Home › Forums › Help/Technical Questions › using small stone as an FX for synthesizer

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  • April 18, 2009 at 10:45 pm #78092
    bennethos
    Participant

    Hi,

    I just bought an electro harmonix “small stone” phaser to connect on my synths.
    The guy in the store (yep I know… a salesman :p ) told me it would work without a single problem.

    I’ve connected the left output of my synth to the input of the EHX and my headphone to the output (don’t have an amp)…

    problem is my synth sounds :

    – like my volume is @ 10% (when the phaser is enabled, if it’s disabled the volume is a bit louder)
    – slightly distorted sound, like the volume of my synth is too loud and it increases when increasing main synth volume.

    I’ve read couple of things that you should put a microphone attenuator between you’re fx and you’re synth, but I guess I wont have any volume left then :p .

    Any technical explanation would be welcome !

    Because I don’t have an amp (only headphones) I was already thinking of building me a headphone amp, like the ones they use for a guitar…

    But that won’t solve my distortion problem.

    thx a lot

    April 19, 2009 at 1:31 am #95801
    McHaven
    Moderator

    I have a feeling there’s a massive impedance problem there. I can’t be certain, i’m not a tech guy. You’ll probably need to send the signal out of the small stone into an amp before amps. Someone who really knows should be along shortly.

    April 19, 2009 at 4:37 am #95803
    julian
    Moderator

    Definitely.

    When I run my synth through my pedals, I usually run it into a guitar amp. Sounds great.

    April 19, 2009 at 5:06 am #95807
    st.bede
    Member

    headphone to the output of an pedal…never did that before…

    I wonder if you picked up a really cheap mixer and you ran every thing into the mixer and then used the headphone out from the mixer if that would slove the prob.

    I know that synth tend to run very hot compared to guitars and I have put many pedal in front of synths but tend to turn the synth way down….

    matter of fact that is my fav use of my EH LPB tube preamp pedal…run the two sides in chain and it can really beef up a VA synth…(of course, too much can be two much)

    April 19, 2009 at 6:52 am #95812
    bennethos
    Participant

    Hey, thx for the replies. I will go and fetch my keyboard amp to do some more tests.

    btw : guitar amps are not designed to play bass, they have a presence boost in the midrange and in the high frequency range, most of them don’t go past 10 kHz. There are several reasons why you shouldn’t use guitar amps to amplify your synthesizer sound.

    Of course I don’t know yet what frequency range is cut off when going through the electro harmonix, a shame I don’t have a spectrum analyzer, would love to test it.

    April 19, 2009 at 10:43 am #95814
    Brianzero
    Participant

    In the late 70’s I was the proud owner of a wasp synth and i ued to take the out put of that into a small stone then into a deluxe electric mistress and then into a deluxe memory man and then into my amp. I have to say it sounded awesome. So yes I think you need to go into an amp of some sort. Good luck

    April 19, 2009 at 4:51 pm #95834
    julian
    Moderator

    well my guitar amp is actually a bass amp that I use for guitar, so it’s all good (Fender Bassman 135)

    but anyways the important thing is it needs an amp of something, even if it is just a headphone amp

    April 19, 2009 at 10:31 pm #95847
    bennethos
    Participant

    ok thx I’ll try that

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