There has been quite a bit of discussion in the Overtone Pics thread about the effects loop. I thought I'd start a new thread since we seemed to have gone off topic (can't use the OT abbreviation here can I!) a little.

Anyway I received my BBE Max-X2 this morning and I've had my G# about 10 days or so. I've heard a lot about the BBe Sonic Maximizers and wanted to try one and this Max-X2, whilst being a crossover has a sonic maximiser built in, but I wasn't ever so sure it was going to work. However I have made a splitter cable so that I can recombine the two crossover ranges, and I fed that into the G#. Each of the crossover ranges have individual gain controls so I have very rough control of the top and bottom frequencies going into the G#. I have had both gain controls at approx 3 0'clock and this is giving me the right level for the G# (it has input LED's,Green, Yellow and Red), and this is about the same level as with nothing in the loop.

Anyway, the results are very good indeed. A/B ing the Sonic Maximiser In/Out is very revealing, much more pronounced bottom and top end, and great clarity, though this only really manifests itself when playing chords, its not so apparent when playing solo notes, and it is most noticeable when playing clean, the more drive you have going on, the les pronounced the effect I think, I guess because the act of overdriving the tubes is bound to introduce more harmonic content anyway.

When physically taking it all out of the loop there is defintely something put back thats not there with both units bypassed but this really is minimal,  but I think I will be needing a hardbypass switch and possibly a Klein.