Reverb Before Cab, or Vice-Versa?

webmaestro

Member
I just finished watching one of Cooper's G66 video tuts, and was surprised to see him put the cab AFTER his reverb(s). All this time that I've had my Axe-Fx II, it never occurred to me to even try this... which I'm going to go do right now just to see what the difference in sound is.

Is one technically correct over the other? I always put reverb dead last in my chain, because it just seems intuitive--like the right thing to do.

Thoughts?
 
The cab can go last and it won't affect the sound. He most likely did this so he could use the FX Loop block to split the signal to Output 2 for a signal without the cab sim for use with a real guitar amp and cab.

Check this out for more info:

How do I send my Axe signal with cab sims to FOH but without cab sims to a guitar amp and cab? | Katsu Kuri Media Blog

Yep, that's exactly what he was doing in the video. Thanks for the link--that was helpful.
 
Makes sense. A physical amp would have the reverb before the cab, anyway.

There is no right or wrong, just many options!
 
just bear in mind that placing the reverb before the cab will collapse it to mono, whereas placing it after will leave it in stereo. you can place stereo effects before a cab block if you use the stereo cab setting and pan both cabs hard left and right, with input select set to stereo. this will have zero implications of you're playing in mono, but for those of us committed to the stereo experience, mono reverb sounds pretty lame.
 
Reverb or delay before am/cab or drive can have its own special sound. More raw 'old school' sounding like pedals before a (real) amp. It can be nice but most of time it's not what you want.
 
Anyone that ever played a polytone most likely used a reverb pedal before the amp, as the reverb almost always broke, I've heard (and have a broken one). lol
 
Depends what you want to achieve.

If your simulating the "room" effects of a hall or real world space - then you want your reverb after the cab. In the real world, thats when room effects take place (in a recording or live).
If your simulating a spring reverb in an amp, or a particular reverb pedal - then place it before the cab - again in the real world thats where those types of reverbs are placed inthe chain.
If you simulating a reverb pedal into the front of an old amp (that doesnt have an FX loop) - then put your reverb before the mp bloc.
 
I usually put reverb after cab when looking for the "studio" type and stereo reverbs. I run direct tho to FOH and my CLR's, and don't use FX loop/external cabs. BTW - looking forward to the new reverb Cliff is prepping. I love the nuance and detail a finely executed reverb can provide.

Can't run stereo cab 'cause I love UltraRes, and can't run 2 cab blocks for CPU space. Guess I could always use more than 4 patches for everything I play... but with scenes it is just soooo easy this way.
 
As mentioned above, I also like to run a spring reverb block before the cab block on some presets- in particular, I do this for the Swart amp model, which I use quite a bit. I place the reverb block at the end of the grid for the more typical studio type reverb applications.
 
If the Drive parameter in the CAB block is set to zero(default) then the placement of the Reverb block, before/after CAB block yields exactly the same re daily since the CAB block then is linear.
 
I go with a "move it around until I like how it sounds" approach with all my FX blocks. I used to do the same thing with hardware pedals. Plenty of people suggest the "proper" signal chains to use, but sometimes interesting tones can be created by not following the "rules"

time based effects in front of the amp for example. Many will say your need to but those effects last, and/or in the fx loops, but that isn't always possible on some amps, and even when you do have loop, or a processor with flexible routing like the AE2, you don't have to do it that way.

Nothing wrong with it, it sounds good, but it can also sound cool putting a reverb and delay in front of an amp for some different sounds.

On the Axe is quite easy to just move a block around and try it out. Much less work than physical cables.

So just try the reverb in a few locations, super easy with Axe-Edit. Move it around, play a few minutes, see how it sounds. Move it again, play some more, see if you think it sounds subjectively "better" or "worse"

People can certainly look at my patch layouts and say I did something "wrong" but as long as I tried it both ways and picked the one that I personally thought sounded best to my eyes, I'm using the "correct" option for ME
 
You gain nothing putting it before the cab and risk collapsing the stereo image if the cab is mono.
 
i would always put the spring reverb before the cab...for absolute authenticity...

Dick Dale did a Q&A after a show and I asked him how he sets up his reverb, and the King Of Surf Guitar said the only thing that was important is to put the reverb (he used a dedicated tube reverb unit) before the amp to get that surf-y goodness!!
 
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