Owner`s manual

True to the Music
Radial Engineering Loopbone Owner’s Manual
10
STRUCTURING YOUR PEDALBOARD
The Loopbone is designed to be the centerpiece of your pedalboard
setup. As such, the Loopbone will likely become one of the most active
pedals in your system. There are no hard rules when it comes to pedal
placement, so experimenting with different setups is highly recommended.
It is, however, important to note that some effects, such as wah pedals
and fuzz boxes, tend to react with the guitar pickups as part of their
sound. Therefore, you may want to connect these before the Loopbone
should you wish to retain their particular tone.
When structuring your pedalboard, consider what effects should be used
in what order and where they will sound best in the signal path. To figure
this out you have to consider how you play each song during a perfor-
mance and what songs require which effects. You may, for instance,
decide that your direct signal path will contain your wah pedal and favor-
ite distortion, while effects loop-1 will be used for effects that you use
often such as maybe a chorus and delay. Loop-2 may be designated for
eccentric effects that you pull out of the hat once in a while to create
special effects such as a ring modulator, octaver or flanger.
You would likely put your volume pedal after the Loopbone so that you
could adjust the overall output of the effects, while at the same time
reducing system background noise. Once again, each player will set up
their pedalboard based on their needs. There are no rules. Experiment
and have fun!
Dealing with Noisy Pedals
You will find that some pedals emit more noise than others. This is gen-
erally caused by power supplies, electronic displays, or extraneous
electro-magnetic fields. Interference from radio broadcasts is another
problem. These types of noise often get into the signal path through
poorly shielded cables. Using high quality shielded cables will often help
minimize noise.
Making sure all of your pedals and amps are connected to a single power
bar will help minimize noise by reducing contamination due to ground-
loop problems. Sometimes, the only solution may be to disconnect the
power supply and use a battery. Although batteries are a pain, pure DC
from a battery can result in less system noise with some pedals.
If you encounter noise when you engage a loop, the best solution is to
disconnect all of your pedals and start adding them one by one and
listening to them as they are added. This will allow you to isolate the
problem. If, however, you find that noise continuously increases as you
add more pedals, you will have to decide what is critical to the perfor-
mance and remove what is not. Keep in mind that the very fact that you
can disengage the effects loop (and remove that noisy pedal) from your
signal chain is the very reason you got a Loopbone in the first place!