how should my pedals be arranged

[kk]

What up SeymourStilleto/

my signature has my signal chain which has a lot of simliar effects as you...

run your comp> wah>OCD>amp>send>chorus/echo>reverb>bbe sonic max.>return

you will be good to go.

and btw... my delay pedal and reverb pedals sound great in the loop.

 

[ja22y]

One of the reason I don't put digital FX (pedals or multi fx rack stuffs) in front because I don't want to digitize my raw guitar tone. When I do use it, I like it in the parallel loop and mix it so most of the signal is analog. Remember that in the days before the FX loop, everything is in front. But then everything (delay, reverb, ...) was analog and they sounded great in front, although a bit noisy.

 

[Chris McKinley]

ja22y,

I remember playing in the days before effects loops, and the effects sounded like crap out front then, too. Back then when you played live, you just didn't have a lot of effects on your sound. Mostly, it was just dry, cranked Marshalls. Analog effects in the studio sounded good because they were put in after the dry signal was recorded.

 

[crisis]

Gibbyage,

You may be misunderstanding the admonition of the manual. The reason that it suggests that rack effects be used in the loop is because:

1) Most rack effects include or are limited to modulation and/or reverb effects, which belong in the loop regardless of whether they are contained in a pedal or a rack unit, and

2) The loop includes a Send gain control, allowing the user to adjust the strength of the signal entering the rack unit's input. Some rack units can be more finicky about handling strong signals at input, usually due to digital circuitry.

and from what I am led to believe effects loops are supposed to deal with line levels as opposed to signal levels?

 

[timokeranen]

Hi all! I'm new on this board. Very interesting stuff here!
My amp is a Lonestar classic head, and i'm using a boss cs3 comp, bb preamp and mxr carbon copy in front of it (in that order). For some reason the carbon copy sounds very muddy if i put it in the fx loop. And the mix (delay volume) has to be set very high if it's in the loop. Any ideas?

 

[Chris McKinley]

crisis,

It depends on the amp. That's why Mesa's effects loops have adjustable send controls so you can set it accordingly.


timokeranen,

Your compressor and preamp are fine, but take the delay pedal out from in front and put it in the loop where it belongs. You don't put delays or modulation effects in front of your amp's preamp or they'll generate noisy artifacts and decay noisily and unnaturally. Having a muddy tone in the loop unfortunately doesn't automatically make it fine to run the delay in front of the amp.

As to that muddy tone, you must understand that the point of making that pedal was to recapture the more natural decay tone of earlier, bucket-brigade circuit analog delays. You see, in real life, higher frequencies roll off much faster than bass ones do. Therefore, with each repeat, the tone will be darker and darker.

Now, if the very first repeats are still too dark, you may wish to check any of three things.

1) Check the gain level on the amp. If it's too high, it will compress treble frequencies and limit-boost muddier bass frequencies in the effects loop signal.

2) Check the send level on the effects loop. If it's too high, it will do the same thing as described in 1) above.

3) Check the tone stack of the amp. If your bass knob is too high, well...that's a bit self-explanatory. If your mids are scooped, you'll have the same problem. If your treble is too low, same deal. It might even be that your presence control is too low, though on Mesa's, that's rarely a problem.

 

[timokeranen]

Chris,
Thanks for the info! I'll put the delay to the loop and check my settings.
- Timo

 

[timokeranen]

Thanks, Chris!
I lowered the loop send level a bit and the delay came out very well
- Timo

 

[djw]

Just to gum things up... Ideal processor placement: before and after amp, not in amp's fx loop

Key takeaway being:

* Processor stage1: before the amp: Wah, EQ, phaser, compressor
* Amps' preamp Distortion and then tone controls
* Amp's effects send
* Processor stage 2: in amp's fx loop: [optional effects here - not many effects are best here - phaser could go here, time-effects could go here *if* you want a crapped-out power tube saturation sound as a special effect]
* Amp's effects return
* Power tubes directly driving a mic'd guitar speaker
* Processor stage 3: after the amp: Compression, EQ, stereo time-based effects

Of course, I don't know that I necessarily agree with everything this guy opines; nor do I have the luxury of being able to control stereo effects looped through my channel on the PA. But there's some good stuff here.

Having formerly been pretty addicted to chorus and delay effects, this philosophy would have left me in a bit of a quandary back then for sure. I must say that it has been nice not having to bother with these any more, and things definitely sound better...

...Though when I do use those effects (chorus/delay/flange) they're the only things that I run thru the effects loop. Everything else (wah > comp > trem > phase > od) goes in front of the amp.