FX loop blend question?

[Son of Bovril]

ok, I'm not entirely sure on how the technical side of an fx loop really wrks, so say you are running a few pedals in the FX loop of your amp and you have the FX blended at 50% with your clean tone (via a blend knob on the amp)

what happens if you turn all the pedals off? does it split your clean tone and send half through the FX loop and then blend it back with the other 50% of your clean tone?

the reason I ask is that if this is the case and there is slight latency due to the bypassed pedals in the FX loop, could it cause phasing issues/fatten up your tone like short delay would when blended back together?

[Son of Bovril]

bump

[ga_edwards]

That's the way it should work yes, you'll get 50% of the amp's normal tone and 50% of the fx loop (with pedals bypassed) tone.

The tiny delay caused be caused by something in the loop not having true bypass. Try sticking a patch cable in the loop, straight out and back in to see if it's the pedals or the loop itself. If it's fine, add the them back in one by one till you find the culprit.

There are true bypass blender pedals available if the fx loop on the amp is the cause. Something like the Xotic X-blender (other less expensive units are available!) should do the job. Stick all your pedals in this units loop instead of the amp.

You could even plug this into the amps loop set to 100 wet if you want the fx after the preamp.

Hope this helps.

[Son of Bovril]

hmm so if you are running a 50% blended tone and you had to turn a mute switch in the fx loop on then you would only have half the volume, is that correct, or would your volume still stay constant but just be the direct tone?

[ga_edwards]

That sounds right. Muting the signal in the loop would cause a drop in volume, bypassing effects in the loop so the signal passes through unaffected wouldn't drop the volume.