Question for our guitar playing brethren ...

[goatfoot]

Man, those Tribute guitars are beautiful! Too bad my fat fingers get mixed up in those thin strings ... still, maybe someday.  
 
Anyway, I was peaking at the guitar side of the site when I noticed that some models have a built-in effects loop.  How cool is that!  As far as I know, Alembic is the only manufacturer to offer that.  I don't use any effects on my bass - except my fingers - but that is still way cool.  
 
My question for ya'll is how do you use it?  One jack goes to the amp and one to the effects send, right?  So where's the effects return?  And is there a wet/dry blend control?  
 
And my question to Mica is Have you been holding out from us bass players?  How come we don't have that?  
 
Kevin  
 
P.S.  It's pretty cool that the club members here can admire both Alembic guitars and basses.  I've been on some Internet clubs where bass players write gu****rs like its a dirty word.  How silly.
 
(Message edited by goatfoot on March 17, 2004)

[cdf]

goatfoot-
 
The electronics package with the effects loop is called tribute electronics and is standard in the Tribute and Furthur guitars. I recently got a Tribute guitar (absolutley awsome, best purchase I've ever made) and this is indeed a very cool feature. There is a Tribute Electronics page on the website, www.alembic.com/info/manual_tribute.html or look under the What's New section. This will give you a great, in depth desciption of the effects loop and the whole elctronics package. Here's my short summary. The effects jack is two way, send and return, it sends a signal out via a Y shaped (TRS) cable. One end of the Y sends to the effects the other end returns the signal. The effects on/off switch determines whether the original or effect-ed signal goes to the other mono jack which feeds the amp. Another neat feature is the final volume control can be post effects loop. Then increasing or decreasing volume does not alter what the effects are doing only the volume. Much more detail ( and probably clarity ) can be found on the Alembic site. Anyway its a terrific electronics package that allows you immense breadth of control. Very befitting Alembics' Beyond Custom philosophy.  
 
BTW I have not seen many, but there are a couple other  builders out there that incorporate on-board effects loops.  
 
Hope that wasn't too rambling,
Court

[goatfoot]

Thanks Court, that clears things up.  Like I said, I don't use effects with my bass but it is still a cool feature.  
 
Is there any advantage in looping your effects from the guitar rather than from a side chain at the amp aside from the ability to switch from effected to un-effected sound no matter where you are on stage?  For instance, does on-board looping clear up any effect generated noise?
 
This is like another world for us bass players.  We're so use to discussing scale length and CVQs, etc.  It's cool to see what the other side is up too.
 
Kevin

[cdf]

Kevin,
 
Besides the convenience of switch at the guitar there are a couple other nice points. As I mentioned before having volume post effects let's you dial in just the right tone/effect etc. that you want and then not have that change when you raise or lower volume. On somethings this does not matter that much, but on others like an envelope filter it makes a fairly big difference. As for generated noise when the loop is elsewhere in the chain, I suppose it would depend on the components. The bypass in the onboard effects loop is a real bypass so when effects are off there is no extra noise. Whereas I have heard some (not all, but more than a few) effects that introduce a bit of hiss or occasionally worse when they are off but still in the siganl path. I have found the Alembic electronics in my guitar to be very high quality and very low extraneous noise, but I would imagine the same could be said for using the effects loop on an Alembic preamp. I know from reading other posts that there are many others out there who have more experience with electronics than I and who could give you a better answer, but for what its worth those were my opinions.  
 
Now to flip this around I am dying to play around with a Superfilter or try out something with a Q-switch. While I understand the priciple of a Q-switch I am very very curious as to how that theory trranslates to practice. So I would be psyched to hear any thoughts on the Mighty Q.
 
Court

[keavin]

that mighty Q will further any frequency that you already have diald up (it,ll take the tone deeeeepeeerrr into that diald setting),            keavin.

[cdf]

Keavin,
 
thanks for the response, sounds pretty cool