My Lonestar 112 hates pedals (buffered)

[charliewood]

Hey all this is a first post for me,
How you all doin?
While I never conciously selected Boogie as a brand of amp to play - in fact being a JImmy Page fanatic I always assumed I would end up in the Marshall zone, I played many many many Marshall amps, classic and modern, over the years and just couldnt vibe with any of em - and I always ended up with boogies - through trades, good buys - whatever - Im a boogie guy....
I just found a great deal on a Boogie Lonestar V1 112 - and it sounds great (fantastic) directly plugged in with both my strat and my gibson nighthawk - Ive played a tele through it too but it also sounded great... dirty and clean!
Heres the deal - when I run a buffered effect through the input jack (not the loop) it sounds mushy(tone issue) and theres a volume issue, for whatever reason it sounds horrible - I think it may be the architecture of the first gain stage and the tone stack - I dont have an elaborate chain of effects mind you - mainly its a Boss Compression sustainer, and rarely a Boss OC3 octave pedal - in the manual they make a big deal out of how the gain stage setup is a different sort of arrangement than most amps, and the drive and gain interaction is the key to dialing in a great sound.... ok but
They should also mention that it hates pedals in some cases - well in mine anyway... does anyone else have problems with buffered pedals ?????
I also have a mini DejaVibe and it doesnt seem to have the same tone sapping effect as with buffered pedals..
Also I couldnt get used to not using my Output and Solo - so I jumpered the effects loop with a pedal patch -
is this OK??
it seemslike its running fine and I dont seem to have any problems so far - but I though Id ask, because with these scenarios "its not what you dont know that gets you" - "its what you dont know you dont know"
You Know?
Anyhow any help would be greatly appreciated
Thank you kindly
Cheers
Charlie

 

[plan-x]

Buffered pedals should be ok but I use true bypass pedals and it works great. I do have one buffered in my pre-preamp chain. I use my loop for the ambient stuff, dly, chorus, etc. There the buffer is less noticable. The loop bypass switch is supposed to be like a patch cable.

 

[djw]

You don't have to patch in the loop with a cable if you want the Solo and Output features to work -- just engage the loop with the switch next to the jacks ("LOOP IN").

Re: buffered pedals, I've never encountered any pedals that sounded particularly bad going into the amp, but then again I don't use them very often. I could see the Comp/Sust pedal making a mess of things if you have the Gain turned up on the amp, but you could probably compensate for that by turning the sustain down a bit. I dunno. I just haven't really run into issues with pedals myself.

 

[charliewood]

I realized that the problem primarily lie with the Boss Comp/sus and set about to mod it to see if it would remedy the problem, the CS3 has sounded a bit squishy to my ear when used with certain chain combos and certain amps.... I have had the Wampler books and have wanted to "quiet" the hiss in the pedal for a long time.... so I looked into the mods listed and the parts and values required and whatayaknow I had all of them - in the proper values and types of caps and resistors... which was awesome!
Not only did I have the caps for the quiet mod but I also had the resistors and caps for the full body mod as well...
I whapped them all in without checking as I went - which Im sure seasoned pedal modders know is courting disaster if you have to problem shoot later,,,
However it actually made a sound when I jacked in to it with a cable - I plugged the guitar in fired up the LS and BOOM - whata freaking difference!!!!
It was like a boutique sustain pedal - while the quiet mod didnt silence the hiss completely its neglegible now and the headroom is Freakin Fantastic!!!
I highly recommend anyone who has a shitty CS3 to do the mods in the wampler book - Its so much better its seriously almost like a different pedal...
And the Mesa doesnt have as much of a difficult time dealing with it...... It purrs
Thanks for the replies .... Im in love with my LS 1x12 + 2011 Nighthawk combination again - what a TONE!!!
Cheers
Charlie