Tube amps and effects, a pain

[guitarwreck]

I am switching to using tube amps again after years of modeling amps.
One thing I hate about it is the effects situation. I am not happy
with my amps reverb, and delay and reverb are usually in a loop, and
after the preamp.

That puts me in the situation of needing an effect unit run in the
loop, but then I need a screamer for gain boost in front of the
preamp. This will have me setting up two effects every time, one
through the amps loop and then a screamer pedal in front.

The one nice thing about the digital amps is that the suckers have
your effects and tuners built in. I would just use all pedals, but
then the reverb would be before the preamp of the amp. Same for
delay., chorus as well. Will a reverb pedal sound good in front of an
amp? I have heard even those who have the EH reverb pedal Holy Grail
say it needs to be run in the amp loop.

How do you tube amp owners run your effects, tuners, overdrives, and
loop type stuff like reverb, delay, chorus. I am hoping that I can
get plenty of opinions on effects with a tube amp, which effects
should be hooked where, and how about ease of setup. I would like to
know if many of you run your reverb into the front of your amp. If
you use a rack effects through your effects loop on your amp, then
what about overdrives and distortion pedals? If your amp only has one
channel, you surely use an overdrive pedal, so then you are stuck
setting up the rack effects cables, and pedals? All that stuff was
set as presets on the modeler amps and units. All I had to do was hit
a button and my effects were set for the song.

Now it looks as though if I am too have the best situations for
effects and my Tube amp, there will be a lot more setup and cables to
mess up. I hope a few of you tell me that there is no problem running
a reverb pedal before your amp, nor any problems with delay either,
as Long as I have my pedals set in the right order on my pedal board.

Hope I get a ton of replies. By the way, the tube amp sounds so much
more full and real than the digital amps, that's for sure. If I can
just get my effects setup right, with minimal work with cables and
power supplies, then I would be a happy camper.

Jeff

[famp69wv@yahoo.com]

Although I like my amp dry....

Jeff

I hear good things about the holy grail (EH).

I'd like to suggest something a little different & with less clutter. Its nothing new but you don't hear about it much. Call it 'the EVH approach' because, although he probably wasn't the first, I believe he may have been the first person I heard of using this method.

Get yourself one of those cabinet emulators that go between the amp & speaker. (Rich people use Palmers whereas poor people like me use an old H&K Red Box). Run the bled off signal to a signal processor/ power amp combo or even a modelling amp or two and, viola, 3D sound. Dry sound out front with lower levels of what ever you want for slap back, echo , verb etc. etc..
I hear EVH would use straight (dry), harmonizer & reverb (left) & delay (right) which presumably accounted for the 3 side by side cabinets per head in his stage rig. Obviously you don't have to get as 'wet' as he did.

I've used this myself (generally with DC30 type amps & find it to be very effective) although I like a 'MUTE' switch somewhere in there so I can just go dry....

It very nearly went without saying that whereas he's a real player I'm just a duffer....

[R.G.]

All that stuff was set as presets on the modeler amps and units. All I had to do was hit a button and my effects were set for the song.

Now it looks as though if I am too have the best situations for
effects and my Tube amp, there will be a lot more setup and cables to
mess up.

By the way, the tube amp sounds so much more full and real than the digital amps, that's for sure.

Welcome to the non-digital world. It's almost like to have something sound better, you have to work for it, isn't it?

I agree that "Do what I want" is a control button we should have on amps, but to date I've never found an amp with that control. Digital amps try, but the sound gets neutered and sterile along the way. Someday, maybe. They keep getting better. But discerning players - and by your actions, you now qualify - keep coming back to tube amps when they can.

There is a built-in contradiction in the way we use amps and time delay effects like echo and reverb, as well as to a lesser extent chorus and flanging.

If you do time delay effects and then distort them, you cook the nice sounding delays to sonic mush. The right way to do this is to get all of the tonal modifications, including especially your distortion, first, then apply time delays. The sound of a delayed distortion is very different from the sound of a distorted delay.

[Mark Black]

As it happens my current amp (Fender Blues DeVille 4x10) has an effects loop which is truly usable. This is not true on lots of other amps, especially older models. In fact I've got ALL my effects in the loop and as long as I don't get carried away with the volume controls (overdrive the effects) it seems to work well.

The order I use is pretty conventional although there are certainly variations:

Pre Out >Distortion > Wah > Phaser > Analog Delay > Chorus > Booster > Rack Effects > Power in.

The only wrinkle perhaps is that I use a cord plugged from the#2 input of the amp to the input of one of my rack effects to derive a completely unaltered guitar signal which I can choose to bypass the amp front-end and have a strictly rack-box based sound for special applications. This also bypasses my floor effects at the same time due to the way it is hooked up and the functionality of my rack effects. Gives me a master volume as well using the outrput control of the last rack box.

