A mic pre-amp is really the way to go. Sonus puts out a product called “blue tube” that is excellent, but spendy. ART also has an inexpensive mic-pre/direct box that also contains a tube that is much cheaper (less than $50.00, I think). The super-cheap way to go is simply to get a 1/4″ to xlr line-transformer (it MUST be a transformer) adapter from Radio Shack (or somewhere similar, (probably about $10 to $15). However, a line-transformer offers you no volume control to control your input signal into the effect. Different pedals may require some tweaking (either up or down, depending on the pedal and how sensitive it is).

I have pretty much solved my problem with the Q-tron pedal described in my original post by two things: 1) I stopped trying to use an effects loop to run the Q-tron through. I am going directly from the mic into the pedal (I am currently using a line-transformer adapter, but I am probably going to go for a mic-pre, because it is better). 2) I worked with my limiter following the q-tron a little more and found settings that control the “punchiness” better.

Hope this helps…..