Effect Looper...grouping effects

[momo]

Im in the process of building a looper for my pedalboard. Now I would like to group 2 or 3 insert points to one switch. I would have lets say a fuzz switch, on that I would put 3 insert points for 3 different fuzz effects, and so on. Now are there any impedence/bad effects/tone loss problems in grouping effects inserts on one switch?
Also I would like to have a mute switch at the end of the chain for tuning without the signal reaching the amp.

Anything worth pointing out before I build?
Thanks a bunch!

[ashcatlt]

I'm a lot confused by what you're looking for on this? You want to have 3 seperate fuzz boxes in parallel with one switch that kicks in those 3? Then you use the fuzz box itself to turn on the fuzz you want?

If that's the case it ain't gonna work. Whatever impedance problems you end up with will be nothing compared to the fact that 2 of the fuzz boxes would be bypassed and sending the clean sound back, so you'd end up with some mix of 1 fuzz and 2 clean signals...

On the other hand maybe you want one switch that chooses between three different fuzz boxes. If that's the case, well I don't know of any stomp switches with more than 2 positions, so you'll be looking at either switching by hand (maybe try a 5-way strat switch so you can get 2 fuzzes in parallel!) or using some digital stuff. Assuming you end up with a switching scheme that will do what you're looking for, 2 of the fuzzes could be completely disconnected from the circuit, so you wouldn't have any problems there.

I'd probably just have one fuzz insert, run the 3 fuzzes in series and turn on the right one at the appropriate time.

That said, all questions of impedance interaction between 3 parallel effects can be eliminated with 6 simple buffers. (If you're confident that the 3 effects have exactly equal input and output impedances you could get away with just 2 buffers...)

edit: 6, not 7

[momo]

Hey thanks for the reply, first off I would say that normally I would want one footswitch per effect on the looper, but economics and pedalboard space is making me want to put 3 effects on one footswitch.
So yea, I hear you on 3 effects on a switch, but the way I see it if I use the fuzz example, if I have one fuzz working and the other two on true bypass, then its like having one pedal on the insert no?
The signal from the pedal is passing thru the other effects like a wire as far as I know.
I would not bunch a fuzz and a wah though because of the usual problems with that.
So maybe the key to making this work would be to wisely choose which pedals to group together?
To resume, I would have 3 effects on one loop and open the loop footswitch and then choose individually which pedal of the group to use.
Do the other effects have load/impedence issues even if they have true bypass?

[bobtec]

you will need to boost the signal a little too having that many passive loads will suck tone