Volume Swells Help

heyguys....just got the GM 40 Deluxe and the midi board.  love it

question.  I am looking for ambient type swells....where by which I get the delay trails and can swell the gain i assume it should be first in my chain.  The expression feature via the midi board w volume is not doing it for me.  Question....does it matter which volume pedal i use if its in front of my board?

Well I can share my VP adventure with ya. I do a fair bit of ambient volume swells and so it’s important to have a VP that functions properly. When I first got my GM I naively tried using an exp pedal as a VP with the FSM, only to realize that the exp pedal wants to control 0-100% of the amp’s volume. Obviously that’s a deal breaker. I tried a few different brands of exp pedals but they all behaved the same. So I went with Plan B which was to simply use a conventional VP. You can put one before the amp, or put one in the amp’s fx loop. Either way, the amp’s effects block is downstream which is good news, the VP wont cutoff the effect tails when you heel down!

Regarding the location of the VP – if you put it before the amp, it will control volume and gain, just like your gtr’s volume knob. If you put it in the amp’s fx loop, it will only control volume, like a master volume control. I opted to put mine in the amp’s fx loop because I don’t want the gain to change, only volume. But to each his own.

If you put it before the amp, use a high impedance VP (IE 250K). if you put it in the amp’s loop, use a low impedance VP (25K). Personally I use a Boss FV-30L, it replaced an Ernie Ball 25K VP which worked fine but I prefer the Boss’s compact size on my pedalboard.