question about running a balanced line through guitar effects to an unbalanced input

  • Thread starter Thread starter antichef
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antichef

antichef

pornk rock
I'm using a preamp (one of the ACMP-73 units we got a while back in the group buy) fed into a power amp for my guitar recently. The output of the preamp is balanced, and the input of the power amp is unbalanced. I use a microphone-style cable to connect the two (XLR on the preamp side and TRS on the power amp side) and it works great - I suppose the power amp just picks up one of the two phase-offset signals and ignores the other.

Problem is, I've tried putting some guitar effects pedals in between the two (thinking of it as a naturally occurring effects loop), and I just get silence.

Anyone with thoughts on this admittedly obscure issue? I'm happy to wire on a TS plug, just terminating one of the two balanced wires if that would work, but before I whip out my soldering iron, I thought I'd check here to see if anyone knew what was going on.
 
bouldersoundguy said:
The information you need (and much more) is here: Sound System Interconnection
Click to expand...
Wow - thanks! Looks like I'd be running pin 3 to ground rather than just cutting it off, which is probably what I would have done.

Anyway, other than going about it this way, would it be a better idea to properly unbalance the signal first, or is that just a waste? It's a very short run we're talking about - like less than a foot.
 
antichef said:
Wow - thanks! Looks like I'd be running pin 3 to ground rather than just cutting it off, which is probably what I would have done.

Anyway, other than going about it this way, would it be a better idea to properly unbalance the signal first, or is that just a waste? It's a very short run we're talking about - like less than a foot.
Click to expand...

With such a short run I don't think that you would notice a difference one way or the other.
 
antichef said:
Wow - thanks! Looks like I'd be running pin 3 to ground rather than just cutting it off, which is probably what I would have done.

Anyway, other than going about it this way, would it be a better idea to properly unbalance the signal first, or is that just a waste? It's a very short run we're talking about - like less than a foot.
Click to expand...

I would say do whatever sounds best. You're basically reamping live so any reamp tools could be applicable.
 
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