A basic pedal question

Steve922

Don't laugh but can someone explain to me where an effects pedal 'fits'?  Does it go between the Guitar and Amp or perhaps between the Pre-Amp and Power-Amp ? I fancy buying a Looper (just for a bit of fun alone in my practice room) but if its the latter then it won't work with my Blackstar Fly 3 amp; nor, I think, with the Blackstar ID Code 10 which I'm thinking of buying.

monquixote

You can put a pedal between the guitar and amp or in the FX loop.

Usually into the front of the amp is fine. You only really have to use an FX loop if you are using delay or reverb and you don't want the trails to be distorted.

robinbowes

You're in luck - pedals generally go between the guitar and amp.

Steve922

Thanks chaps. I take that as a green light.   I was thinking of buying a Blackstar ID Core-10 while they are on offer at £65 from Coda. Then I thought if I buy a pedal at the same time, it will push the price over their 'free-postage' threshold and I'll save £8.95  :-)

They sell the Boss RC-1 Looper at £75. Anyone see any problems there? i.e. a Boss RC-1 Looper into a Blackstar Core 10 amp just for the practice room?

Teetonetal

robinbowes said:

You're in luck - pedals generally go between the guitar and amp.

Unless you put them in the loop.

ThePrettyDamned

Steve922 said:

Thanks chaps. I take that as a green light.   I was thinking of buying a Blackstar ID Core-10 while they are on offer at £65 from Coda. Then I thought if I buy a pedal at the same time, it will push the price over their 'free-postage' threshold and I'll save £8.95  :-)

They sell the Boss RC-1 Looper at £75. Anyone see any problems there? i.e. a Boss RC-1 Looper into a Blackstar Core 10 amp just for the practice room?

Should work fine. Just note that you'll have your loop being influenced by the preamp eg if your amp is distorted, so will that be. If you had an amp with an effects loop, you could put it there, record a clean chord progression in the looper, then use distortion to jam over the top. 

But yes, it'll work anyway. 

Teetonetal

ThePrettyDamned said:

Steve922 said:

Thanks chaps. I take that as a green light.   I was thinking of buying a Blackstar ID Core-10 while they are on offer at £65 from Coda. Then I thought if I buy a pedal at the same time, it will push the price over their 'free-postage' threshold and I'll save £8.95  :-)

They sell the Boss RC-1 Looper at £75. Anyone see any problems there? i.e. a Boss RC-1 Looper into a Blackstar Core 10 amp just for the practice room?

Should work fine. Just note that you'll have your loop being influenced by the preamp eg if your amp is distorted, so will that be. If you had an amp with an effects loop, you could put it there, record a clean chord progression in the looper, then use distortion to jam over the top. 

But yes, it'll work anyway. 

Which is why I always have a looper in the loop.
The work around of course is to have a distortion pedal before the looper, so you can go Guitar - Distortion - looper -amp.

op needs to buy another pedal....

english_bob

monquixote said:

Usually into the front of the amp is fine. You only really have to use an FX loop if you are using delay or reverb and you don't want the trails to be distorted.

..and this is dependent on the amount of distortion you use. Low to mid gain sounds from the amp generally sound OK regardless of whether the delays are in front of the amp or in the effects loop. Delay before a high gain amp will probably sound like a whole blanket of mush. Which you might like. 

The one place you really can't put pedals is between the amplifier and the speaker. Yes, the connectors look the same, but the higher current going through that cable will be a thoroughly upsetting experience for your pedal, your amp, and potentially your wallet.

Sporky

english_bob said:

Delay before a high gain amp will probably sound like a whole blanket of mush. Which you might like. 

I do!

english_bob

Sporky said:

english_bob said:

Delay before a high gain amp will probably sound like a whole blanket of mush. Which you might like. 

I do!

I'm not sure I entirely endorse the view that there's no such thing as a bad sound, just an "out-of-context" one, but there is an element of truth to it. If you're into "textural" guitar, most of the rules about how you're supposed to use effects go out the window. 

EricTheWeary

FWIW digital pedals, like loopers, use a reasonable amount of current. The RC1will eat a PP3 battery in three hours. So, budget the extra few quid for a suitable power supply. 

Sporky

english_bob said:

Sporky said:

english_bob said:

Delay before a high gain amp will probably sound like a whole blanket of mush. Which you might like. 

I do!

I'm not sure I entirely endorse the view that there's no such thing as a bad sound, just an "out-of-context" one, but there is an element of truth to it. If you're into "textural" guitar, most of the rules about how you're supposed to use effects go out the window. 

I don't think that's unreasonable. I've recently been following Drew's suggestions of having the mix and repeats quite low on delay and reverb, but running them into moderately dirty amp models. You can turn up for mush, or turn down and the dirt just pulls the repeats and playing together a bit without losing all the clarity.

Steve922

Oh dear!   Just as I'm about to buy, I come across an ad for the Zoom G1on and G1Xon multi-effects pedals which at first sight look really good at a cheap price. After Interwebbing reviews, demos etc. they look to be amazing value for a beginner.

