Introduction
You may have noticed that effects pedals, such as distortion and envelope filters, sound different when you adjust the volume on your electric guitar. You’ve spent hours dialing in distortion and made sure to mark the setting on your effects pedal. And then you lower the volume on your guitar, and the effect sounds different, maybe there’s not as much high frequency or the effect is not responding the same way to your playing. This can become frustrating as you spend additional time adjusting your effects pedals’ settings, and adjusting your playing style to get the same sound from your effects pedals.
One solution to this problem is to place a volume pedal at the end of your effects chain, and keep the volume knob on your guitar at full output at all times. However, all volume control must be done with the volume pedal in order to maintain consistency from your effects pedals.
Another solution involves the use of an effects loop built into the guitar, similar to an effects loop you would find on an AMP, with a SEND and RETURN, but instead the loop exists inside the guitar, and the volume knob on the guitar comes after the effects, rather than before. Credit for coming up with this idea is attributed to Jerry Garcia, and the term OBEL, or On Board Effects Loop is widely used to describe a guitar that has this optional feature. Guitars that have an OBEL also have the ability to bypass the effects loop, or not use it at all.
Using an OBEL allows for consistent response from your effects pedals/processors at any guitar volume. Additionally, it allows you to completely bypass your effects loop, allowing you to play your guitar with clean tone, and then with the flick of a switch on the guitar you can send the guitar signal to your effects chain.
Check out our OBEL Equipped Guitars
The On-Board Effects Loop is a wiring design inside the guitar which uses a separate 1/4″ stereo jack on the guitar, allowing the direct output from the guitar pickups to be sent on one side of a connected stereo cable to the input of your effects pedal chain. The effected signal from the output of your effects pedals goes back into the guitar on the other side of the stereo cable to the volume knob, and then out of the guitar output jack to your guitar amplifier, allowing you to adjust the guitar volume after being processed by your effects.
- Do I need to have a 9V battery installed at all times to hear sound?
The answer is yes.  You do need a working 9V battery installed at all times to hear sound coming out of the main output, even with the OBEL bypassed.  The pre-amp is always active in the signal and the pre-amp is powered on by plugging in a guitar cable to the main output.  To save battery life, unplug the guitar cable when not playing your guitar.  If you accidentally leave the cable plugged into the guitar, the battery would drain out in about 2 weeks, that’s about 14 full 24 hour days of battery life from a single 9V. We do offer a Pre-Amp Bypass Upgrade option for OBEL equipped guitars that will allow you to bypass the Pre-Amp should the 9v battery power drop down too low to power the Pre-Amp properly.
- The OBEL doesn’t seem to be working. When I flip the toggle into the OBEL, I get no sound. My OBEL guitar isn’t working with the HubBub Junction Box.
The Godfrey Daniels HubBub Junction Box is wired Tip to Send, and Ring to Return. Sometime in 2018, we made sure that PHRED instruments guitars moving forward are wired with the OBEL I/O jack on the guitar to be compatible with the Godfrey Daniels HubBub and HubBub Stage Pro Junction Boxes.
If you are experiencing issues with your OBEL equipped guitar and a Godfrey Daniels HubBub Junction Box, there are few things you can try to troubleshoot the issue.
Test #1
1. Plug a regular mono guitar cable into the Main Output jack on the guitar. The other end of the cable should be unplugged. This is just to power on the pre-amp, if your guitar has a pre-amp. Most guitars with OBEL have a pre-amp.
2. Plug another standard mono guitar cable into the OBEL I/O jack, and the other end of that cable directly into your guitar amp.
3. Put the MINI toggle into OBEL mode, and you should get sound if the OBEL jack on the guitar is wired correctly. The volume knob on the guitar won’t work in this test, and that’s ok, as the volume on the guitar is bypassed for this test. Here’s a video that shows how to perform the test above.
Test #2This test is mostly specific to PHRED guitars with copper foil inside the electronics cavity or with a dual output jack plate. If you perform Test #1 above and don’t get sound, we’ll need to make sure that neither the tip or ring lug on the OBEL jack are grounded somehow to the copper foil inside the electronics cavity. You can visually inspect for this by removing the electronics panel on the back. If any part of the OBEL jack is touching one of the screws that is securing the Dual Output Jack plate, then there could be grounding. The best way to check is with a multimeter. Here’s a video on how to test for that.
The FixIf you have performed Test #1 and Test #2 (inspected for grounding of the tip or ring lugs, and there is no grounding, and also no sound from Test #1) then it’s recommend to swap the wires that connect to the tip and ring lugs on the OBEL jack. This will require soldering. Here’s a video that shows which wires need to be swapped.
- Do all effects pedals need to be in the effects loop, in other words, can an OBEL equipped guitar have some effects in the effects loop and other effects outside of the effects loop? Â Â
Effects like delay, reverb, noise gate, limiters, and compressors can be placed inline between the standard guitar output jack and your amplifier so that those effects are always on and/or always accessible to you whether the OBEL is engaged or bypassed.
- What does OBEL mean?
OBEL stands for On-Board Effects Loop. It is a wiring design inside the guitar which uses a separate 1/4″ stereo jack to allow the direct output from the pickups to go to effects pedals and then back into the guitar for post-effects volume control. The purpose of the OBEL is to allow for volume adjustments on the guitar after being processed by effects. You may notice that distortion and envelope filters respond differently with volume adjustments on a standard electric guitar. Using an OBEL allows for consistent response from your effects pedals/processors at any guitar volume.
- What is required to use the OBEL?
We recommend to use a junction box with a stereo 1/4″ guitar cable to connect the guitar to a junction box (a stereo Y-cable can be used instead). A junction box looks like an effects pedal. It has a 1/4″ stereo input jack on one side, which is where the stereo guitar cable from the guitar’s OBEL jack plugs into. The other side of the junction box has 2 mono 1/4″ jacks. One of those jacks is a send to the input of your effects the other is a return from the output of your effects. Using one mono guitar fx patch cable, connect the send from the junction box into the input of your first effect pedal, and the the return from the junction box plugs into the output of your last effects pedal in the chain.
- Can an OBEL equipped guitar be plugged in like a standard electric guitar with one cable using just the mono guitar output?
Yes, you do not have to use the OBEL in order to plug in your guitar to your effects. Â You can simply bypass the OBEL using the OBEL bypass mini-toggle switch on the guitar and use the guitar as a standard electric guitar with your effect pedals plugged in-line between your guitar and amp.
- How do I connect up my OBEL guitar to my effects and amp?
