Torn between HX Effects & Stomp

[guitarboy_02451]

I run two Dr Z amps (old MAZ 38) and an old Carmen Ghia. The CG is basic, two knobs... 

 

The old MAZ has a master vol / pre volume as well as an unbuffered fx loop which is its downfall. 

 

My pedal board is simple and linear. 

Wampler Comp -> Peppermint Fuzz -> Zen Drive -> Xotic AC -> Xotic BB -> Fulltone Supatrem -> Maxon AD 999 Delay. 

 

So crazy heavy on various gain stages, lean on ethereal modulation/special sounds. 

 

All effects run into front of amp. 

 

In my experience DrZ’s don’t like unbuffered pedals, nor cheap pedals.  A non boutique will have evident signal loss. Same with cables, the Z’s are picky. 

 

I have a DAW and an Eleven Rack. I’ve used L6 since POD 1.0.... I hate playing through studio monitors. 

 

I haven’t played live in nearly 10 years and have no plans at present. 

 

Stomp gives all cool effects + cabs and amps.  Lean on pedal control, but you don’t need to run cabs and amps.... And, I can add my existing board into the chain. 

 

HX FX gives all the same FX, sans amps and cabs. Lots of routing (which I don’t need cause my amps are old school). 

 

With each one would have to spend thousands of dollars to get the same high quality fx in individual boutique stomp pedals. 

 

So, I love playing the Z’s (Maz

38 is loud but I have a Z-Brake) but would love to get a low power thing (think 5 watts...) maybe two... Think Swart... or Champs.  And Stereo! 

 

So I’m torn..... is any one else on the fence between the two? 

 

Also, both true bypass????  The Z’s will chew them up if they’re not.  

 

Thanks in advance. 

pg

[spikey]

Money irrelevant here, this is what Id do.

 

Get a Boss WAZA Tube Expander and HX effects thru the WAZA FX Loop. Then use a Radial "Head-Bone" to switch the amps into the Waza.

 

You want 5 watts out or 150 watts out with FX from the Waza and HX to any amp, this will handle it. Dream rig now! 

[Kilrahi]

Maybe I'm looking at it too simply, but to me if you're really not going to use the amp/cab/IRs in the HX Stomp, but instead an amp you love, then the answer is a solid HX Effects. ESPECIALLY if you don't have other pedals but you want the HX device to be all the effects, bottom line, at the end of the day, the extra buttons are more useful. 

[paulmphillips813]

I’ve been using the HX Effects into my Dr Z (JAZ 20/40) and it works great. Dr Z amps are great with pedals going into the front end.  Honestly, I never noticed a difference between buffered loops and true bypass - my understanding is that if you have a lot of effects and no buffering it can cause some parity issues. I prefer to have everything buffered so my amp can just live in its sweet spot and I don’t have to fuss around and mess up the clean sound to get the volume evened out.  If you only have a small board I doubt it even matters. 

 

That said, the HX Effects can be set up to do both so either way is available. If you use it in your unbuffered loop on your MAZ (you can do both straight in and in the loop, by the way. There is a send/return and you can set up the order of the effects any way you want including having some effects coming after the pre-amp section of your amplifier) then the box will handle the buffering job. 

 

Its a really flexible tool tool and the snapshot function is really useful. One foot switch to turn on/off and adjust the knobs on as many as 9 effects instantly. If you spend the time to set things up you won’t have to touch your amp once no matter how many songs you have in your set. 

 

 

[Heavyville]

I thought buffering was only when the leads are long on stage  or a tone of effects pedals set up etc? 

not an expert on this...