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What's the deal with ampsim/preamp/amp-in-a-box pedals? (kbin.social)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/guitarpedals

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Hey everyone, I'm a bit out of the loop with these pedals, and I'm trying to understand the ways people are using them.

I understand what they do, I'm just wondering why someone would use a pedal instead of just setting on an amp that has the gain or tone shaping characteristics that they're looking for.

In particular, because the pedal then (presumably) gets plugged into the amps preamp section anyway, which is going to colour the sound again. So then, would the optimum use be to plug into a really transparent, clean amp?

To be clear, I'm talking about pedals like the UA Ruby, Zvex box of rock, Benson Preamp. Not so much about Helix, ToneX, etc. I know the latter are more like an all-in-one recording solution, so you can DI and still get great sounds at home, but the former? I'm not so sure what they're best used for!

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[–] baronvonj 3 points 2 years ago

Yeah if the pedal doesn't have a CAB sim then it's just putting the preamp section (and maybe tone stack) of an amp into a pedal, and you can arrange the rest of your signal change around it the same as you would like it's the front of an amp. You can stack it in any order with other gain pedals, or you can go front of amp to stack the gain stages of both. Some amps' FX loop are line level, and some are instrument level. So some of these preamp pedals might not work going directly into the FX loop return. You could even use them as underdrive, to quiet an amp that is otherwise too loud for the situation (there's a recent TPS show episode on this posted in [email protected])