putting reverb last in chain

[donald stringer]

I was reading some on effects placement etc on R.G."s site and was wondering what would I have to do in order to place my reverb last in chain. I mean very last inchain, just before the speaker for the the most natural sounding effect.I think Eddie Van Halen did this with his marshall[using power attenuators or power breaks? But I wanted to do it on a very smalllevel so I can park my delay and rev in the back of the amp. and out of the effects loop. Following a more logical sequence of effects lineup. Putting only ..Comp. dist. ..E.Q. before and all delay reverb at the last.Allthough I do know that in some instances that it is better to have it in line, Some possibile sol. from full or part time gigging musicians would really be great.Eric johnson does something like this on a more elaborate scale[I believe he uses a sep. mixing board and jvc toget his rev. mix for the stage before sending it to the board. Thoughts, comments ,suggestions anyone?

[petemoore]

Tube driven Reverbs in the amp work great...lloo
 I use a patch cord between RV3 output and amp's input.
 The very best reverbs come after the amp and speaker...try pluggin your amp in in a long hall...
 Reverb 'after' amp/output is new to me...I doesn't quite follow or it doesn't make sense...

[donald stringer]

o Post-processing at the board: eq, echo-derived effects, reverb

It's important to understand the basic stages that are used in a pro rock studio, in order to try to reproduce these stages as closely as feasible, whatever your equipment situation.

Many guitar tracks were recorded with echo before the power tubes, but almost always, the amp is not cranked, because the beats are unmusical and scramble and weaken the basic Tone. The only way to combine *cranked* amp Tone with echo-derived effects is to place those effects after the amp.
This is a quote from amptone .com[ this is the address....Http://www.amptone.com/g080.htm  An extensive listing of variations on effects placement..very interesting

[Ansil]

for a while i had a small little amplifier that had great creamy distortion. until i blew it up.. but i used to mike it up and then put it through my digitech.  into a power amp.

lol that has been years ago though.

[petemoore]

Mikin' a lil'l 30w Marshall Artist [Kwon Kung kang Fu], into a Hiwatt 50w into 4x12...it was the only I ever tried that made the Hiwatt sound Usable...it was a hellugg every time to setup and move all that but it sure worked quite well that way. Good Mic is at least for shure.

[Mark Hammer]

In some respets, you want your reverb to be both first AND last in line.  In other words, the reverb pan is driven by a signal tapped right off the very start of the chain, and the reverb output is mixed in way at the end.  

This does a few things.  First, it means your reverb signal will be distinct from the non-reverb signal, which lets the reverb become more of a "wash" in the background and less of a distraction.  One of the problems that various sorts of delays and reverbs create is that the sound can quickly become too cluttered, a bit like two people trying to talk to you about the same thing at once.  By letting the reverb signal be as unprocessed as possible it keeps the two signals different.  

Of course sometimes you DO want the reverb to be a variation on a processed sound, and in that respect the ideal arrangement would be to have a pedal board with a rotary switch that would let you tap the reverb send off of any of an assortment of "stations".

A second reason why you may want the reverb send to come from the front end is that it will have the most dynamics at that point, and correspond to the strength of your playing most closely at that point as well.  Things like phasers tremoloes or flangers will take away from signal strength as they sweep and things that restrict dynamic range like fuzzes and compressors will get in the way of allowing you to push the springs differently and work them like an efect.  There was a terrific article in Polyphony in 1981 by Craig O'Donnell on why spring reverb will never die, and one of the selling points was that because it is a mechanical system you can use spring drive AS an effect.  Sticking the reverb send way off at the end deprives one of that option.  I should point out that some of Fender's higher end amps with on-board tube reverb tap the reverb send right at the amp's input , only permitting further eq-ing and gain/master configurations after that reverb send signal has been obtained.

Where do you blend it back in?  Presumably at the mixer stage just prior to where the power amp gets its signal from.

[donald stringer]

Mark I think you have a handle on what I am trying to achieve[ more natural sounding reverb w/o load boxes/ extra power amps etc. An eddie van halen cranked amp. dist/ with reverb in the background sort of sound. Even if I dont fully understand it[let me see]  your talking something like[tell me if I am close] guitar/into a splitter,something simple, guitar in ,buffer and split the signal into two routes /route one drives comp./eq/dist/..route two drives reverb send which is actually at the endof chain.Lets say effect loopin.Now in my understanding that does what you say it puts the reverb last in chain[short of load boxes etc.] But takes the signal fresh from the guitar or even amp. out before it hits the guitar. This would take the reverb totally out of the tone shaping  chain . If that isnt close it is at least close enough to try. I am sure that I will think of variations  of it....I couldnt believe that I didnt get more of aresponse about eddie van halen. At one time everybody wanted to sound like him and in all honesty I swore then that if I saw eddies picture on one more guitar magazine that I would puke.But now its sort of like eddie van halen what about him. I sure would like to hear some of his very first tones blended in to some newer renditions. Thanks for the response.