Joker Verox

My buddy gave me a couple of old pedals and told me to hook them up passively, does he mean to run it through the effects loop on the amp instead of in a series from the guitar? He said something about not wiring them in a series, but how else could you do it? He’s out of town so I can’t get a hold of him. I have heard of passive and active pickups and passive and active pedals but never of wiring them passive or active.

If the effect pedal has a battery in it, then it’s active. Period. End of discussion.

There’s no such thing as hooking up effects passively or actively. I think your buddy has his terminology confused.

You can hook effects up in series or parallel. In series, you just plug one into and another, and then to the amp. In parallel, you have to have a way to split the output of the guitar signal, send it to all of the effect inputs, then send all of the effects to a mixer to recombine the signal.

You normally only see a parallel effects setup in big rack systems.

As to whether you run the effects in front of the amp or in the effects loop…that depends on the effect. Time based effects (delay, reverb, chorus, phasing and flanging) tend to work best in the effects loop. Gain modifiers (distortion, fuzz, boost) should be in front of the amp, between your guitar and the amp input. Wah pedals should be there as well, but other tone modifiers (like and EQ) can go in either location.

Compressors and pitch shifters need to be in front of the amp. Noise gates can go in either location.

Good luck.

Greetings from Austin, TX

Ken

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