Effects Loop with G-Major and DBX 266XL

Hey everyone. I have a G-Major and DBX 266XL going thru my effects loop of my Mesa Dual Rectifier. I have the Send and Return nobs at 12 oclock and my setting knob is on Auto Red/Orange. The gate (DBX) works fine when playing clean sounds. When I hit the distortion on the gate does not work. For the gate to work I have to plug into the DBX then go from the DBX to the input of my amp head. Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong? This is very frustrating. If you need to know anymore info let me know. Later

To use a gate in the FX loop, you have to have the FX mix on the amp set 100% wet, effectively making it a series loop. Great for gates, compressors, eq's and such, lousy for delays, reverbs, and modulation fx. Also since the loop comes after the preamp, if there is a big difference in gain or master settings on each channel, that would make a gate act funny. If it works ok front-ended, why not leave it there? That way it wont cut the tails off your delays like it would in the loop.

What do you mean by 100% wet? Are you saying run the effects thru the input of the amp and the gate thru the effects loop? Would that even be possible? Thanks.

If I run it from my guitar to the gate, from the gate to the front of the amp head its going to be gating the guitar and not the amped distortion. i don't think that is an effective method unless im missing something

3-channel recto or older 2-channel? The newer ones have a parallel fx loop with a mix control, which has to be set at 100% for the gate to work properly. If you're trying to gate out amp noise like the hiss on overdriven channel, gate has to be in the loop. Maybe try this...put the gate before the g-major in the loop. If you have the newer 3-channel head (I'm not too familiar with the old ones), connect the "external switching jack" for channel 1 to the bypass jack on your gate. When you switch to clean, the gate will bypass (dont really need it for clean right?). Then you can set the gate threshold to work with the dirty channel(s). This may cause a ground loop hum. If it does, lift your gate and/or fx from ground, not the amp. You might get a surprise if your amp is not grounded and you touch something that is!

I have the Solo Head which is 2 channel, clean and overdrive ( has vintage settings and such). I will try putting the gate before the g-major and see what happens. I don't see why it wouldn't work if put after the G-Major. I have a built in gate on the G-Major which is ok. I more concerned with gating the dirty channel and not the clean since gates seem to cut off the effect if you let it sustain. Thanks and any other opinion is appreciated.

Surely it would work after the g-major, but you might find it cuts off delays and reverbs when the gate closes.

chuck,

The G-major has an excellent noise gate built in as one of it's effects. In all of the preset structures the noise gate comes first, so it should not affect the reverb or delay trails.

If I were you I would dump the DBX and use just the TC, fewer things to go wrong. The gate can be turned on or off by preset, so you could have one set of presets for you clean stuff and another set of presets for for overdrive stuff.

One thing to note, the TC was designed around a serial effects loop. Therefore you will want to set your amp's effects loop mix percentage to 100%. This essentially makes the effects loop a serial loop. You can also have the amp modded so that the loop is always serial.

TC has an excellent web site that you can source info from.

Here is a link: http://www.tcelectronic.com/G-Major

If you select the support link on that page, you will find a wealth of information about how to best use the TC.

chedgeco... 8)

Mesa's parallel effects loop can never operate as a series loop, even when set to 100% mix! It's more like a range of 10%-90%, you never lose your original signal!

If I'm not mistaken though the noise gate on my G-Major will not gate the amp distortion. It will only gave the effects of the TC Electronic G-Major. I am almost sure of this. I may be completely wrong though Let me know guys and thx for the info.

Update: I turned the mix all the way up to 100% last night and the send value pretty high up. The gate works pretty well now. I have it going before my TC Electronics G-Major. I'm still trying to retweak my amp and the G-Major after hooking everything back up.

IMHO, I don't think the gate belongs in the effects loop. I'd try it in front! As mentioned above, even at 100% mix level, you are still blending the effects back into the original signal, thus only gating the effected signal.

So how should I set up the gate?

A gate or any non time based effect should go into the front of an amp.

So your saying plug my guitar into the input of the gate, then the gate to the input of the amp?

chuck said:

So your saying plug my guitar into the input of the gate, then the gate to the input of the amp?

Click to expand...

Exactly!