HX Stomp 4CM and Pedals

[rumy73]

Hello all,

 

I tried to find an answer but I am without luck; so I turn to the forum.

 

Setup

 

I am running my HX Stomp 4cm with my Friedamn Smallbox amp, which I set up according to the Line6 tutorial. I have a few pedals into the Input Mono/L. I am monitoring the sound by way of the amp's speaker cab.

 

Everything works and sounds great when not bypassing my Friedman's preamp.

 

Problem blending pedals with Helix preamps

 

The trouble, however, arises when I want to use my analog pedals with an HX Stomp preamp.  To explain what I doing when I use a preamp: I turn off the FX Loop block to bypass my amp's preamp and activate the Helix preamp block that follows it in the chain. This sounds really good and I believe am I doing things correctly. Nonetheless, my pedals don't seem to be blending well in this context. They seem almost a bit too strong, which results in a muddy sound. 

 

Is there a solution that someone might share?  

 

Mapping

 

Global EQ cutting at 79 Hz and 10,000 Hz

 

Global input, output and sends are instrument level.

 

Guitar > One Control buffer > Diamond comp > MXR Phaser > Seymour Duncan 805 Tube Screamer > Archer Ikon > TC polytune Tuner > Input Mono L to Amp FX return.

 

Output > Amp FX return

 

Helix FX send > amp input. 

 

Helix FX return > Amp FX send

 

TL;DR

 

My patch: HX Stomp FX Loop L (turned off) >  HX Stomp Mesa Lonestar modeled clean preamp > HX Stomp Simple Delay > HX Stomp 63 Spring = sounds good

 

Any pedal(s) + my patch = sounds muddy. 

 

 

 

 

[Schmalle]

You can try to match the Smallbox's preamp with a Hx preamp ( JTM45 maybe?) and then compare apples to apples when using pedals.

 

You can tame the level coming from the pedals and check whether too much level is the problem when using Hx preamps.