Hot Rod Deluxe Footswitch

Not the way your thinking.... wait, what are you thinking?

If your asking can you put the AMP's Switch on your pedal board with all your other bits? You most certainly can....why not?

You didn't really give enough info on what you want to do and why the 'foot-switch' comes to mind but I wanna take an honest stab at an answer and for other readers who may not know :)

The function of your Amp's foot switch is to change the channel on the PRE-Amp. That's it. From Clean to Crunch/Dist etc...

So your signal chain with no pedals looks like:
Guitar > PRE-Amp > Power Amp > Speaker

However: on Amps with a LOOP (like your Hot Rod) there are generally only two placements of effects in the signal chain.
A. before the PRE-Amp.
B. after the PRE but before the POWER AMP
(typically anything after the POWER Amp come out the speaker as in your case with a COMBO Amp. The function of the "POWER Amp" is to drive the speakers. Exceptions would/could be if your using multiple heads and/or daisy chaining cabinets together.)

So placing effects before the PRE amp would be in a chain that plugged into your INPUT plug.
Example: Guitar > T-Screamer > EQ > Amp (INPUT)

Placing an effect after your PRE is what the LOOP is for.
Say: Guitar > EQ > INPUT> PRE > LOOP OUT(after PRE) > FLANGER > LOOP IN>POWER Amp.....etc.

Its that simple. If you're wondering about the 'placement' of different effects in the signal chain (before or after the PRE) there are a lot of resources on the net.
I just googled "Guitar: effects placement" and got a lot of hits.
http://www.amptone.com
http://www.harmony-central.com/articles/tips/guitar_effects_guide/
http://users.sa.chariot.net.au/~gmarts/fx-order.htm
http://forum.thestompbox.net/showthread.php?t=5155

ad nauseum.

Hope that helps. :)

Thanks for the response Dagwood. Right now, I plug my guitar into my pedal board and my board into the main input of the amp. I never thought of adding the footswitch to my effects, but saw another guitarist do it this weekend. I did not see where everything was plugged into the amp, but saw his board.

That is what prompted the question. If you have suggestions on how I should be connected differently to the amp, I am open to those too. I am still trying to figure out the sound portion of playing live.

Right,

What kind of Pedal Board do you have?

RIght now, it is individual effects (tuner, overdrive, wah, chorus and eq). I am considering a multi pedal in the very near future, but that is what I have for now. I plug my guitar into the tuner. The effects are in the order listed, then from the eq, I plug into the main input on my HRD.

Bgdaddy

I used to do this very thing a few years back, individual pedals into the instrument input, but then I used the Hot Rod's footswitch to go to More Drive for solos. You get a nice boost especially in More Drive, with lots of sustain and volume boost.

The footswitch has nothing to do with your effects chain. You could not enter it into your chain if you wanted to. It simply switches your amp from the Clean channel to the Drive and More Drive channels. Of course you could put the footswitch on your pedalboard, it doesn't matter where, it is not connected whatsoever to your effects pedals.

Yes, the Hot Rod does have an effects loop. You can come out of PreAmp Out and go into your individual effects pedals or multi-efx unit, then come out of the output on your effects and go back into the PowerAmp In on your Hot Rod. I have experimented with this, but never used it full time. They say it is best to go with distortions or overdrives straight into the instrument input, but better to use modulation effects like chorus, phase, or delay into the effects loop. I just never felt like going to all that much trouble and setup.

I used to experiment with a volume pedal only in the effects loop and liked it. I could then turn Volume on the Clean Channel, or Drive on the Drive channels way up but keep total volume down. They say this is simply like turning your guitar volume down, but I think it is different somehow, certainly sounded different to me, more grind and overdrive at lower volumes. Try it and see if you like it.

You can even skip your PreAmp altogether. I have gone into a multi-efx and then out of it's output into the PowerAmp In. You lose all tone and volume controls (on your amp), this can be controlled by your multi-efx and guitar controls. Worked pretty cool, but be prepared and have your guitar volume down or you will get blasted. :shock:

There are really lots of options how you can do this stuff. Just make sure you never send a truly amplified signal (like a Speaker Out) into your amp or you will instantly damage it.

Wes