Vintage Guitar Processor Placement

Okay, so what we have here are two older processors that I still have around. The Digitech just because it's a totally different beast than most stuff out there and it'd be nice to see Digitech come make a comeback because they had some really fantastic stuff in the 90s. I've had some of their rack gear it was really good and this is kind of one of I guess you could say it was their 2012 but it's in a box on the floor even the button layout's almost identical to the rack mount. So these were really popular units they have a tube an actual 12AX7 inside so you get a pretty warm with some tweaking you get some pretty warm distortion sounds. This is the old die-hard Boss M50 that just won't die and anybody owns one really kind of want to hang on to them because it's a whole collection of Boss stuff in one box and you save a ton of money by just getting the one box which is why people buy these things in the first place. You know why spend four thousand dollars on a pedal board when you can spend four hundred dollars and get most of that stuff that you can't afford in the box. So these came out I think both of these came out in the 90s. The ME50 is a very old unit they also have a bass unit ME50 and I actually plan on finding one used and picking it up one of these days because I also play bass and I really like this unit it's just a pinch hitter it just doesn't fail. The thing about these older units that the younger guys are not realizing is these don't work real great with a four cable method. They're not designed to be placed in the effects loop of a guitar amp. Most guitar amps didn't even have effects loops when these things were developed. These were some of the first ones well there was a whole line of Digitechs and Bosses before these but they're designed to put everything in a compact box at your feet in front of your amplifier so your guitar plugs directly into these the output of these can go to one or two amplifiers both of these have stereo outputs and they both have stereo effects so you can do cool panning delays and things like that and nice sounding choruses but they're designed to be in front of your amplifier not in the loop that's the design that doesn't mean you can't put them in the loop in my humble opinion and experience they don't sound as good in the loop and part of that doesn't make sense because well isn't this just a collection of stomp boxes that you put in the loop on a pedal board anyway mostly yes but some of these things you want in front of your amp and some behind the amp and these units don't have a way of splitting that signal up so that your time-based delays and things and reverbs can go into the effects loop these just simply guitar goes in guitar signal comes out plugs into the front of the amp that's what these are designed to do now if you want to cheat and try to put it in your effects loop you can do a what you would have to call a three cable method where your guitar goes into these and then it comes out or your guitar would plug into your amplifier and then your effects loop would come out of the amp into the input of say the rp20 here come out the mono unless you have a stereo effects return like a jazz chorus has you run it back into your head now you can do that it will work will it sound good your your mileage may vary and your experience with tweaking eq and things like that will vary but you've got to remember if it sounds like crap it's not the unit sounding like crap because it's a crappy unit it's because you're not using it as it was designed these units are designed to be in front simple as that if you want your effects to be you know your chorus and delays and reverbs to be in your loop the best thing to do is to go with separate pedals and put them in your amp loop but don't put the whole entire unit in the loop because it's just simply not designed to be there that's the simple truth of the matter nowadays everybody's gotten used to four cable method and i'm sure there are people out there that think you can take any device and apply the four cable method for that method requires that the unit you're using has outputs for an effects loop on the unit the unit needs an effects loop as well as your amplifier it's the only way the four cable method will work older units do not carry those they started to bring them about you know around 2000 everything started to explode in the four cable method so that's all i was wanting to bring out is that if you do find these older units don't expect them to perform very well in the effects loop you can go ahead and prove me wrong on that but you won't be doing it with the four cable method and that's my point units that are old designed to be in front of your amplifier should be placed there and you should tweak it until it sounds good you need to take the time to make these sound good and that's my lesson for today on older gear and i've always had a lot of older gear i also have the more modern gear but these hang around they've got their fine points there are great clean tones on the rp series from digitech and boss i don't even need to mention boss we all know boss it's great stuff so i hope you found the video helpful if you're thinking about getting into vintage gear it's hard to think of this stuff as vintage already but it's it is it's vintage so i thank you for watching i hope you appreciate the time and remember to subscribe and like the video i'd love to hit 10 000 subscribers by the end of the year right now i'm heading for 8 000 so i'd be really happy to hit 8 000 so help me out click that subscribe button folks thank you very much have a good day now thanks for watching