pedal into board

thepsychedelicdollhouse · Post by **thepsychedelicdollhouse** » Sat May 24, 2014 8:50 am

anything technically wrong with using a guitar pedal as part of an effect send/return though a board? it'll work ok, right?

kslight · Post by **kslight** » Sat May 24, 2014 9:28 am

Some pedals may work better than others, depending on if they can handle line level signals or not?(most pedals are not designed for line level signals, but a few are) May also be a bit noisy. For this purpose, I would highly recommend a gadget like the Pigtronix Keymaster (which is what I use) to make sure it is all interfaced properly. You may also be able to get good results using DI boxes?but I like the Keymaster because it is self contained and dead simple to operate.

thepsychedelicdollhouse · Post by **thepsychedelicdollhouse** » Sat May 24, 2014 9:30 am

thinking of a caitlinbread belle epoch or their echorec.

kslight · Post by **kslight** » Sat May 24, 2014 9:32 am

I don't know the individual specs of those pedals, but if I were you, I'd just try it?and if it doesn't sound good or work well then you know you'll need something to get your levels straight. You shouldn't damage anything by trying it, it just may not sound good.

thepsychedelicdollhouse · Post by **thepsychedelicdollhouse** » Sat May 24, 2014 10:08 am

i appreciate your help and insight.

numberthirty · Post by **numberthirty** » Sat May 24, 2014 12:57 pm

kslight wrote:Some pedals may work better than others, depending on if they can handle line level signals or not?(most pedals are not designed for line level signals, but a few are) May also be a bit noisy. For this purpose, I would highly recommend a gadget like the Pigtronix Keymaster (which is what I use) to make sure it is all interfaced properly. You may also be able to get good results using DI boxes?but I like the Keymaster because it is self contained and dead simple to operate.

Isn't the Keymaster microphone and not line level? I would not even have thought about using it for this.

kslight · Post by **kslight** » Sat May 24, 2014 1:16 pm

numberthirty wrote:
kslight wrote:Some pedals may work better than others, depending on if they can handle line level signals or not?(most pedals are not designed for line level signals, but a few are) May also be a bit noisy. For this purpose, I would highly recommend a gadget like the Pigtronix Keymaster (which is what I use) to make sure it is all interfaced properly. You may also be able to get good results using DI boxes?but I like the Keymaster because it is self contained and dead simple to operate.
Isn't the Keymaster microphone and not line level? I would not even have thought about using it for this.

It will take a microphone (unamplified), but actually works better at line level, I usually plug a mic pre between a mic and the Keymaster for that kind of processing. You can also plug a guitar straight into it if you wanted to.

hogfish · Post by **hogfish** » Sat May 24, 2014 1:30 pm

Keymaster can take ANY signal you throw at it and spit out what you need. Will take XLR or TRS balanced,or TS unbalanced and spit out unbalanced OR balanced. Additionally, it has 2 independent signal loops. in Parallel mode you can crossfade between the 2 loops. In series mode Loop A will drive Loop B. The ultimate swiss army knife reamping tool, the only piece of gear I own that is in constant use.....

Recycled_Brains · Post by **Recycled_Brains** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 9:44 am

go out via a reamp, back in via DI.

Gilroy · Post by **Gilroy** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 4:19 pm

if you have a 500 rack, there's a great convenient little box by radial for like 250 that does just that: converts a line level source to instrument level then back.

klangtone · Post by **klangtone** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 4:45 pm

Gilroy is right. It's called the EXTC. Great little box. Send level, return level, and wet/dry mix knob. Transformer coupled to reduce ground loops.

Roy

banana brains · Post by **banana brains** » Sat Jun 14, 2014 9:53 pm

In case you don't have the background:

Your guitar pedals are looking for a hi-z input source (guitar). Mics are low-z (mostly) and Live level is line level (higher impedance than hi-z).

I think (someone correct me if I'm wrong) but guitar pedals also output hi-z. So, to do it properly you would need to convert the line level signal coming from the send to hi-z, then into your guitar pedal, then convert the output from the guitar pedal back to line level and back into your return (which is looking for a line level signal).

Hope that helps. FYI...as others have said, they make devices for this "reamping" process such as the REAMP V2 which i don't think anyone mentioned.

ashcat_lt · Post by **ashcat_lt** » Sun Jun 15, 2014 11:14 am

soupdejour wrote:In case you don't have the background:

Your guitar pedals are looking for a hi-z input source (guitar). Mics are low-z (mostly) and Live level is line level (higher impedance than hi-z).

I think (someone correct me if I'm wrong) but guitar pedals also output hi-z. So, to do it properly you would need to convert the line level signal coming from the send to hi-z, then into your guitar pedal, then convert the output from the guitar pedal back to line level and back into your return (which is looking for a line level signal).

Hope that helps. FYI...as others have said, they make devices for this "reamping" process such as the REAMP V2 which i don't think anyone mentioned.

I believe that you (like most) suffer the misconception that you have to match impedance between source and load. It's just plain wrong. For everything north of the power amp that actually pushes your speakers, every connection works best when the load impedance is significantly larger than source. We usually want at least 10:1 ratio, but bigger is always better.

The input of most pedals designed for guitar will be between 500K and 1M. The output impedance of these pedals sometimes depends its volume control, but (especially with "big name" commercial pedals) is more often pretty low. 1K is pretty typical.

Most line level inputs have an input impedance of at least 10K, and most line outs are actually ultra low, but usually specified to be no more than 600R.

So send from your mixer to the pedal is (at worst) 500K:600R, which is like 83:1, and meets our "at least 10:1" rule of thumb. The return is a little iffier, but is quite typically 10K:1K, which just barely fits the rule.

What is a bit more touchy is the actual voltage levels running through the things. The headroom of every active device is constrained by its power supply. That is, the very biggest P2P voltage that can pass is theoretically equal to the power supply, and in practice usually a bit less.

A guitar pedal is almost always built with a 9V supply, but they never actually pass that much signal. Some might just barely get to 8V, but I think maybe 5V P2P is a safer estimate for clean throughput in a pedal which is not specifically meant to distort.

5V P2P is around +7dbu, and should hit around +3dbVU on your meters.

Of course, there are some pedals which kind of deliberately break some of these rules. A genuine Fuzz Face pedal actually does sort of depend on the relatively high impedance - and more importantly the inductive nature - of a passive guitar pickup to kill a whole lot of treble and high mids going in. It'll usually be fizzy rather than fuzzy if fed from a low-Z non-inductive source (whether it be an active guitar, another pedal before it in the chain, or a mixer send), but it really just needs an LPF of some sort ahead of it.

A Rat pedal is specifically meant to distort, so any discussion of clean throughput is moot, but its maybe important to note that it creates most of its distortion by hard limiting its output to something like 1.2V P2P.

And of course all gear has its little idiosyncracies. If you really want to know whether your mixer will work with your pedal you should actually learn to read the spec sheets for your equipment. Or just plug the damn thing in and find out! It'll either work or it won't and any problems will be almost immediately evident.

rhythm ranch · Post by **rhythm ranch** » Sun Jun 15, 2014 12:46 pm

ashcat_lt wrote:...just plug the damn thing in and find out!

+1000

vvv · Post by **vvv** » Mon Jun 16, 2014 4:38 am

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