Two Pedals both w/Effects Loops

Town Liar

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New to the group. I am in the process of redoing my pedalboard. I have two pedals that both have sends and returns that I would like to take advantage of but I have absolutely no idea how to do it. The first is a noise gate that is early in my chain and the second is an HX Effects. Currently I have the gate running in the 4-cable method and the HX Effects just running through my loop. I would like to use the 4-cable method with both. They are nowhere near each other in the chain, but if someone could help me out with a easy to understand explanation for a total dope, I would appreciate it! Diagram is even better with a few pedals in-between the two! TIA!
 

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Do you have the manual for the Fortin Zuul or another noise gate? They show the hookup. E.g., see page 2 of this https://fortinamps.com/cdn/shop/files/FORTIN_zuulplus_2023_manual.pdf

But the basic idea is that you sense the presence of music (or not) at the front of your pedal chain, where the hum & noise is at its lowest level. That way the gate is less likely to be fooled by the presence of hum/noise/whatever. And you enforce the decision at the end of the pedal chain (i.e., when there's no music, you shut off the signal), so that there are no more pedals afterwards to generate any additional hum or noise before going into the power amp.

Hope this helps.
 
First, let me say I'm a bass player, so everything I am going to say is from that perspective and may not apply to your situation. Pedal order is completely subjective. If it were me, I would put the noise gate after your noisiest pedal. I have an HX Stomp on my board which has an effects loop, and I use that to bring in the dirtier effects like tube screamers, overdrives and distortion. I do this because the effects loop allows me to blend that in (using the HX Stomp) while preserving my clean signal. If you are a guitar player, you may want that raw distortion to prevail in your signal, but as a bass player, I don't -- I always want some element of my clean tone to be in the mix so that my signal doesn't get too muddy. The one exception to this is any kind of fuzz circuit that wants to see a raw signal from your guitar. You want those before any kind of buffer (again as a bass player using an active bass -- this doesn't apply to me). I'm assuming that white pedal in you chain is a wah, which can go first, followed by anything that is impedance sensitive (like a fuzz), and then I would go into the compressor, which will tighten everything up. From there I would go into the HX (assuming it is one of the pedals with the effects loop), and from there I would add distortion, then modulation. From there I would go out to a pre-amp or eq to shape the tone to whatever amp or sound system you are plugging into.

Again, pedal order is subjective, and there aren't any wrong answers -- you just have to find a signal path that works for you and the type of music you are playing.
 
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