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i want to run an overdrive effects chain and a fuzz chain

i want to have both chains come together at the end of the pedalboard

i've never done anything like this before but i'm sure someone here has

i need guidance

something like this:

guitar -> Y splitter always on -> chain one to overdrive / chain 2 to fuzz -> chains come together somehow (???) -> perhaps a jhs colour box (so it gets on both chains) then a boss tu-3 tuner so i can mute all of it while i am tuning.

all this because i only have one input on my amp. if i had two inputs of course i could run the overdrive chain to one input and the fuzz chain to the other, this would be simple enough and it wouldn't be a puzzle how to make this work

a potential issue i see:
if i am using the overdrive chain, i think the fuzz chain will still be making noise due to whatever pedals are on
but if i can figure out a way to switch between the chains at the very end then that wouldnt matter
i would need something like the opposite of an a/b box, two in's, selectable which one goes through, then one output

so if you can help me unravel this mystery, that would be awesome

Are you trying to run two separate effect chains after each? So that fuzz gets reverb a and overdrive gets reverb b and then summing it al to mono?

Plenty of summing pedals out there. I’ve not looked into it but there’s probably something worth getting that lets you mix/blend the signals

Lots of passive summing pedals without a blend/level.

I’m not sure how this will all sound but going to the front end of an amp running parallel signal chains could be a bit of a mess.

Nobels Split 4 and nobels mix-41c

I would consider DD-3 as the Y split and then tag something like this at the end of the fuzz/drive chains

A boss ls-2 at the end of your chain will do all this and more. You can use the levels to cut and boost as well. Different modes let you switch, sum the signals to mono, even blend clean in if you wanted. Cheap second hand too.

A passive y splitter will do the start pretty easily but there's the whole signal loss argument which I have noticed (I play a keyboard and guitar into a mono pedalboard) I use a matthews effects alchemist which is like fine I guess but its just a switcher with buffers. You could use that to go one in two out and at any point plug in another instrument to split your chains, so like synths through fuzz guitar through overdrive etc

Correct me if I'm wrong but can't this be done by using almost any type of looper/switcher? Loop 1: OD chain, Loop 2: Fuzz chain. An AB-type switch might work better but sometimes you probs want to stack all of it

tommasters wrote:A boss ls-2 at the end of your chain will do all this and more. You can use the levels to cut and boost as well. Different modes let you switch, sum the signals to mono, even blend clean in if you wanted. Cheap second hand too.

A passive y splitter will do the start pretty easily but there's the whole signal loss argument which I have noticed (I play a keyboard and guitar into a mono pedalboard) I use a matthews effects alchemist which is like fine I guess but its just a switcher with buffers. You could use that to go one in two out and at any point plug in another instrument to split your chains, so like synths through fuzz guitar through overdrive etc

LS-2 was the first thing that came to my mind as well

Do you want to run them in parallel or just switch between them without having to turn each one on or off? Sounds like you just want to switch between without ever running them at the same time.

whoismarykelly wrote:Sounds like you just want to switch between without ever running them at the same time.

Yeah in such a case I would recommend something like an Octaswitch or similar/smaller depending on how many pedals you want to use it with and how many combinations you want to use.

I am not 100% sure I am understanding what you want to do, but if you are just trying to switch between two effect chains wouldn't a Boss LS-2 Line Selector work?

Ghost Hip wrote:I am not 100% sure I am understanding what you want to do, but if you are just trying to switch between two effect chains wouldn't a Boss LS-2 Line Selector work?

^this

whoismarykelly wrote:Do you want to run them in parallel or just switch between them without having to turn each one on or off? Sounds like you just want to switch between without ever running them at the same time.

Right

just got educated on the line selector, that's what i need. this is pretty simple after all

thanks for the help gents

karmablock wrote:

Ghost Hip wrote:I am not 100% sure I am understanding what you want to do, but if you are just trying to switch between two effect chains wouldn't a Boss LS-2 Line Selector work?

^this

well i was psyched that the solution i was after would be as simple as the boss LS-2

have any of you dudes that use it tried to use it with vintage fuzz circuits?

it looks like there are buffers all over (which isn't surprising when you consider what it's for):

The pedal (LS-2) has input and output jacks, and send/return jacks for loops A and B. The incoming signal is buffered, then split three ways: to the output mixer/buffer, to loop A send and loop B send. If left empty, the send/return jack in each loop are connected internally, to simply pass the signal along. Each loop has a level control, located after the return jack. The return signals then join the main bypass signal in the output mixer/buffer, and is then sent out through the output jack.

so now i'm thinking... just a simple A/B with an LED at the front of the chain
then both chains
then bring the chains together with a saturnworks passive 2 channel summing mini mixer - rather than a summer without a mixer (like the jhs summing amp)
i will probably run a boss tu-3 after that which has a buffer plus i can use that as a mute
doing it this way will also avoid any problem i would have switching between the 2 chains at the end of the chains instead of the beginning, where i would have noise from the unused chain still getting through

that saturnworks is cheap too, but if it sucks that would be good to know

actually i just realized switching at the beginning instead of the end is going to let the noise from the unused channel through. god dammit

I have a few things from Saturnworks and I am happy with all of them. That being said, I don't have the exact thing you are talking about. In my experience the low price is not an indicator of the quality.

http://www.muzique.com/news/buffers-before-fuzz/
It Is not hard to make a pedal that switches between two effects-paths passively, I'm sure if you check out some loop-builders they have one. You can also "negate" the buffer using a transformer as such, I suspect you can do without the transformer though and just use a 100k resistor to ground like seymour duncan does in the tweak fuzz. I like buffers (and boost!) before fuzz though as I run them at full blast always. The LS-2 is a great tool though so even if you dont like it you probably can find some other use for it.