Many folks don't like distortion in the effects loop, and many amps don't work well with it there. I like it because it doesn't require as much re-tweaking of the distortion controls based on whether I'm using the clean or dirty channel of my amp.

Some like phasers or wahs before the distortion.

Yes - the cabling, effects, and power supplies are MUCH more complex than your previous setup. There are more possibilties for noise & ground-loops in the rig. I use a custom-built single power supply to power all my pedals and leave everything plugged in all the time. There are multiple cables including signal, AC power, and footswitch lines which I have taped together as a sort of umbilical and THAT stays attached to my pedalboard. The end that gets unplugged is color-coded (matching colors on the gear it plugs into) for no-brainer hook-up. I could have done it cleaner with snake wire and multipin plugs but didn't want to find myself at a gig with a very special suddenly bad cable I couldn't easily replace.

There are LOTS of ways to do it and it basically boils down to what works best for you with your gear and technique.

Have fun!

Mark

[Luijo]

The way I do it is pretty simple:
I have a few effect boxes BEFORE the amp input ( wah, comp, OD, dist, booster and a phaser). Then I have a few other boxes IN the loop ( delays, another phaser, flanger, choruses and another booster). I just use the amp's reverb, no additional reverb pedal.
All of my pedals sit in a single pedalboard with all the necessary wiring for going, coming back and then going again to the amp. Can be a little confusing to at first sight, but quite easy once you understand it. You can think of it as my preamp being in a loop in my pedalboard and then going to the power amp from there.
I try to use the best (and shortest possible) cables and PS.
I have a few "families" of effects wired up in bypass boxes. For example: all modulation boxes can be bypassed all at once with one box, and can do the same with my delays.
Some of my pedals are TBP, other aren't.

[Steve Conner]

The guitarist in our band happily uses all his pedals, including a digital delay and Tube Screamer, ahead of the amp. IIRC the screamer goes last, and it works fine because he doesn't turn the delay and overdrive on at the same time (which would more than likely cause the 'Sonic mush' that another poster mentioned)

When I play guitar myself, I usually don't use any effects at all. Since I got into tube amps, I don't really feel the need for them, except for maybe a bit of chorus now and again. But I have seen other people use setups with their effects loop brought to the pedalboard, or alternatively, a rackmount effects unit in the effects loop controlled by a MIDI foot pedal on the pedalboard.

[Steve B]

Been there. I've done the modeling amp thing as well as the separate tube preamp-FX-power amp thing, too. Even with the rack setup, I was still using a few pedals in front of the preamp. But the ambient FX were between the pre & power amp.

It sort of boils down to what you are going to use the amp for. If your distortion sound comes from the preamp portion of the amp, then it would be best, IMHO, to run your ambient FX in the FX loop. Distorted sound gets echoed instead of the echoed sound getting distorted. Although, there are many classic examples of running an echo into a distorted amp. Early Bill Nelson (Be Bop Deluxe) had a few cuts with that particular sound. Jimmy Page, too. But, if you are using delays to add ambience to the sound, I would say post distortion. No FX loops in any of them.

I am now using a few different powered older Fender amps, & using pedals for the OD & distorted tones. I have a Princeton Reverb, Deluxe Reverb, & Bassman head & 2-12 cab. Which one I use will bascially be determined by how much power I need in a particular situation.

I like to run the amps with the volume set right below the breakup point. Just enough for a bit of sag & compression, but not distorted. Running delays into them works fine, & I sometimes also use a digital reverb when I use the Bassman. But the reverb on both smaller amps really sounds great, especially in conjuction with a delay pedal.

Steve

[Guitarist]

I'm soon of going this route:

Gear: Modeller/Vamp Pro, FCB 1010 midi pedal, Hiwatt tube head

Tube buffer Y's into amp and modeller. Optional.
1010 has an amp switcher in it so you can set tube amp to clean or mean as a patch.
N.B. Most modeller have a preamp bypass so one can easily save a patch as standalone or effects only.
Make a DPDT relay so you can switch the modeller input to the tube amp's effect send or the buffer. Plug this remote relay switch into the 1010 or wire it inside the floor controller.

I hope that makes some sense as I'm not thinking to logically today.

I installed an effects loop into the tube amp but maybe this is doable with the HK redbox method. Using an unbalanced microphone (Sure 545) in front of the speaker and into guitar effects can work nice.

The benifits here is you still keep the tuner/effects at all times, your SS digital preamp get tubified big time, you can send the PA speaker modelled tone balanced, you've got two paralled systems if anything fries.