Mark III with digital pedals in effects loop

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marion

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Hi,

Mesa newbie here. My first Mesa is a Mark III red stripe.

I need advice. I can't figure out what's causing this problem and whether there's a solution. I have a Wampler Tumnus Deluxe (Klon style pedal) in front of my Mark III red stripe in the rhythm 1 channel. Sounds great but once I put in a digital pedal in the effects loop like a Boss DD500 or Zoom MS100BT, something happens regardless of gain and level setting on the Tumnus. With the Zoom MS100BT, sounds normal at first but as the sustain fades, the sound flutters or makes a fartsy sound. With the DD500, it squeals as soon as you hit a note. If I remove both pedals and leave only my TC Hall of Fame reverb in the effects loop, no issues. If I put all my pedals in front ( other pedals -> Tumnus -> Zoom -> DD500 -> reverb -> Mark), there are no issues. I don't want this setup though because I want my delay after dirt for when I use the lead channel. I tried putting a volume pedal after effects send to back off the volume/level going into the digital pedals but it doesn't help.

So, what's causing my problem? Is it the effects loop of the Mark, the digital pedals, impedance mismatch or simply the sum of all? Note that I have other overdrives/distortion in front but only the Tumnus has this effect on the Mark III. Thanks!!!
 
Im not sure if this is the answer you want to hear, but if the only one dirt pedal is causing the issue, it's highly likely that IS the issue. Have you tried running the tumnus in the efx loop? You'll have to redo your tone settings in it because of the change in tone stack locstion, but it's worth a shot.
 
I have a red stripe also and it doesn't like my Strymon stuff in the loop.
The overall effect and tone just seems off. An MXR carbon works great though.
 
I contacted Wampler. It turns out that my pedal needs a replacement. They sent me a new board for free eventhough I bought it used and is 5 years old. I installed it in the pedal and now everything is working fine.
 
So I have a similar but different (potentially issue). I have the Mark iii black dot. I just had the R2 volume pot mod done. It solved my R2 volume issue but I found a new problem. After the mod I moved my looper (TC electronics ditto looper) to the amp's effects loop in my signal chain (it's the only pedal in my effects loop). The effects loop works fine when the pedal is not activated or if i'm using the amp R1 or lead channel. However, if I use the looper with R2, the R2 volume goes full blast when I activate the looper. (note its' the R2 sub volume that I put in with the mod, not the standard amp volume that controls the R1/R2 channels). I've isolated the problem to this pedal (if put my MXR univibe in the effects loop I can't replicate the problem). Ordinarily I'd say that's a pedal issue but since it's only an issue w/ R2 and I just had the R2 volume mod done it seems like it could be the issue. I've also removed all of the rest of my signal chain and run just this pedal on its own power supply and the issue persists so I don't think there is any power/signal contamination causing this.

Unfortunately I never used my effects loop prior to the R2 volume mod so I can't say if this issue began with the R2 volume mod. I've ordered a new looper pedal to test to see if it's that pedal. I've also reached out to the amp tech who did the mod so he's thinking about it.

Anyone run into this problem and have any thoughts on why this might happen?

Thanks!
 
Small update. I purchased another looper pedal (vsn 48K looper). Same problem. So I don't think the problem is specific to my original looper pedal (Ditto looper). I've basically narrowed it down to all of my digital pedals (loopers + fender micro comp) while my analog pedal (mxr univibe) works fine.

I also took the step of unplugging all footswitchers from the amp and taking the pedals completely out of the signal chain and running on a standalone power supply so it's just guitar > amp > send > looper > receive. Same problem so I think I can safely say that it's not caused by signal/power interference.

Thanks
 

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