Pedals eat up the tone

[Boxcar Willie 84]

How can I minimize the effect that pedals seem to have when plugged into the front end of an amp-eating up the tone? I don't know much about the mechanics of signal transfer thru cables and whatnot, so any help will be greatly appreciated.

[horns666]

Re: Pedals eat up the tone

Frank Marino used alot of Boxes and he used LPB line boosters between each box......I don't beleive they exist anymore , maybe Ebay

Hopefully someone else could share some more info on this unit

[Riffmeister]

Re: Pedals eat up the tone

You need to get something similar to a GCX, or a Rocktron patchmate to take the pedals out of the Signal chain when they aren't in use.

Carl Martin makes a device that alows you to plug in your pedals, up to six I think, then you can program presets.That way in addition to taking them out of the path when not in use, it will also switch any combination on or off at once.

Unlike the patchmate,GCX, and Bradshaw systems, this is a one piece unit and your pedal actually are on the floor in front of you. It does not change channels on your amp either as the other units can.

The other thing, is that depending on what kind of pedals you are using, you can put them in the FX loop to help with the tone sucking problem.Hope this helps.

[Boxcar Willie 84]

Re: Pedals eat up the tone

Yo Horns-are you talking about the Electro-Harmonix Line Power Booster, that thing that you could plug right into your guitar?

About the switching system type deal, I can't really afford it, and I don't see the use when I'm only running two pedals into the amp. Could I do like SRV did, and have a Line Selector with a loop set up for the front-end pedals, and then just activate the loop when I want to use those pedals?

Thanks for the help guys.

[horns666]

Re: Pedals eat up the tone

No , I remember that thing. No it's something he patched between his pedals to avoid signal loss

[OklaStrat]

Re: Pedals eat up the tone

2 fairly cheap options:

1) a 'loop pedal' that bypasses your pedals when activated. or wire up a true bypass on your pedals - can be simple to tough depending on what the pedals are.

2) put some sort of preamp BEFORE the pedals like the horns-mentioned LPB - it's a preamp, basically. Another option is to use EMGs in your guitars - that will do the same thing. even something like a cheap boss OD-1 with the gain settings turned *way* down (so you are sending the cleanest tone into the pedals) will work wonders.

What amp are you going into, and also, are you using good cables or cheap ones? That makes a difference right there.

Pete

[OklaStrat]

Re: Pedals eat up the tone

My vote is still for the Boss pedal, or any sort of booster/overdrive that will give a clean tone. This should be enough to overcome the tone-suckage [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]

Probably the easiest thing to do would be to beg/borrow pedals from your friends and try them - just make sure they are always on, as when they are off, you aren't getting the preamp action.

Pete

[max]

Re: Pedals eat up the tone

Everything that converts the high-impedance guitar signal to low impedance will do the trick.
Normally you would use a DI-Box for this purpose. Most DI-Boxes only have an XLR-out, because
they are intended to be connected directly to a mixing board. So you will need a proper cable.

If you don't know where to spend your christmas gratification, you could give the Valvulator1
(www.vhtamp.com) a try. [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

I don't know, if the DS-1 converts the impedance level, but the TC Line-Driver/Booster/Distortion
does this for example (thats the Line-Driver part of it).

My 2 cents ->
DI-Box and cable, if you're on a budget,
TC LBD, if you want to try a new distortion pedal anyway,
ValvulatorI else.

Hope this helps.

Max