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EBS Billy Sheehan Signature Drive - using the loops
- Thread starter arcureo
- Start date
I belive inverting the signal phase takes a little circuit to happen; one example is shown here: Invalid Link Removed
Maybe it's possible to squeeze that into the EBS pedal (in the battery compartment?).
Maybe it's possible to squeeze that into the EBS pedal (in the battery compartment?).
Im a bit confused on the whole FX loops thing. Whats the point of an effects loop? Why not just directly connect each pedal? By that I mean plug your guitar into the right side of the EBS Billy Sheehan pedal then on the left side do not use the drive loop, just use the top plugin and plug in your next effect then the next effect down the line to the last one then the last effect would be plugged into the amp.
The EBS Billy Sheehan pedal comes with an insert cord so I tried plugging it into the drive loop then the ring/send into my Wylde Overdrive pedal then that connected to my wah pedal then the tip/recieve was plugged into the out jack of the wah. I also directly connected all 3 pedals down the line. To me it sounded exactly the same. Haven't looped it on the clean side yet so that may sound different. I'd love to know what the difference is of looping and directly connecting. Especially on amps with FX loops.
The EBS Billy Sheehan pedal comes with an insert cord so I tried plugging it into the drive loop then the ring/send into my Wylde Overdrive pedal then that connected to my wah pedal then the tip/recieve was plugged into the out jack of the wah. I also directly connected all 3 pedals down the line. To me it sounded exactly the same. Haven't looped it on the clean side yet so that may sound different. I'd love to know what the difference is of looping and directly connecting. Especially on amps with FX loops.
If you only want the effects in, say, the dirty side, keeping the clean side as nothing but tight bottom end, it give you that option, and opposed to everything being affected. The point of the loops is to give you control of the clean side, but adding dirt and effects via the level control.
He always stated that his setup was truly biamped, a clean side and a distorted side, going through separate amps and cabs. This pedal emulates that.
He always stated that his setup was truly biamped, a clean side and a distorted side, going through separate amps and cabs. This pedal emulates that.
So your saying that if I loop my overdrive and wah pedals in the dirty loop I can keep the clean side clean and mix in the effects with the level control? So what about if I put effects in a loop on the clean side? How does that affect the clean side and controls?
I know this is an old thread, but I came up with some really simple pedal mods that make huge improvements to this pedal. All of these mods are to the drive loop cable and don't change anything internal in the pedal.
A while back I got the idea to use the drive loop to run the signal through an expression pedal. That gave me the ability to go from clean with zero distortion to full and everything in between instead of just on or off. You lose a small bit of the full distortion signal doing this, but that wasn't an issue for me since I never ran it totally maxed anyway.
I still didn't like the loss of low end due to the out of phase issue. I ran the loop through a TC Electronics SpectraComp with a patch that had minimal effects which was just using the pedal as a phase reverser, and a really cheap way to do that since I already had one that I wasn't using. The SpectraComp never quite did it for me as a compressor with the annoying volume issues, so I was going to sell it, but this didn't cost me anything to try.
The latest idea was to build a passive High Pass filter to take the low end out of the loop signal so no phase cancellation was going on with them. This worked so well that I stopped using the Spectracomp idea above. I like the sound of the out of phase distortion. I just didn't like it sucking out the low end. This is a super easy mod. Just build the standard high pass filter with a through capacitor and resistor to ground to block frequencies below a target frequency. Using a standard tone control .022uf capacitor and a 10K resistor it blocks everything below around ~74hrtz. That keeps enough low end to make a difference but still sounds like the stock pedal. I preferred using a 5K resistor, though, which raises the cutoff to ~148hrtz for restoring most of the bottom end. Use whatever option you prefer or anything in between or wire in a switch to have both options.
A while back I got the idea to use the drive loop to run the signal through an expression pedal. That gave me the ability to go from clean with zero distortion to full and everything in between instead of just on or off. You lose a small bit of the full distortion signal doing this, but that wasn't an issue for me since I never ran it totally maxed anyway.
I still didn't like the loss of low end due to the out of phase issue. I ran the loop through a TC Electronics SpectraComp with a patch that had minimal effects which was just using the pedal as a phase reverser, and a really cheap way to do that since I already had one that I wasn't using. The SpectraComp never quite did it for me as a compressor with the annoying volume issues, so I was going to sell it, but this didn't cost me anything to try.
