Confused!!!

[TrevorG]

Whoops! Don't post photos often(can you tell). Sorry!

 

[Old Garage-Bander]

Whoops! Don't post photos often(can you tell). Sorry!

Kind of figured that.
I retract what I say about wanting the photos.
Just send me everything IN the photos.
We'll call it good.

 

[TrevorG]

Ha ha. Some of that stuff is thirty years old next year! Spent the last month throwing away the stuff that was outdated. Took ten trips to the tip. Cleanest that rooms looked in ten years! What little I have left I'm gonna keep.

 

[FuzzFacetious]

Well they have to make things pretty fool proof for guitarists, don't they?

Seriously, without seeing the specs on all of the equipment involved in your particular setup, that's hard for me to say. I can only comment in general about things designed for instrument level vs those designed for line level.

So you say that...
Guitar > guitar pedal > guitar amp works just the same as Guitar > guitar amp effects out > pedal > guitar amp effects in?

But when you replace the guitar with a bass and the guitar amp with a bass amp, but keep the same pedal, it doesn't work no matter how you hook it up?

Guitar - pedal - amp - (loop) pedals (loop) - cab/speaker

Works at any volume, master volume is after the loop.


Bass - bass amp - (loop) pedals/mfx (loop) - cab/speaker

This works great at low volume, at slightly higher volume I hear a slight negative difference compared to playing the pedals in front of the bass amp. I have never been able to turn up crazy loud but as the volume increases the effects sounds change a little as the master volume is before the loop.

It confuses me why they wouldn't build the bass amp in the same way as the guitar amp.

That said, I tried a little orange micro dark and that had the loop after volume too but I didn't get to turn the volume up to test it.

 

[Old Garage-Bander]

It confuses me why they wouldn't build the bass amp in the same way as the guitar amp.

Because then it would be a guitar amp?

I must admit, you have me stumped, which is no great task.

Probably best if I bow out. I don't feel as if I'm being of any help to you.

 

[bongomania]

I have a somewhat fuzzy ( ) answer about the difference between guitar and bass amp loops. With guitar amps it is assumed that the input stage (preamp tube etc.) will be used as a distortion effect. So any delay, reverb, and many other time-based effects will sound best after that input distortion. Since that is the most common accepted usage, guitar amp designers have designed the loops to work with that in mind. Also, a driven guitar preamp tends to have a very narrow dynamic range. That means there generally won't be huge peaks causing bad-sounding distortion in other effects down the line (in the loop). Bass preamps are often designed to be run clean, requiring more headroom (and clean gain) and there is no standard cultural assumption that bassists will put reverbs and delays on their instrument. Bass has massive dynamic peaks, so when they are amplified by the preamp stage, they can cause awful unwanted distortion in the loop.

The reason that answer is fuzzy is that it relies on a load of assumptions and generalizations, and it overlooks the fact that different amp designers have different ideas and goals. But I think the general premise is close to true.