Hey guys. Found something interesting. I set up a smaller, more portable rig with a 4 space rack bag, sms, power conditioner, carvin and korg pitchblack tuner. I ran my guitar into the sms input then out of the sms to the rear input of the tuner then out to the carvin. I couldn't set the sms gain past 9oclock without clipping on the hardest notes. I was having to run the amp almost wide open to get to playable volume. I removed the tuner from the path and now everything is as it should be(gain set around noon, amp at about 25%, clean as can be). My question is, how are you supposed to set up these tuners in a rackmount situation?? They obviously must be first in line.
Being a "guitar" tuner, it expects to see a very low-level guitar input signal. You were running a VERY HOT line level signal into a very sensitive guitar-level input which was very easily overdriving the tuner's circuit. Tuners generally are placed before a preamp, before the gain has taken guitar-level up to line-level.
The problem with tuners is that they just shit all over your expensive signal path. They are best connected via a switcher box or a side-chain signal so they are completely out of the direct signal path.
Recall that Jerry had his Korg up on top of his rack and he would flip a toggle switch that would both mute his rig and send the guitar straight to the tuner. He couldn't tune while playing, but it did keep his signal path pure and isolated from the tuner's digital garbage and shitty signal path.
Brad