The latest idea was to build a passive High Pass filter to take the low end out of the loop signal so no phase cancellation was going on with them. This worked so well that I stopped using the Spectracomp idea above. I like the sound of the out of phase distortion. I just didn't like it sucking out the low end. This is a super easy mod. Just build the standard high pass filter with a through capacitor and resistor to ground to block frequencies below a target frequency. Using a standard tone control .022uf capacitor and a 10K resistor it blocks everything below around ~74hrtz. That keeps enough low end to make a difference but still sounds like the stock pedal. I preferred using a 5K resistor, though, which raises the cutoff to ~148hrtz for restoring most of the bottom end. Use whatever option you prefer or anything in between or wire in a switch to have both options.
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What someone should do is come up with a useful mod to disable the horrible tone control ...completely out of circuit.
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Mea Culpa
My math was WAY off on this. I don't know what I was thinking, entered the wrong values into a calculator, mislabeled components, or just brain freeze, or whatever, but here's the corrected version:
First, since the resistor goes to ground, a low value cuts the volume, so I went with a much higher value and there's hardly any volume drop. So, the corrected circuit uses a .0047uf capacitor and a 220k resistor for High Pass at ~153 htz or a 110K resistor (I used 2 220Ks in parallel) for High Pass at ~307 htz. I wired a switch so I can use either. The High Pass at 307 htz retains a real beefy low end which is the one I prefer. Flipping the switch to set the High Pass at 153 htz still has decent bottom end, but has a bite more like the the unaltered pedal.
Here is my question
Do I plug my bass directly into the billy pedal then connect all my other pedals, THEN into my amp
Or do I use the effects loops on my svt4pro
I tried it both ways and got WAY more volume from the guitar to the pedal route
I’m just confused
Is my bass getting ”pedaled” before it goes into my amp?
Do I plug my bass directly into the billy pedal then connect all my other pedals, THEN into my amp
Or do I use the effects loops on my svt4pro
I tried it both ways and got WAY more volume from the guitar to the pedal route
I’m just confused
Is my bass getting ”pedaled” before it goes into my amp?
Pedals are generally designed to go between guitar and amp, so do whatever works best for you.
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Seeing as this thread has been resurrected, just thought I’d share.
I’ve just had custom kill switch built to sit in the dirt loop of my EBS drive pedal, courtesy of Bright Onion pedals. Based upon one of their regular kill switches, I asked them to add a phase switch and reverse the LED operation so that it comes on when the pedal is bypassed, therefore activating the drive loop.
I’ve only tried it at bedroom levels at the moment, but the difference the phase switch makes is unbelievable. It’s almost like having a whole new and differently voiced drive pedal. Gone are the nasal overtones around 500hz and back comes the fat low end. I’m pretty certain that it’ll sit in the mix more comfortably, but I still have the option to take it back out of phase if I want that mid focused, high gain “go nuts” tone. And certainly a lot cheaper (£55 inc vat and shipping) than buying the orange pedal.
I’ve just had custom kill switch built to sit in the dirt loop of my EBS drive pedal, courtesy of Bright Onion pedals. Based upon one of their regular kill switches, I asked them to add a phase switch and reverse the LED operation so that it comes on when the pedal is bypassed, therefore activating the drive loop.
I’ve only tried it at bedroom levels at the moment, but the difference the phase switch makes is unbelievable. It’s almost like having a whole new and differently voiced drive pedal. Gone are the nasal overtones around 500hz and back comes the fat low end. I’m pretty certain that it’ll sit in the mix more comfortably, but I still have the option to take it back out of phase if I want that mid focused, high gain “go nuts” tone. And certainly a lot cheaper (£55 inc vat and shipping) than buying the orange pedal.
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I don’t get how to “complete” a loop
Plug in the “y” wire
One side the purple BS pedal in
Where do the other wire go ?
I’m confused
You need one of these to use the effects loop. It's a EBS Y-Type Insert Cable. Other manufacturers make them also.
You plug into the input and output of the BS as normal, then use an insert cable like the one above with the stereo plug into the clean or dirty loop and the other ends go to the input/output of whatever you want in the loop.
Basically it's just a way to run send and return from a single jack to save space and cost, but it does make it a pain to use as you need a special cable.
Basically it's just a way to run send and return from a single jack to save space and cost, but it does make it a pain to use as you need a special cable.
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BTW, not a great idea to use a digital pedal like the Spectracomp for this purpose (or in any blend loop). Phase inversion is just a polarity flip with no time delay, so it's easy to invert with a simple buffer stage. However digital pedals like the Spectracomp will add a few milliseconds delay to your signal, causing comb filtering effects when blended (like the hollow metallic sound you get from a flanger, but stuck in one position instead of cycling).
