Delay in front of an amph

[marnold]

Hey folks,

As I'm toying with my new JCA20H, I wondered how it would be to have a digital delay in front of the amph and then have the amph distort the crap out of it. I'm mainly looking to add a little fullness. My guess is that it would work pretty decently. Obviously an effects loop would be preferable. Ironically, I'm not finding the need for delay to be as great as I thought it might be. I'm also not in the market for a pedal this very second because I fear for my life.

[Spudman]

I almost always run my delays into the front. I like the lo-fi much better in most cases. If you just run a short ambient delay less than 160ms it can sound pretty fat too.

[Katastrophe]

I'd go for it, when you get the "all clear". I used to run all my effects in front of my preamph, and it sounded fine.

[Blaze]

I like short one in front(rockabilly,country), effects loop for Blues, Rock , Prog etc..

[Robert]

Certains amps may work worse than others for delay in the front. That's one of the reasons I prefer a half-dirty amp to a high gain distorted amp - I can use the delay in the front. If I turn my Marshall in to the high gain stuff, delays in the front don't work well at all, and that's what the fx loop is for. However, it's more cables and stuff to haul around that way, so I don't bother (I'm lazy by nature).

[hubberjub]

When I use my Boogie I run the delay in the loop. With the Astroverb, which is basically the same amp as you have, I run the delay into the front with no problem. I run my amp pretty clean and use a fairly short delay with that setup. Though I assume you use a little more preamp distortion than I do I doubt you'll have any problems.

[marnold]

Thanks for the input. At this point, I'm enjoying the dryness, actually. The only effect I use when playing dirty is delay. I think I can rig something up via my old ZOOM 505II pedal that my son still has to have a patch that is delay-only. It would at least give me an idea. I tend to add a very short delay that fades away quickly just to give it some bigness. I messed with my EX-7 and CF-7 with the amph clean and it seemed to work pretty nicely. The chorus with some gain wasn't too bad, but not something I'd use a lot anyway.

[marnold]

Well, I just set up a couple of patches on the ZOOM and it worked surprisingly well. I set one for the least delay effect (i.e. mixed toward dry with two repeats) with 150ms of delay and another with the least hall reverb I could get. This pedal is not known for its subtlety, so even a little is more than I would use. The reverb didn't sound so hot with distortion but sounded pretty reasonable clean--although it was still more reverb than I would typically use. The delay added the desired bigness. Dare I say, it sounded awesome. It would be even better with a delay pedal that I could tweak more.

Are there good digital delay pedals out there that could also do reverb? I say this just for research purposes, of course. I know some people prefer analog delay, but I don't want to add noise at all for this application.

One quick search turned up the Boss RV-3 (http://www.bossus.com/gear/productdetails.php?ProductId=142), so there must be others.

[mainestratman]

Wow.. get a guy a tube amph and he becomes a cork sniffer about noise.

;-)

[marnold]

Wow.. get a guy a tube amph and he becomes a cork sniffer about noise.

;-)
Hehe. Except if I'm a true cork sniffer, I'd WANT the noise!

[Ch0jin]

As someone who used to use a Zoom 505, the first one, many moons ago, I can assure you, if you're digging the delay/reverb within, a world of -far- more glorious tones await you when you get a better delay pedal!

I rolled my own using a GGG kit designed to sound like the Ibanez AD80, and out of the 10 or so pedal's I've made, it's the one I most love to show off. They are just amazing sounding, so warm and lush.

I usually turn off the spring reverb in my amp when running the delay because the delay gives me more than enough space in the sound.

Also, the original AD80 is an analogue device, whereas the PT80 (the kit) has a digital chip for a heart, but sounds (to my ears) exactly the same. Using a digital chip though should remove any concerns about the noise you'll get with an analogue device.

Anyway, I'm sure others have more varied experience to offer.

Oh and FWIW, don't be tempted to buy a behringer reverb pedal. I have one and it's ghastly. Maybe I've been spoiled by many years of spring reverb, but I just can't find a setting on it that sounds anything like a real spring.

OOps almost forgot. I run my delay in the FX loop with my tremolo. I tend to run a fair wack of preamp gain (like a true Peavey fan haha) or dirty fuzz's into the clean channel and both ways I like the delay in the loop.

[marnold]

As someone who used to use a Zoom 505, the first one, many moons ago, I can assure you, if you're digging the delay/reverb within, a world of -far- more glorious tones await you when you get a better delay pedal!
The delay and reverb on my AD30VT sound a lot better than the Zoom and are much more flexible to boot. While I would like a touch of reverb playing clean, I'm not finding as great of a need for delay as I thought I might with this Jet City. It sounds pretty sweet just dry as a bone. When everything settles down next week, hopefully I'll get a chance to play it more.


OOps almost forgot. I run my delay in the FX loop with my tremolo. I tend to run a fair wack of preamp gain (like a true Peavey fan haha) or dirty fuzz's into the clean channel and both ways I like the delay in the loop.
In a perfect world, I'd probably prefer to do the same thing. However, my amph has no effects loop so it's officially moot.