Guitar Pedalboard Design

Haha, great as always Jim :) Thanks so much again.

Lol, I'm adding more stuff to my wanted list here on equipboard.

About the AC15's tone, I feel this happens when I engage all the pedalboard directly in the Vox. What you comment about the boosters and the Dyna Comp sounds the possible issue about the tone suffering. Say, somedays I dial the knobs and everything feels right to my ears, but other days I don't get what I would like so I prefer to plug the guitar straight in the amp and just enjoy the Vox chime.

The Ep booster stays on most of the time, except when I like to go with a clean tone or without drives. I'm using the LS-2 as the Dry-Wet signal splitter (the knobs are at 0 dB), all the drives go before this pedal.

So, by the moment, I'll check the echo trials on the Echosystem, and the pedalboard with and without the Dyna Comp and the Ep Booster to check any difference in the sound!

oh man, the LS2 is buffered too...

I'm just going to ramble some thoughts out incoherently and take from it what you will.

a good line driver is a fine thing with long cable runs, you get some power and a lowered impedance and it prevents tone suck if its in a sensible aprt of the chain, but piling up all these different line drivers might not be helping you out. The minute you use a buffer you're altering your tone because there's no impedance loading from the first tube stage on the pickup. Its a nominal 1 megohm load but the tube will vary depending on how ahrd you hit it whereas a solid state device at 1 megohm presents a steady load so it doesn't 'breathe' with the pickup so to speak... Its almost a feel thing... also, presenting a buffer to some dirtboxes can change the way they behave a bit too. Impedance is a big deal but guitarists don't pay much attention to it outside of speakers LOL... I suspect what's bothering you is just too much processing and its losing something... the voxes, especially newer ones, are pretty sensitive to what you give them. I have a lot of trouble finding the right dirt boxes for my amps. Given my druthers I just turn them way up and have at it anyway, but I'm fairly careful with the setup. Voxes have really wide bandwidths and dirtboxes don't. If you're turning thigns ona dn off a sizeable volume boost is often needed to rpeventyour sound from getting smaller. I have ridiculously low gains ettings when I use dirt into my ac30s, just a taste of the pedal's hair, even from something like a rat, but I have a big dollop of output to throttle the amp into submission. This also prevents the pedal sound being 'smaller' then my clean tone. I willa dd that my idea of clean tone has gotten dirtier and dirtier lately... I went from fender twin type clean over to more of a classic pete Townshend 'rock n roll' clean and then I just give it more. The thing about the voxes is that they are, as my dad once put it, 'the cleanest dirty amps.' The dirt isn't overtly dirt until you're blasting that sucker. Take the edge's clean tone from the 80s... ac30, if you listen its compressed, but not with a pedal, and its surprisingly dirty, but its that subtle vox distortion just setting in as he digs in... then he's goosing it. But the clean still comes off as clean. You're also playing in a bedroom environment. Whenever I'm with a drummer my perception of what works with my amps changes a lot. Gigging or at elast jamming more in a rock band situation with your pedalboard and 15 may help you get what's working and what isn't. Try not to get lsot in setting your gear up to sound good on its own. You have nice pieces and they probably can do wonderful stuff and the weird artifacts may not bother you so much once the band is ripping.... look at something like the old DOD OD250, its kidna shitty playing on its own but I love it when I play rock n roll in a power trio. Its often way cooler then more sophisticated, fancy drives because of the way it sits in the mix when you get it set right for that scenario.

By the way, the block logo dynacomps DO have a buffer. I had to look at mine. This accumulation of buffers in pedalboards was the reason for that big push for true bypass in the 90s amongst the early boutique builders. All these companies had great circuits but unless you only used one or two effects they would rob your tone... all those buffers add up to really alter your clean tone. You really just need one or maybe 2 buffers in a rig if you have a lot of effects or you have long cable runs or something. All true bypass, as I said in a previous post, can be bad with a lot of cable between everything, but a board full of buffered pedals will rpesent other problems.... there are also buffer and buffers. MXR and Boss are not giving you a really hifi buffer. Ideally you want a well designed fet setup at high voltage, at elast 18 or a cork sniffer opamp like some of burr brown's offerings. For a splitter I strongly suggest a Radial engineering unit. My switchbone is buffered but can simulate the impedance load of going straight to the amp with a 10ft cable if you want, you can really dial it in against a cable to sound neutral with your amp, then whatever is before or after it will do what it does but the switchbone manages to be active and sound passive... its pricey but worth it. I think they just released a new version this eyar with another output and more features.

