Firehawk questions in an effects loop

[basudz]

I'm looking into getting a Firehawk FX but am a little confused about a few things.

 

If I use this with an amp in the effects loop, it bypasses the amp's preamp so effectively the amp at that point is just a power amp correct?

I've read that in this setup you don't set an amp in the Firehawk, which is what I'm confused about.  Wouldn't that be when you wanted to use an amp in the Firehawk? If I want the characteristics of the amp sim that is.

 

Also, if I went with this setup with an amp that had a power attenuator on it, would the attenuator still work in this setup?  I'm not real familiar with how the built in attenuator switches work on amps.

 

And lastly, is going with this setup the same has using a Firehawk FX with something like a Tech 21 Power Engine?  Or would the T21 sound better?

 

[silverhead]

.....

 

If I use this with an amp in the effects loop, it bypasses the amp's preamp so effectively the amp at that point is just a power amp correct?

I've read that in this setup you don't set an amp in the Firehawk, which is what I'm confused about. Wouldn't that be when you wanted to use an amp in the Firehawk? If I want the characteristics of the amp sim that is.

 

......

It depends on how/where you connect theFirehawk FX loop cable to your amp. If you connect the cable to the regular guitar input on your amp the signal goes through your amp's preamp section. In that case you would not use an amp model in your Firehawk preset. However, if your amp has a separate input for its power amp section, which bypasses its preamp, then you are only using your amp for its poweramp and cab/speaker. In that case you would use an amp model (but no mic/cab) in your Firehawk preset.

[basudz]

Alright, that makes sense.  Then is there really any difference using a Tech 21 Power Engine compared to any old amp with a send/return loop?  Except for the speaker differences that is.

[mcbeddall]

The speaker difference can be very big though.

I never owned a power engine but I did a lot of research into it when looking for a solution to amplifying my tones.

For what it's worth the fender mustang amps do a decent job with modellers for a relatively small price.

However whenever you're using a guitar cab or something similar the only way to get " that sound" to the pa is to mic it like a conventional guitar setup, if you have set all your tones up using a guitar cab it will likely sound horrible when you try and direct send to a desk ( for gigs or recording ) this is because a guitar speaker will naturally filter out high and low frequencies for you.

This is the reason I settled on a powered pa speaker , the tones I've created sound the same whether I'm using my speaker ( stagesource lt3) or going direct to the desk or recording into a DAW.

the simplicity of doing it this way is key for me, last gig i did I only needed to take my guitar and the firehawk as I ran straight to desk and just had the signal sent back to the house floor wedge, sounded great and my set up time was about 3 minutes.

It's worth putting some thought into how you intend to use the firehawk in the long run

[basudz]

The speaker difference can be very big though.

I never owned a power engine but I did a lot of research into it when looking for a solution to amplifying my tones.

For what it's worth the fender mustang amps do a decent job with modellers for a relatively small price.

However whenever you're using a guitar cab or something similar the only way to get " that sound" to the pa is to mic it like a conventional guitar setup, if you have set all your tones up using a guitar cab it will likely sound horrible when you try and direct send to a desk ( for gigs or recording ) this is because a guitar speaker will naturally filter out high and low frequencies for you.

This is the reason I settled on a powered pa speaker , the tones I've created sound the same whether I'm using my speaker ( stagesource lt3) or going direct to the desk or recording into a DAW.

the simplicity of doing it this way is key for me, last gig i did I only needed to take my guitar and the firehawk as I ran straight to desk and just had the signal sent back to the house floor wedge, sounded great and my set up time was about 3 minutes.

It's worth putting some thought into how you intend to use the firehawk in the long run

 

I'm just a bedroom hobby player and won't be playing out or gigging with this setup, and I'm not into recording.  I'm fairly new at playing guitar (only a couple years) and am not wanting to build an extensive pedal board or anything either.  I like playing a bunch of different kinds of songs, while working on my technique, and just want to plug in, select a patch, turn on youtube or a song on my phone/tablet, and jam away for a couple hours.  Plain and simple really.

 

I was looking at the Firehawk as sort of an all inclusive solution that would provide good quality sounding patches, easy to find patches to use or start with from the mobile app community, and a basic set of useful effects to work with.  It seems to have everything I'm looking for and am just trying to figure out what to do about outputting the sound.  

[mcbeddall]

If it's mainly bedroom use you could get a couple of studio monitors, your tones will be in stereo then and if you have a decent computer or laptop you only need recording software to have everything you need to record your own stuff, generally speaking the bigger the speaker the better the sound for guitar but my studio monitors are only 6 inch but sound great at low volumes and don't take up a lot of room, might be an option worth looking at.