Rack Effects Interoperability with Guitar Pedals and Third Party Rack Equipment

GT rack effects are completely compatible with normal guitar pedals and third-party rack products.  You are not required to have a GT-only solution.  We know you may want to move into a rack solution incrementally, continue using some pedals, or you have other good reasons for a mixed approach.  Here are some ways to utilize pedals or third-party rack products along with your GT rack modules.

Adding Normal Pedal Board Guitar Pedals to Your Rack Effects Setup

You always have the option of using your pedal board effects as usual, running audio cables between your pedals to your GT rack effect modules..  Doing so may require some long cables in your chain.  That cabling may have no audible impact on your tone, or if it does, adding a buffer pedal or module may easily solve the problem.  With this approach, you'll continue stomping your pedals normally, while using GT footswitch units to control your GT modules.  You may be able to put the GT footswitch(es) on your pedal board with your pedals.

Of course, you might also physically locate normal guitar pedals in a rack.  Pedals can be mounted on rack shelves or drawers or other rack components.  Typically you won't have easy access to the controls of those pedals, but they are secured in the rack and less susceptible to unwanted adjustments.  If you can find a solution to your liking, this can allow you to easily keep using some of your pedals in a rack solution, since as you'll see below, you can control those pedals with our switching system.  We introduced our 3U Pedal Rack to provide a better way to mount your pedals in a rack.  It gives you a way to mount them while keeping the controls easily accessible.

The picture above shows the 3U Pedal Rack mounted in a small desktop studio rack.  It gives you a number of options for mounting pedals in your rack for easy cabling.  Third party rack security covers can also be installed to limit access to the pedals.  More into can be found at 3U Pedal Rack.

Adding Third-Party Rack Products to Your Rack Effects Setup

It's easy to add third-party products such as power conditioners that don't require audio connections in your chain.  You can also cable in third-party rack effects into your GT modules, just like you would cable them in with pedal board effects, except you may be able to use shorter cables and keep everything contained in your rack.  Rack-based effects tend to come with their own footswitches, so you would likely continue to use the third-party footswitches with third-party rack effects and use GT footswitches with GT effects.

Controlling Third-Party Effects with GT Rack Effects Remote Switching

Another option is to move your pedals into your rack or use third-party rack effects with GT rack effect remote switching.  This is also very easy.  You'll need a Bypass Looper module to do it.  If you haven't used a looper before, think of it as a special type of pedal with Master and Loop inputs and Master and Loop outputs.  Your incoming effects chain connects to the Master input and the start of the rest of your chain is connected to the Master output.  Between the Loop input and Loop output, you connect a sub-chain of one or more pedals.  Those pedals are switched on and remain on all the time.  The switch on the looper just bypasses the pedals in the sub-chain, or connects them between the Master input and Master output as though they were cabled in that position in your chain.  To switch your pedals with GT switching, you put them in the loop on the Bypass Looper and switch them in/out of your chain with the GT footswitch connected to the Bypass Looper module.  This works the same for pedals or third-party rack effects, like a nice rack tuner.  You leave the third party effect always on, relying on the GT switching to put it in or take it out of your chain.

 

Third party rack tuner cabled to Looper module

 

12-Button Footswitch controlling a third party tuner

 

 

Working with third-party rack tuner and pedal

 

There may be other routing solutions that will work for your particular setup instead of using a looper.  Perhaps you only need them in one part of your chain, where an ABY switch is used to control them, for instance.  Or you may use our Mixer to split your signal to one or more loops.

Power for Third-Party Effects

Most third-party effects won't be compatible with our 18V Power module output.  That doesn't mean you are stuck with batteries or power transformers, though.  Our Warthog power module can be configured to produce a variety of different DC power configurations that can be used to power your pedals or other rack gear.

Buddy Board

While there are great rack tuners available, some players prefer to have their tuners up-front and on the floor where they can easily see them.  We accommodate that with our Buddy Board option for our 12-Button Footswitch.  This adds an auxiliary DC power connection to the footswitch, and a small pedal board bolted to the footswitch for your tuner pedal.  The Buddy Board can also be used to accommodate a wah pedal at the beginning of your signal chain.  Check out Buddy Board, Tuners, Wahs for more details.

 

 

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