Home (amp tone and effects placement)

>Interesting ideas in that system, especially the repeated
>"EFFECTS AFTER THE MIKING OF THE AMP".

>One problem - the guitar signal going through a digitech
>processor before any other parts of the system will
>kill the tone so that no further processing will get it back
>in shape.

The 2101 has flat eq, unless you set an eq. The amp can't tell whether the guitar is going through a 2101 first, unless you use the crazy time-based special effects. Your phrase "will kill the tone" is vague.

>You'll end up sounding like a bumblebee
>next to someone plugging his strat into a tube screamer and/or
>fuzz face into a marshall/fender amp.

>Regards, mike ~^v^~ aNaLoG.MaN ~^v^~ (203) 778-6658
>AnalogMike at aol.com http://users.aol.com/AnalogMike/stock.htm

If you turn off the time-based effects and just use the distortion stage, the 2101 into a tube amp sounds identical to a traditional distortion pedal into a tube amp. If you only use the eq and level controls in the 2101, it sounds exactly the same as using a traditional separate eq. I don't know if the 2101 or 2112 has a decent equivalent of the Tube Screamer, which I believe is simply a way of mixing some clean tone with some standard distorted tone.

I experimented with the Digitech 2101 before a Fender Pro Jr 15 watt amp. The Digitech itself is transparent. When all the effects are off, the eq response is unchanged. I did clean A/B tests to find this out. The Digitech RP10 floor effects unit, however, added high treble to the guitar signal. The 2101 is a studio-clean general-purpose processor, in addition to having a distortion stage.

Effects processors do not color the sound any differently than a series of effects. The only thing that messes up pure tube amp tone is poor choice of effects and settings before the amp. You can fall prey to the same bad choices whether you use separates or multiprocessors. In particular, beware of putting chorus or other time-based effects before a heavily saturated tube amp. These effects go better after the mic'd speaker, when using heavy power-amp saturation.

You can put most any effect after the mic'd speaker. But be careful about what you put before the tube amp, because it's a distortion stage -- think of the tube amp as a distortion box, as far as placing effects before or after it. You can use the compression, distortion, and phaser in the Digitech 2101 before the

Currently there are two camps of guitarists: those who are oriented towards multieffects, and those who are oriented toward pure amp tones, with no effects. This dichotomy is not necessary -- it's just that most guitarists haven't discovered how to effectively chain effects relative to the saturating tube amp.

I've listed several problems with speaker isolation cabinets and effects units, but there is no inherent problem with putting an effects unit before the amp. The simple placement of a digital multieffects unit between guitar and amp does not automatically ruin the tone. It depends on what settings and effects you use.