SansAmp Owners--How does it do with pedals?

Classic SansAmp--Does it like 'em? Can I plug my pedal board into it and just think of it as an amp for recording?

I have a tech 21 trademark 10 amp, which is pretty much a sansamp in small practice amp form. I'm not sure how it compares to the sansamp classic, but I figure it will probably behave in a similar manner.

My main complaint with it is that any fuzz / distortion / boost pedals sound like garbage with it. Wah is ok but a little weak. I run delays in the effects loop and those work fine. It just seems to not play well with any type of distortion/fuzz at all.

What I've tried with it that sounds bad: vintage rat, big muff, DOD classic fuzz, zvex fuzz factory, MXR blue box, DOD buzzbox, homemade boost.

The effect of using these in conjunction with the trademark amp is similar to using two distortion boxes that sort of cancel each other out, turning the signal into floppy wet cardboard.

If you're only using delay / reverbs / modulation then it should sound fine...

I've also got a Trademark10. I haven't had any problems putting my pedalboard in front of it, and I use the DI out for home recording. I use a VV Route 66 into the clean Tweed setting, and it sounds fine.

I should clarify that it works *ok* in the low-gain tweed setting, since the signal is fairly clean. Problems start to arise when you set to a higher gain or switch to british or tweed.

I guess it's a matter of taste, but distortion / fuzz pedals don't sound very good to me when coupled with this amp, especially compared to a regular tube or even decent solid state amp. Somehow the sound becomes more boxy.

I even called tech 21 when I first got the amp to discuss the issue of using pedals with it, and the tech there agreed with me that distortions and fuzzes don't really work well with the amp.

The amp itself does a fantastic job of emulating "real" tube amps. I have done some recording stuff with it where people were commenting on how "huge" the guitar sound was. I would highly recommend it, and I also have the sansamp bass DI which is somewhat of a one-trick pony but does what it's supposed to do. I've never played with the sansamp pedal, so this stuff may not apply...

I used to use my pedalbaord with a Classic SansAmp as a practice studio before the POD came out. I had no problems whatsoever with the SansAmp taking pedals. I used to leave it on the bass channel with the dip switches in positions 1, 3, 4 and 6 up and stomp in whatever sound I was looking for. It worked great.

Since I got a POD as my practice studio I just keep the SansAmp in my gig bag in case my amp ever goes down on a gig. It's only happend once, but it was a lifesaver that allowed me to finish the gig.