mark IV. It's okay I guess if you are picky and you feel like your amp needs further EQ'ing.

I would use the Tubescreamer for boosting your second channel. Drive down, level up, Tone to your taste. That should give you the slight increase in gain. Honestly you are going to have a hard time getting a great tone with a metalzone into the clean channel. Metalzones aren't very amazing pedals. The natural drive on channel 3 with the GEQ set up with the "V" shape will get you really close to the metallica sound you like and you can use the tubescreamer can boost you just over the top.

 

[golf4ever27]

Ok, I took the external EQ out. I ran the chorus and the delay through the loop, and the wah, compressor, the tube screamer in front of the amp, in that order. I'm using the amps distortion and lead, I may not even use the tube screamer as I'm not sure it's needed with the Mark IV's lead channel. Can anyone tell me what channel or channels I should let the loop(chorus, delay) work for. I figure cleans, but I'm not sure what else. The tone I have so far is really good, sounds a lot like the tone Metallica's live Sh&t,Binge, and Puge live dvd, at least I think. I bought a recording program a few weeks ago that I'm trying to learn how to use, it's a cheap program(Cakewalk), but until I learn more about it, I'm not spending a couple hundred on a program. Once, I get more comfortable with it, I will post a clip or two ao I could get some more opinions and advice. Thanks for the help.

 

[ryjan]

To get the perfect Metallica sound ditch all the fx and tweak on Lead channel. Its in there.