Pedals in the amp loop ..do they work properly ?

Barney

Are say delay pedals ...i mean like Boss DD2 designed to work well in the loop of guitar amps or are the studio rack type ones better...? And the single pedals for the front of the amp ?... im really thinking of a MK 4 boogie

RandallFlagg

Pedals can work fine in the loop, delays and reverbs can sound clearer than in the front if you use amp pre-amp gain. However, you can experience some tone loss when a few pedals are strung together then out through the loop, especially if they are true bypass.

Also, you may get a boost in treble when the pedals are on compared to when they are off. I had this with the Flashback and Carbon Copy. A buffer can help, but I found that with the buffer there was a general brightening of the tone all the time. 

I spoke with the amp builders and they blamed the pedals!

ICBM

The loop level can be an issue with some amps and some pedals - if it's above the available signal headroom in the pedal you will get unwanted distortion, a drop in volume and usually a muddy sound.

Mesa and Boss are not particularly bad for this, but there is a definite problem with some - a DD3 in the loop of a Rectoverb for example. I haven't tried a MkIV with pedals in the loop so I can't say - they're such different amp circuits that there's no way of knowing if the level is similar, even though both are Mesas. The problem can be fairly slight - I fixed it in the Rectoverb by dropping the level only by about half.

BintyTwanger77

ICBM said:

The loop level can be an issue with some amps and some pedals - if it's above the available signal headroom in the pedal you will get unwanted distortion, a drop in volume and usually a muddy sound.

Mesa and Boss are not particularly bad for this, but there is a definite problem with some - a DD3 in the loop of a Rectoverb for example. I haven't tried a MkIV with pedals in the loop so I can't say - they're such different amp circuits that there's no way of knowing if the level is similar, even though both are Mesas. The problem can be fairly slight - I fixed it in the Rectoverb by dropping the level only by about half.

I haven't found an issue with the Rectoverb loop levels. Did you mean the older models as opposed to the newer 25W RoV?

ICBM

BintyTwanger77 said:

I haven't found an issue with the Rectoverb loop levels. Did you mean the older models as opposed to the newer 25W RoV?

Yes, the 50W Rectoverb.

I think Mesa may have taken note of a lot of criticism of their FX loops recently - they always used to use a parallel loop with crude passive mixing which was a nightmare for any digital effect that ran the dry path through the digital domain, causing an unavoidable latency-based tone suck - most new models seem to use series loops, so it wouldn't surprise me if the 25 is better for level too.

Dave_Mc

ICBM said:

The loop level can be an issue with some amps and some pedals - if it's above the available signal headroom in the pedal you will get unwanted distortion, a drop in volume and usually a muddy sound.

Yeah. My tonerider analogue delay did that. Well, a drop in volume, anyway. It was too quiet to hear any of those other problems.

clarkefan

The big problem is designers making amps with loops that are too hot for instrument level gear like pedals, which these days is stupid. Most players want to use pedals in their loops so why design the output of those loops for rack gear/line level?  It's not the 80s anymore

Putting something in the loop before the pedal, like a volume pedal or a volume box, can bring the hot level down so the pedal works, but then you have to rely on being able to bring the power amp volume back up after the pedal to compensate.

Hopefully your loop has vols for the send and the return, in which case lower the send vol and raise the return vol