Before I pose my question, I will briefly run down my rig. It has been a while since I last posted.

I run a Stepabout and use channel one for Bass and two for Melody:

Channel 1 runs an EH Holy Grail Plus and from there to my power amp and cabinet. Normally used as a 'clean' channel.

Channel 2 runs a Disnortion--> EP-1 --> Echolution --> Power amp and cab.

Lately I have been just playing without effects and rather prefer not using the HG+ because it adds noise. So I removed it altogether and for the first time in a month or so I went to use all the other effects. Each one is in its' own way is less pronounced. I have tried fooling with the gain on the Stepabout thinking that the signal may need to be hotter to 'drive' the effect more.

I really love the tone of the Stepabout by itself and would prefer not to use reverb, but am lost as to why I would need it to actually hear the other effects at a usable level.

The other caveat that I have to deal with is that I cannot seem to choose 'A' on channel one and 'B' on channel two without losing nearly all volume on channel two. I have to run 'A' on both channels to have full volume. I figure that it has to do with the effects pedals in that chain, but I cannot seem to get it sorted out. Can anyone else with Stepabout experience shine some light please?

Thanks guys, Steve

Hi Steve,

One possibility is that the pedals are not hot enough to drive your power amp effectively. Most of them are pretty low output, designed only to drive guitar amp inputs, that have an additional gain stage (this could also be the source of your noise issue).

You might need something between the pedals and the amp to get the signal level hot enough to drive the amp.

The Eventide TimeFactor is nice in this way because you can run either a guitar level signal or line-level signal into it, and set the output for amp (guitar amp input) or line level (power amp input).

One thing you need to do for sure is balance the instrument levels of your two signal paths.

Run straight from the StepABout into the mixing and amplification portion of your setup.

Get the levels for each channel set the way you want for balance. Make sure that both the bass has the same level on A and B, and do the same for the melody.

There's more, but I guess you should first figure out if your signal isn't just too weak to drive the power amp. What kind of amp is it?

hope this helps

It is a Carvin DCM 1000. I have been doing some research the last few days and speaking with some friends and they are leaning toward your inititial suggestion that it is a problem with the levels driving the power amp. I never gave this much though but it makes sense. The power amp is two channel but bridged to 700W at 8 ohms into one channel.

I will be trying out a few friends amps to help sort things out. I had not been thinking about the difference in the levels being an issue.
Thanks a lot.....

Steve