Despite not knowing much about effects, I recently obtained a cheap reverb pedal (TC Electronics Skysurfer), which turns out to be quite fun for mucking about. If I plug my bass into the pedal and the pedal into the amp's normal input all is fine, but if I connect the pedal to the effects loop (Orange Terror Bass head) then the amount of noise is horrible - humming and hissing, and the pedal's sound when the effects are turned up seems to deteriorate.
My suspicion is that the amp is at fault, but it may be because, not being familiar with the use of effects, I'm not supposed to plug just one into the amp's effects loop. In either case it's a bit of a nuisance. Can anyone enlighten me?