Thanks for purchasing a Silencer! Your amp’s FX loop and the Silencer’s FX loop don’t have anything to do with each other although they serve similar purposes. If you want to reduce the noise of the pedals in your amp’s FX loop then you would connect the Silencer to the signal chain in the amp’s FX loop. If you have pedals before your amp’s input and you want to reduce their noise then you would connect the Silencer to the pedals before your amp.

Here are a couple ways you connect the Silencer to an amp’s FX loop:

1) You could connect the output of the last pedal in the effects loop to the Silencer’s Input jack and the Silencer’s Output jack to the amp’s FX return,

2) You could connect the amp’s FX Send to the Silencer’s INPUT jack, the Silencer’s FX SEND to the input of the first pedal in the chain, the output of the last pedal in the chain to the Silencer’s FX RETURN and finally the Silencer’s OUTPUT jack to the amp’s FX Return.

The way the Silencer works is that the signal present at the Input jack determines when the gate mutes or unmutes. A loud input signal unmutes the Silencer’s output, a quiet signal causes its output to mute.

If the Silencer’s FX loop is not being used than the output signal originates from the Input jack, in other words the signal at the Input jack is muted/unmuted at the Output jack.

If the Silencer’s FX Return jack has a plug inserted, then the Silencer’s output signal originates from the Return jack, so that the Return’s signal is muted/unmuted at the Output jack. A quiet signal at the Input jack mutes the Return jack’s signal at the Silencer’s Output jack.

The Silencer’s FX Send jack is a copy of the signal present at the Silencer’s Input jack.

If the noise source is your guitar pickup then you probably want the Silencer to be at or near the beginning of your pedal chain. In this case, potentially you could just hook up the guitar to the Silencer’s Input jack and then connect the Silencer’s Output jack to the rest of your pedal chain and not use the Silencer’s effects loop.

If the noise source is a pedal, or group of pedals, you’ll want those pedals to go into the Silencer’s effects loop. If these pedals happen to already be in your amp’s effects loop then connect the Silencer like so:

Amp Fx Send -> Silencer INPUT
Silencer SEND -> Input to first pedal in chain
Output from last pedal in chain -> Silencer RETURN
Silencer OUTPUT -> Amp FX Return