How does the gm40d handle pedals?

As title, what's your own experiences with pedals. Reason I ask is that I'm coming from a pretty high end set up and use a number of boutique pedals, wampler, xotic and eventide etc. I use a boss es-8 which allows pedals to be placed in any order or in the effects loop or direct to amp.

I am having a problem getting the pedals to sound anywhere as good as they do with the mesa lss.

I set up the cleanest sound possible on the gm40 then select a pedal but I'm getting a fair bit of fizziness and kind of unnatural sounds. Velvet fuzz, black 65, tweed57, bb+, sp,EPL and H9 max.

Maybe I have some tweaking to do yet....

Are you going thru the FX loop, and is it line lvl or stomp box (inst) lvl? Why? The effects loop on many amps is designed to both send and receive line-level signals, so putting a typical pedal in the loop will often get noise, weakness, and distortion. I'm trying to find this info in the manual but cant find it yet. I did read where -10 dBv is "consumer" line level, common with older and cheaper recording gear, and that is listed on send and return specs, so I guess the FX loop on the GM-40 is line lvl.

I use an effects switching unit the Boss ES-8.

It allows you to place the pedals in front of the amp (i.e. Direct in) or place the effects you choose in the effects loop.

As a rule all my distortion effects like the wampler Plexidrive, Black 65 etc go direct in the front of the amp. Time based effects, in my case the eventide h9 and evh phase 90 are in the effects loop.

I'm finding I'm having to reduce the h9 output to -7db or less to reduce any unpleasant sounds but can't do that with the dirt/ amp in a box pedals.

I know this amp pretty much has the sounds I need without all the effects I have and my plan was to reduce my pedals anyway but is it just me?

Is no one out there using pedals with this amp?

I'm getting the distinct impression that that this amp is too "hot" for pedals. I'll need to dial down the output on the h9 on some of the channel 3/4 lead and ultra settings and if I want to use say my wampler velvet fix I'll need to use a clean non boosted preset.

I'm growing to love this amp actually. I know I'm posting done on the face of it negative posts but I'm learning how to use this beauty with quite a complex set up.

Thats what Im planning too, as a complex setup- Incorporating the GM40 with Helix.

Sooo, what I discovered/ remembered today was that in the send volume out of my es-8, which goes into the amp input, I had my sp compressor and noise gate (isp decimator II) in series. I did this as it saved using a loop on the es-8 due to the fact that more often than not the sp was always on. This in effect was boosting the guitar input, not only that the boss es-8 input on the system setting did not have the buffer on.

So tweaking the sp level and the buffer helped cut down on the worst of the feedback/ noise....when I say feedback I mean not anything good, a very high pitched microphonic squealing.

This is a very different beast to my mesaboogie, but issues like this aside I think the actual quality of the tone is quite sublime.

It suits me because I have a number of electric guitars, LP, SG, Lucille, telecaster, strat, jaguar and gretsch white panther so for each I can tweak each actual preset for each unique guitar....

Think I'm going to be selling some pedals soon....