I know I should know better but....

[Thor]

I had a bad experience a few years ago when I was using my amp's effects loop, the long & short of it was the power supply for the effects went squiffy mid performance, the sound quickly degraded into mush and I had a blind panic - not much fun in front of a rammed pub audience, I pulled out the leads in the effects loop and normal service was resumed. Anyway, I seem to have put that behind me now and had been gassing to give it a try again.

I've been using a Fender Sub Lime fuzz pedal for some time now with no problems and have recently added a few things to my arsenal (well I've got to give the lead guitarist a run for his money), so up to now I've been using the fuzz pedal straight into the front of my amp - not using the effects loop - and that brings me to my point - what are the benefits of using the effects loop rather than plugging the lead from the output of the last pedal into the front of my amp?

I know I should know better (at my age) and am sure someone here will enlighten me!? Also, what's with most other peeps using things like a "looper", forgive my ignorance but I'd like to know if I may be missing something.

Thanks in anticipation!
Pete.

[BigBassBob]

The effects loop of an amp is for using effects such as reverb and delay.

The idea is that your derive the majority of your tone in the signal chain up to the poweramp which then takes that tone and amplifies it. So, for example, if you like to run your preamp dirty and you're using other effects before you hit the front of the amp, the end result can then be sent to a reverb unit so it's YOUR sound being reverb'd before being amplified for the listener (rather than running reverb before the preamp which would make the difference in tone between bypass and in effect much greater as the signal the preamp receives is going to be reverberated.) You could also use the send and return if you're using a tuner sat on your amp.

For the most part, the majority of effects should go into the front of an amp.

I'm awful at explaining that lol, but hopefully you get the idea or someone could put it a better way.


"Loopers" could refer to a few things;

true bypass loopers which are hardwire switches with a send and return loop. People put effects in the loop that have a negative effect on their tone when bypassed (e.g. pedals with bad buffers.) People can also put multiple effects in a loop so they don't have to riverdance on their pedals to turn multiple ones on at the same time.

It could also refer to blend pedals which are much like the loopers mentioned above except they have a dry/wet blend so you can mix your clean signal with an effect.

And it could refer to phrase loopers which allow you to record ostinatos and layer them in real time.

Chances are, people are referring to the first example I've listed

Hope this helps dude!

Edited November 17, 2011 by BigBassBob

[Thor]

Cheers for the response regarding the effects loop, so I'm currently running the following "chain":-

Fender Sub Lime Fuzz - Dunlop Bass Wah - Rat Distortion pedal - MXR M288 Octave pedal - MXR M169 Carbon Copy delay pedal - Amp, I've not encountered any problems with putting the effects straight into the front of the amp (as yet) - just need some fine tuning with regards levels as sometimes it seems the RAT can get a bit lost in the mix? Do you think there's any benefit in using the effects loop - would it help with the RAT problem maybe?

Holy cow, I had no idea effects were such a minefield - I was reading the show us your board thread last night, some serious stuff going on there, and I think I liked the sound of the blender you referred to, may have to investigate that further. Are there any "stock" blenders you've used/would recommend?

[BigBassBob]

No worries dude

Yeah, the whole thing of putting delay and such in the loop is more for guitarists who derive much of their overdriven sound from preamps. For most bass players I think it's fine to run straight into the front of an amp.

Regarding the RAT I'd say that it's best going in the front rather than the loop. I've not used them at all myself but I've heard that they can lose low end on bass without mods so that might be why it's getting lost. I think the best thing you can do is run it in a blend loop to bring some more clean signal in... that should give it more punch.

I think you can use a Boss LM2 as a blender. I've used an Xotic X-blender for a while which is a great (albeit expensive) pedal; it has bass and treble EQ, volume controls and a phase-shifting switch (only ever needed to use it when running a Roger Mayer Fuzz.) I'm debating selling mine if you're interested btw.

[Thor]

May be interested in the blender - how much is expensive?

[BigBassBob]

About £120-130 new if you order from a shop in the US.

[cheddatom]

Boss LS-2s seem to go used for £60ish

[blind pilot]

I think Max offers a 'bass mod' the Rat, [url="http://www.sfxsound.co.uk/mainpage.asp?page=mods"]http://www.sfxsound....e.asp?page=mods[/url] I have not had mine done yet, so cannot say what the difference is, but I can speak highly of his work!

some people will even run an EQ with the Rat to add a bit of bass back - see the attached!

[Thor]

Appreciate the responses guys, the link for sfxsound looks really good - thanks for that!

[xgsjx]

"Fender Sub Lime Fuzz - Dunlop Bass Wah - Rat Distortion pedal - MXR M288 Octave pedal - MXR M169 Carbon Copy delay pedal - Amp"

Is that the order you run your fx in? Seems a little unusual having the octave near the end of the chain, but if it works for you
Like you may have gathered, not many folk use the amp's fx loop other than to maybe run through a rack fx unit.
Have you tried the Rat in a different position in the chain?

[Thor]

No I hadn't considered running the Rat in a different position? I guess it could be worth it - as you can probably tell, I'm new to playing around with effects so I just kinda added them into the chain as I got them (without much thought as to the potential impact regards their position).

Certainly worth considering - I am having some fun with them.

You should have seen our lead guitarist's face when we ended a song and my rig was feeding back as well, if not better, than his! Priceless!

[xgsjx]

1/2 the fun is experimenting with the order of your fx.
An order that works well is octave - distortion - fuzz - filter (wah) - delay. But mess about with the order as you'll find that a pedal in one place will sound very different in another.

I'm gonna try sticking my distortion before the octave & then overdrive after it just to see how it sounds. If I don't like it, I change it back. Easy!