active basses, effects, effect loops and clean boosters....

[worship_mud]

hi there everyone,

i'm a longtime lurker and firsttime poster, so have mercy with me, in case i breached the nettiquette for the BC forums!

i guess this qualifies as a noob question, but i haven't found an answer via the search function....

i just started dabbling into effects and encountered a problem with the clean (uneffected) sound...

first i had my effects inline before the preamp of my head, but thec lean sound was really affected by quality loss. so i then moved my effect chain to the effect loop of my amp, which increased the clean sound, but some effects just did not work (mostly overdrive and the octaver).

so i thought that the use of a clean booster (yes, i'm looking at you, Lehle Basswitch Clean Booster!) might remedy my clean sound, when the effectas are inline in front of the amp.
but: i use exclusively active basses, which per se is a kind of clean booster (is it??).

so my questions would be:

- does the use of a boosters in order to convert (lower) the impedance make any sense in conjuncion with an active bass?

- does it make sense to split the effects up into one part running inline (mostly OD, octaver, any input-sensitive effect) and the rest (modulation effects) through the amp's effect loop?

my set up is:

lakland 4-94 and a markbass big bang, effects in use are: tc mini tuner, MXR octaver, Mooer Fog Fuzz, Mooer Sweeper (or MXR envelope filter, when i get it back from repairs), memory boy DLX delay, chorus (planned), flanger (planned), Microtubes Vintage OD (also planning to add a bass synth, have not decided which one yet...)

i would be thankfull for any advice or help!

thx in advance!

w_m

Edited September 15, 2014 by worship_mud

[HowieBass]

Sounds like one or more of the pedals don't have true bypass and might be impacting your clean tone. Have you checked each pedal on its own with no others in the chain in case it's one misbehaving more than the others? Splitting the chain as you've suggested sounds worth trying. I'm also wondering whether a noise gate might help?

Edit: Another thing worth checking is what quality are your instrument and patch cables?

Edited September 15, 2014 by HowieBass

[Doddy]

[quote name='HowieBass' timestamp='1410784456' post='2553038']
Sounds like one or more of the pedals don't have true bypass and might be impacting your clean tone.
[/quote]
Even true bypass pedals affect the clean tone because you are effectively increasing the cable length,so a
buffered pedal or two won't hurt.

[HowieBass]

[quote name='Doddy' timestamp='1410785813' post='2553066']
Even true bypass pedals affect the clean tone because you are effectively increasing the cable length,so a
buffered pedal or two won't hurt.
[/quote]

I'd agree if it was a passive bass but the OP is using active basses so I don't think cable length is as much of an issue... though poor quality cable might be?

[worship_mud]

cablewise i use cordial cables w/ neutrik jacks as instrument cables, as patch cables i'm using mooer patchcables.
i have no idea how to check the quality of the cables, to be honest... any advice?

for powering duties i have a harley benton power plant junior w/ isolated outputs, each effect w/ its own powercord, the tuner w/ a wallwart. i thought about upgrading, as i will add some more effects, any suggestions?

i thought about the redunancy of adding a booster, though the Lehle advertises it's Basswitch as a "[color=#080C2E][font=futura-pt, Arial, sans-serif][size=4]impedance converter", which i kind of assumed should be the same as having an active preamp on board the bass (is it????)[/size][/font][/color]

[elephantgrey]

If your upgrading a power supply from an isolated power brick, id at least think about the gigrig power system. amazing bit of kit. Couldn't imagen my board without one now.