Did I do the Right Thing? (HX Stomp Routing)

[zander1555]

I have a bit of a unique situation here. I love my single effect pedals. Love their persistence and their tone. However, my rig sits right outside my toddler’s room and I don’t have an easy and immediately available way of using headphones to practice (can’t really run my Marshall DSL40CR while the boy is sleeping). 
 

I looked into a Captor X and some other headphone attenuation options, but they honestly seemed a bit too limiting. So, I decided to pick up an HX stomp on Saturday. I thought it could knock out many birds with one stone:

 

-Ability to use headphones to practice while actually sounding like a tube amp (or any amp I wanted it to)

-I also play bass, but don’t have a bass rig at all. Would be nice to just grab the HX stomp if I wanted to go jam, or once again practice with headphones. 
-Many new effects I don’t already have, or the flexibility to do things I wouldn’t be able to do without rearranging my board

-Integration into my existing pedalboard

-Backup in case my amp goes down

 

Heres the challenge though-

i also recently purchased a Wampler Terraform. For those who don’t know, it’s a modulation multieffect pedal with a pre/post FX loop. Using this loop, you can elect to place the Terraform’s modulation effects either before or after drive pedals. 
 

Before the HX Stomp, my board looked like this:

 

Tuner -> Compressor -> Terraform (drive pedals in loop) -> Boss CH-1 -> Phase 90 -> Boss DD-200 -> Boss RV6 -> Amp

 

With the HX Stomp having such flexibility when it comes to routing, I figure that there has to be a “more correct” way of placing it in my signal chain than just placing it at the end. 
 

I saw that Alex Price on YouTube also runs a Terraform with an HX Stomp. He goes from the Terraform’s loop OUT, to a drive pedal, to the input of the HX, out the L FX loop, to the Terraform’s loop IN, from the Terraform’s output to a couple reverb/delay pedals, back into the HX FX return, then out to the amp/FoH. Basically, it’s a loop within a loop that places all the Terraform’s PRE effects (and analog drive pedals) before the HX Stomp while keeping the Terraform’s POST loop effects (and conventional reverb/delay pedals) within the HX Stomp’s FX loop. Within the HX stomp, simply place the FX loop block before your modeled amp (or turn off your amp model completely if going into a conventional amp) and you’re good to go. I gave it a try yesterday and it actually seems to work VERY well.
 

This is horribly complicated, but it seems to be the best way to retain functionality of the entire pedalboard while keeping everything (HX Stomp included) in the “correct” order. Does anyone have any other ideas on better ways to do this? I’m actually astounded that it works as well as it does. Kudos to both Wampler and Line6 - these are both amazing pieces of gear.