Tagged As: Guitar Effects Loop
Question:
I recently bought a stratocaster and a small 'valve' amp. The amp has effect loop jacks (send and return). The guitar has Lace-Sensors pickups. With this setting the 'clean' sound is very good, but I'm missing some effects. Also with Lace-Sensors, the 'gain' doesn't drive as much distortion as with another guitar that I tried with this amp. And I can live up with that amp's reverb but it's not the greatest reverb I heard so far. Combination of guitar/amp sounds very good to my tastes, but some of the songs that we play would require my sound to have a more colorful touch. As I found out there are two paths that I could take in when it will be time to add effects into my settings. I could take the way of the digital effects: go with a unit similar to the Boss ME-30 (or some Korg, Zoom or others) that would offer me the advantage of having, for around $300 or less, a whole bunch of effects (better deal), that are programmable in 'patches'. This way I am not, however, taking advantage of the effect loop possibility that my amp offers me. Maybe it doesn't matter. Or I could go the 'analog' way: but here for the same amount of money, counting power supplies and all, I would get (was thinking of getting): an Overdrive (such as Ibanez, or other), a compressor/delay -- that I would connect between my guitar and amp: Plus a Flanger unit that I would connect between the in and out of my effect loop jacks. Then I could later add other effects as I need them: Wah, Volume pedal, Tremolo, Equalizer, chorus, and what have you (that has no end...). The drawbacks are: price (much higher to have everything) and no possibility to 'program', need to remember the different settings of effects for each song or part of song, then to 'switch' and possibly have to bend to play with the knobs, between two songs. Or I taught that maybe I could feed a 'multi-effects' unit (cheap one, zoom, korg and another company have some digital multi-effect units for less than $200) into my send and return loop and use it for reverb, flanger / phaser, tremolo, delay: then put a real analog overdrive plus a compressor/delay (was thinking of the Boss) between guitar and amp: this would be a mid-solution that might work. And that would be less expensive than to go analog all the way. Is there a real difference between the sound of an analog and digital boxes? should I go right away with a fully equipped digital multi-effect (only 1 toy to carry) that does everything, or is it really worth, given my investment into a valve amp that has send- /return jacks for effect (that is more expensive than digital amps): or it is really best to buy few analog pedals now, and buy others as I go: for a really better overall sound texture. I don't want to spend a few hundred dollars to find out that I should have gone into the opposite direction.
Answer:
you don't need to get too caught up in the fact that your amp has an effects loop... lots of em do, and that doesn't mean that you need to use it. personally, i prefer single effects boxes. multieffects don't sound as good, to me, and they're usually loaded with tons of effects that i don't use. if you buy individual effects, you only pay for what you want to use, they're easier to set up, and from my experience, they sound much better. plus, if you really DO want to use the effects loop, you can arrange your pedals any way you want. and if money is an issue, remember that single effects boxes often have a far higher resale value than multieffects processors do.
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