Any opinions, guys? Bear in mind this is for practice use only and I'm an electric beginner.

Wazmeister

Steve922 said:

Oh dear!   Just as I'm about to buy, I come across an ad for the Zoom G1on and G1Xon multi-effects pedals which at first sight look really good at a cheap price. After Interwebbing reviews, demos etc. they look to be amazing value for a beginner.

Any opinions, guys? Bear in mind this is for practice use only and I'm an electric beginner.

Steve, welcome to the forum and the very slippery slope of pedal world !!

The looper will improve your playing most, in my humble opinion. The multi effects will introduce you to all the different sound options and you can Learn which sounds you like and dislike...

You pays your money !

Keep askimg questions here; theres some good people on here, and we'll always try to help out

english_bob

Steve922 said:

Oh dear!   Just as I'm about to buy, I come across an ad for the Zoom G1on and G1Xon multi-effects pedals which at first sight look really good at a cheap price. After Interwebbing reviews, demos etc. they look to be amazing value for a beginner.

Any opinions, guys? Bear in mind this is for practice use only and I'm an electric beginner.

If the effects are the same ones on the bigger G3 (and it looks like they are) then you really do get a lot for your money- most of what's in there sounds really good (the pitch shifting effects on my G3 are a bit rubbish), and has a lot of flexibility in terms of what you can control, which always used to be the weak point of entry level multi-effects.

For simple stuff - recording a few bars of rhythm guitar to play over etc. - the looper on the G1on should be more than adequate- you'd need to go for a dedicated, full-featured looper to get some of the crazier stuff- undo, multiple speeds, more footswitches to allow you to do more stuff "on-the-fly" etc, particularly if you wanted to perform looping-based music live, but for an introduction to looping and a first step in to that world the G1on would be fine. 

The great advantage of a cheap multi-effect early in your guitar playing life is, like @Wazmeister ;says, that it'll give you a good idea of what a wide range of effect types sound like, whether you like those sounds and what you can do with them in your own playing. The Zoom units are very cool in that respect because they allow you to mess with the order of the effects in the chain instead of being forced to use them in the "correct" order, so you can get in to some really cool unorthodox sounds too.

...which leads me to the big disadvantage of a cheap multi-effect early in your guitar playing life. It's very easy to get lost in the world of making silly noises with your guitar instead of learning to play properly. Don't get me wrong- the electric guitar has been one of the pre-eminent silly noise making instruments of the last sixty years and should stay that way, and making electric guitars not sound like electric guitars is a time-honoured tradition that ought to continue, but a guitarist who can only make his guitar sound like an elephant having bum sex with a whale isn't going to be much use to most bands. 

Likewise, it's easy to get absorbed in crafting perfect conventional tones- experimenting with all twenty-odd amp models on your multi-effect and twiddling EQ knobs to get it just so, then adding just the right amount of subtle delay or reverb or chorus or whatever, but a fantastic guitar sound is nothing if you can't play anything with it. Having all those sounds at your fingertips can be a distraction from the less immediately gratifying but more useful elements of practice.

sgosden

english_bob said:

 

, but a guitarist who can only make his guitar sound like an elephant having bum sex with a whale isn't going to be much use to most bands. 

I'm intrigued as to how this would sound, how these two met and decided to fornicate, and physicality's of it . 

english_bob

sgosden said:

english_bob said:

 

, but a guitarist who can only make his guitar sound like an elephant having bum sex with a whale isn't going to be much use to most bands. 

I'm intrigued as to how this would sound, how these two met and decided to fornicate, and physicality's of it . 

I'm not even sure how two whales do it. 

how does it sound? Huge, wet, wrinkled and repulsive, yet strangely arousing.

Steve922

Hmmmm....  all this talk has me excited - I'm ordering the Zoom pedal right now.

And a few picks with it; just because I can :-)

Steve922

I got the Zoom G1on Multi-Effects pedal today and am well pleased with it. I didn't actually get to test it fully because I couldn't pry it away from my grandson who spent the evening making weird noises with it!   LOL

ThePrettyDamned

Sporky said:

english_bob said:

Sporky said:

english_bob said:

Delay before a high gain amp will probably sound like a whole blanket of mush. Which you might like. 

I do!

I'm not sure I entirely endorse the view that there's no such thing as a bad sound, just an "out-of-context" one, but there is an element of truth to it. If you're into "textural" guitar, most of the rules about how you're supposed to use effects go out the window. 

I don't think that's unreasonable. I've recently been following Drew's suggestions of having the mix and repeats quite low on delay and reverb, but running them into moderately dirty amp models. You can turn up for mush, or turn down and the dirt just pulls the repeats and playing together a bit without losing all the clarity.

That's how I run mine - df2 - dd2 - ds2. That way my lead tone repeats don't get nasty, they just sit in the background but my rhythm repeats blend nicely.

english_bob

Steve922 said:

I got the Zoom G1on Multi-Effects pedal today and am well pleased with it. I didn't actually get to test it fully because I couldn't pry it away from my grandson who spent the evening making weird noises with it!   LOL

Told you.