The proper use of the effect loop with pedals?

[MAXIFUNK]

I have seen were some folks put your O/D, distortion, volume. wah pedals in the front end of the amp but put their chorus or delay through the effects loop.

Which is best or better or even better yet what does doing one or the other give you as an expect result.

Really new to guitar pedals and their implementation to effect your sound to achieve a desired sound aka tone.

[Eric]

Most people like their time-based effects (i.e. delay, reverb, chorus, etc.) to echo a distorted tone, and not necessarily for the amp to distort an echo, if that makes sense. By putting those effects in the effects loop, you are introducing them after the preamp, which is where a lot of the gain/distortion comes from in an amplifier. In effect, you are letting the delay do its thing to an already EQed, dirty tone. If you put the delay before the amp, the preamp would be coloring the sound of the delayed notes.

In reality, it's not as big of a deal as people make it out to be. It's more of a best-practice sort of thing. Try it both ways and see what you like. I don't bother with effects loops too much, mainly because it can sometimes be a hassle.

[FrankenFretter]

I have an effects loop on my Marshall, and on my new Blackstar. I don't use them. I run my rig in stereo, using my stereo chorus, so the effects loop doesn't work for me. What Eric said is correct; use the dirt pedals in front, and everything else in the loop.

[tunghaichuan]

I don't have an amp with an FX loop, so I just run my amp clean with all the pedals in front.

As the other posters have said convention wisdom is to run the dirt/volume/compression FX ahead of the preamp and the time delay FX in the loop (post preamp). This sounds the best to me in my experience but like everything else if it sounds good to you then it is good. Too many people get hung up on things like the "correct" order of FX.

The FX loop is good to use for time based FX (flange, chorus, delay, phaser, etc.) in amps that have preamp distortion. Note that some amps sound the best cranked up (mostly power amp distortion) so putting an effect in the loop of one of these amps doesn't do much as the effect tends to get washed out as the loop FX are placed before the power section. Some players have been know to get around this (EVH) by using their entire amp as a distortion pedal and feeding a padded down line out from the output section into their effects and then into a squeaky clean power amp to boost signal back up to loud SPL levels.

[FusedGrooves]

I guess it may depend on how you're using your gear and why....? Perhaps? Maybe?

For me, I rarely use the Marshall distortion - but I'm only running an MGHDFX100 *shock horror!*, in fact I don't often use 'dirty' fx. When I do I use one of the multi Fx items on my ME50 )which I'll leave comment to the experts on whether thats 'good' or not) however for the volume swells and small amount I use it, I prefer to use the Fx loop on the Marshall VS not using it and since I mostly use chorus, delay etc then this probably suits me better than some...if you're playing hard rock etc then it would have to vary ...

I guess....like alot things with music! LOL Being self taught I have large holes in my 'knowledge base'.......thank god for Roberts lessons hey!!