Back to your problem with everything engaged, maybe you need to do more with less. A processed sound is, well, processed. It sounds that way. If you want amp tone focus on amp tone. Figure out what you can't live without and ditch everything else. Personally out of your stuff I would dump the compressor unless Iw as doing country or playing a lot of 12 string. just not needed for rock music ona vox. I would probably play the amp further into overdrive, open master and the channel volume at like 4 and just stick with the Ep and the delay and call it a day. Maybe a dirt pedal just in case.

I gotta go watch cartoons with my kid.... ugh.

Hello again! Thanks to Jim again for the extended explain... Yeah, when I'm refering about the "purity" of the Vox amp, I could describe it like preserving the feel and bite it has just plugging the guitar directly into the amp. Lovely sound and feel. I can turn down the gain-volume pots without any concern, the pot tones contour the sounds to a dull but still musical, well, a voxy sound in the early breaking without neccesarily getting dirty.

So today, I made some experiments again. First of all, I played the guitar directly to the amp to remember what kind of feel and sound I'm trying to get when all the pedals are off.

Then I plugged the pedal and I began cutting off the Dyna Comp, after this I went for the Boss LS-2 to quit off the second buffing pedal, and at last the Carbon Copy with the Blues Driver. So the pedalboard right now is Ep Booster > TS Mini > Echosystem.

The Ep booster is most of the cases on and since I don't use modulations, from the Echosystem I made the wet-dry option and connections. Now, I don't know what I'm going to do with the another 5 pedals, lol.

Edit: By the way, when the second tube amp comes, probably the Vox will be a pedal-free Dry, is just an idea.

nothing quite like a clean vox with nothing into it... and you have an entry level, corner-cut version.... imagine how much you would like a high end one or a real JMI version from the 60s? they're really stunning amps. Even the worst versions over the years still kick some ass.

if you have 2 grand in USD to spend, this ac30 hea din Italy is a helluva deal and is top shelf stuff, 90% original... I'm seriously eyeballing it as a backup to my '62 but its hard to justify another ac30 right now

https://reverb.com/item/11186531-vintage-1964-vox-jmi-ac30-6-super-twin-tube-amp-head-copper-top-ac-30

by the way, do you have an alnico, M magnet greenback or a wharfdale in your vox?

Ok! I think that I found a fair solution using the ideas made by Jim. By the way, my Vox has a G12M Greenback.

So, I understood that a pedalboard with a big chain has some signal loss between the pedals and that a many buffers in a single pedalboard might colour the signal. Then I did a small pedalboard as Ep Booster>Fulldrive 2>Echosystem, but after this 5 pedals were just lying around: Blues Driver, TS Mini, Boss LS-2 Line Selector, Carbon Copy and Dyna Comp.

I found that Ep Booster>Tube Screamer>Carbon Copy sounds really good on its own. Therefore, I made two chains using the LS-2 (in output select mode) to do an A|B:

A) Ep Booster>TS Mini>Blues Driver>Carbon Copy>Vox AC15C1 Normal Channel B) Dyna Comp>Fulldrive 2 Mosfet>Echosystem>Vox AC15C1 Top Boost (Dry)| MG15 (Wet)

I did a test, and with all off per chain, I got still the chime of the Vox. The Chain A is tweaked to sound fat while the Chain B would sound crisper.

Still, I'm curious to change the current patch cables to Mogami (also my guitar cables). That should improve my sound too. I'm using right now a pair of CS Fender Tweed, one shorter than the another one.

I'm not going to weigh in on the high-end cable issue again. I will say that there's a difference between cables with different capacitance and resistance specs but you already pinpointed the source of your trouble and fixed it. If you want everythinng in line the way you had it you'll have to find true bypass versions of the dyacomp, blues driver etc... the FD2 is already true bypass and is pretty much a tuebscreamer with different diodes (in this case mosfets wired as diodes) so maybe you have a few too many tubescreamers. You're really missingthe idea of wet/dry, its really like a wet/wet setup you made. ANyway, I would be getting a true bypass compressor and be dropping the TS9 and then my next investment would be a better celestion. If the greenback does it for you, just check out a better medium magnet version. The recent G12Ms just don't sound as good as they used to. I also managed to blow one out recently and I wasn't even hitting it with that much wattage. Personally I am not that huge a fan of the 25 watt ones. I've realized I really prefer the 30 watts and the 20 watts, but your only options in a new 20 are the EVH signature or soemthing fancy like a Scumback PVC

remember, 'improve' here isn't a set ins tone, quantifiable thing... those buffers were coloring your sound in a way you didn't like, but you're used to hearing your guitar and ac15 with those fender cables, so 'improving them' will just be changing your response from the tone you're using as a baseline, which is guitar -- tweed cable -- vox amp