Smart Guy Help Needed: Voltage levels on line?

[CoG]

Hi all,

Got a question for all of y'all smart guys. How many volts could signal coming from the line out of my Rec Pre be, and how might I measure this? I realize that it's not going to be a constant, and will depend if I'm running any boost earlier in the chain, and that it would be the peak voltage that would matter.

I'm consistently having problems finding pedals that don't have the headroom to handle the line out signal, even if it's only at 9 o'clock or so.

It turns out most pedal designer dudes have a pretty good idea of exactly how much headroom their pedals have, and this could save me some "buy it, try it, 'Bay it" cycles.

 

[ThunderMonkey]

Why are you running your LINE level signal to any pedals? :roll:

LINE level usually goes to another power amp OR into a cab simulator or to mixing/recording board, etc. It's designed to handle unity gain levels.

Most pedals use VERY low voltage and aren't designed to handle LINE level signals. Don't know if it matters how much voltage it runs, more like ....pedals don't like it

Why not use the efx loop or straight in ?

Check the owners manual on the Mesa site, answer is probably there.

 

[CoG]

The fx loop on my Rec Pre frankly sucks-- they admit as much in the manual, though not in those words. "100 per cent wet" isn't even 50 per cent of the signal, even less if any of the pedals have a little volume drop.

As soon as the warranty is up, I may have someone go in and mod me up a serial loop since right now it's pretty much useless.

Straight in is fine if I'm playing clean, but, basically, I have to run all my FX between the pre and my 20/20-- which is actually what they recommend in the manual!

 

[ThunderMonkey]

Ah, the dreaded parallel loop.... :evil: grrrrrrr :evil:

It's not hard to do man, search around here, there's a thread that explains how to do it....with pics

 

[CoG]

seriously? cool! I wonder if the Rec Pre's loop is the same... thanks for the tip, man!

fx loops are the bane of my existence. For a long time I have been looking for a decent Fender-y type combo just for something different, without paying Fender prices (before I went Mesa I was a Marshall guy.) I thought I'd found it with the Traynor YCV80Q, but it has the dumbest FX loop ever designed. It's not just useless like a Mesa parallel, it's actually broken. You can't add wet signal w/o adding gobs of volume between the pre and power stages using these incredibly stupid munchkin trim pots, and it makes dialing in tones really hard.

It's frustrating because the rest of the amp is a triumph, it's basically a Fender Twin for $950.

However, this is no longer about rack gear