The number of the loops

I recently explored options to incorporate additional effect pedals in my Boss SY-300 based pedal board. I am running the trivial options (before the input and after the main output) for years, but never tried to add pedals using the effects loop. For some reason, I never noticed that there is a sound lift switch for the “through” socket and had mine set to “lift” causing quite some noise with a Walrus Audio ACS 1 in the loop. Not realising that everything I had to do was to switch the ground lift off to get rid of the noise, I explored alternatives.

There is of course the stereo sub output of the SY-300, the position of which can be chosen arbirarily in the signal chain on a system wide or patch-specific level. Positioning the sub output after the effects return will cause feedback if you use that sub output as an input of additional effects and return the signal via the return socket. Aside from than that, it works fine as an additional effects send output. Additionally, you can output whatever signal you like using the sub output, while the “through” socket is limited to outputting the input signal of the SY-300. I configured the sub output to be positioned at the third input of the assigner, giving it the output of oscillator 3 while also allowing me to add effect blocks before the sub output.

So, as it turns out, the SY-300 has two effect loops you can use, with the limitation that they all have to use the same return input. And you can even turn that into three if you pan signal supplied to the sub output to 100 % left or 100 % right and have two different pedals on the left and right sub output. Just keep in mind that if you want to run multiple effect loops, you will need a summing amplifier or merger to get all the outputs to the return input.