Hi,
What is the difference between running my wet effects in the amp’s FX loop versus the Fryette PS’s FX loop? Does attenuation affect the FX loop tone in either of these scenarios?
Another thing I tried was taking the FX loop send from the amp into my wet effects, then routing it to my audio interface using an IR loader, and comparing it to the FX loop send of the Fryette. I did notice a difference in the sound—why is that? And is this the same as running it from the line out instead of the FX send?
Amp FX Loop: This is typically located between the preamp and power amp stages, making it ideal for wet effects like reverb and delay that benefit from an already shaped tone. Running effects here applies them directly to the preamp’s tonal characteristics before they reach the power amp.
Power Station FX Loop: Placed in the re-amping stage, this loop allows you to apply effects after the amp’s tone has been fully shaped (preamp + power amp) and re-amped. This is more like adding an effect to a recorded guitar sound in the studio.
Impact of Attenuation on FX Loop Tone:
With the Power Station’s reactive load handling the amp’s output, the tone transparency is preserved through attenuation, so any effects placed in the Power Station’s loop maintain clarity even at reduced volumes. Just make sure you set the level setting on the from panel to ensure best signal to noise ratio.
FX Loop Send to IR Loader vs. Power Station Send to IR Loader:
Direct Amp FX Loop Send: This route delivers a signal with the amp’s preamp, providing a signal character closer to the pre-amp tone. However, because the signal hasn’t been through reactive loading, it may have more high-end and less response complexity than a speaker interaction would provide.
Power Station Send: Since the Power Station uses a reactive load to absorb the amp’s output, its FX send provides a signal with speaker-like impedance interaction, giving a more natural, nuanced tone. This setup mimics the tonal qualities and dynamics of an amp connected to a speaker, which could explain the tonal difference you noticed when running to an IR loader. The Power Station’s reactive load and design specifically work to retain the amp’s feel and tonal response at all volume levels.
Line Out vs. FX Send:
Little difference, but it does depend on how they FX send is implemented. It should be implemented as a line-level output, but I can only speak for Fryette products.
With the Power Station’s reactive load handling the amp’s output, the tone transparency is preserved through attenuation, so any effects placed in the Power Station’s loop maintain clarity even at reduced volumes. Just make sure you set the level setting on the from panel to ensure best signal to noise ratio."
How does the attenuation affect the FX loop of the amp? If at all.
And can you explain about ensuring best signal to noise ratio with setting the level?
Thanks for the poke; if I read a question and then think “I’ll come back to it later” it seems to get lost in the many other things. That is what happened here.
The attenuation does not affect the FX loop tone. It just provides the FX loop with a signal. You want that signal to be as large as possible to have the largest signal to noise ratio.
In painful level of detail
The level switch on the front panel is really what I was meaning by signal to noise ratio. If you have a low power amp, the maximum signal that is going through the FX loop will be lower than with than with a 100W amp. This is pretty obvious. However, we want all out line-level outputs to have an amplitude of around 1V RMS.
Noise is unavoidable, so part of your 1V line level output will always be noise, let’s say its 10mV. Now if you do not set the front panel level switch correctly, you could have only 0.5V RMS of line level signal, but the noise floor will remain the same. In the first case you have \frac{\text{S}}{\text{N}}=\frac{1\text{V}}{10\text{mV}}=40\text{dB}, but in the second case, \frac{\text{S}}{\text{N}}=\frac{0.5\text{V}}{10\text{mV}}=34\text{dB}. Moreover, in the second case the signal to noise ratio is smaller, meaning that it sounds more noisy.
