Session 400 Tone Change ?????

[Larry Strawn]

Just got home from a gig at the Eagles, working with a local band. Due to limited space [5pc. on a small band stand] I left my effects rack at home, took only an Ibenez stomp box delay unit. Instead of looping thru an effects loop, as I do with my rack, I simply "in-lined" this unit. I am very familar with the accoustics in this room, so I set my amp where I normally do here, tuned my steel, then went drank coffee until time to start.

When I intro'd the opening song [Crazy Arms] the tone about blew me away! A couple of minor tweaks, and I was dialed in for the night.

Clean clear hi's, smooth mid's, very strong dominate lows, and more gain.

I didn't open this thread to bragg on my tone, I'm not very "swooft" on electronics, and I'm hoping some one will explain [in terms a Dummie] can understand, what's happening here??

Is it because of being in-lined, versus looped?? Or could I be losing signal strength thru my rack?? Since I do double a lot, my rack is pretty heavily loaded for my steel, and my Tele. I most generally use only one unit at a time, but the rest are still in by-pass mode.

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks Larry

[Donny Hinson]

A lot of effects don't necessarily make your sound better or worse, but too many effects means you have an awful lot of knobs to tweak to get a good sound, and it's difficult to get 'em all right.

Sometimes the simple approach, with fewer things to fiddle with, yeilds a superior result. I guess that's why so many steelers just use a volume pedal and an amp.

K.I.S.S.

[Larry Strawn]

Donny,
Thanx for the reply, I've only got 2 units that I use with my steel, every thing else is for my Tele.

I can separate the effects if that's the problem.

I'm wondering if I might have a problem with my amp? When I go thru the effects loop, it gets "muddy" compared to in-line.

Still tryin to figure this out!

Larry

[Jon Light (deceased)]

Just as a diagnostic, why don't you run a cord between the effects loop in & out jacks to see if the connections are good and clean. At least rule this out as a potential issue. If there is any tone loss with the jumper cord then you'd want to excercise the jacks with a bunch of in/out plug action and some contact cleaner.
But I agree that it is entirely possible that the units you are using could be sucking tone, either by nature or by some universal setting regarding input level, output level, or whatever. However I would think that if they are good boxes----what are you using?--then I would expect this to be surmountable with proper settings.

[Larry Strawn]

Hi Jon,
I'll go out to the music room and try isolating the loop jacks.

Rack is loaded with Digitec 256XL, Washburn WD-1400 digital delay, Digitec RP7, Dan Echo DE-1, Ibenez DS-5, 7 band Eq. A-B box.

Dan Echo, and Ibenez, are usually all I use with my steel.

Thanx
Larry

[Jim Peters]

Larry, the Ibanez box is probably buffered. If so, it will conteract the tone sucking of bad chords and a passive volume control. Can you use a 3 cord setup? That is night and day with my GFI and NV112. Sometimes to be lazy, I'll run thru a tube screamer instead of using 3 cords,the differece is quite noticable.JP<font size="1" color="#8e236b"><p align="center">[This message was edited by Jim Peters on 10 April 2005 at 08:27 PM.]</p></FONT>

[Larry Strawn]

Jim,,
I think I've found the problem, I've been going thru the rack, one unit at a time today. Every thing checked out fine untill I got to the Eq. Don't know if it was the unit, or power supply, but I changed it out, the only thing I had on hand, other than what's in my Vocal rack was an old Dan Electro Eq, put it in and Walla!!! Every thing back up and running. I'll get a new one of better quality, and hopefully every thing will be fine.
Thanks for the help, it's all appreciated.
Larry