Optimal Gain Staging with the RA-100

If you’ve got your hands on the new Franklin RA-100—or you’re thinking about grabbing one—you clearly take your re-amping seriously. Naturally, you want to get the best out of your pedals and re-amp setup, and you might be wondering about the ideal way to set the controls and levels for maximum headroom and the lowest noise floor. The good news is that the RA-100 was designed to handle just about anything you throw at it, so you don’t need to stress. But for advanced users who want to fine-tune their setup, here’s my personal process.

Signal Levels Recap

The RA-100 has two main jobs:

1. Attenuation – converting the relatively hot line-level signal down to instrument level so the output of your audio interface plays nicely with your pedals.
   

2. Amplification – taking the instrument-level signal from your pedals and bringing it back up to line level.
   

“Instrument level” isn’t a fixed standard, since every electric instrument produces a different output. Generally, it’s around 6 to 20 dB quieter than line level.

The Re-Amp

On the left-hand side of the RA-100 is a passive, transformer-balanced re-amp. To understand the levels, it helps to know that the transformer itself provides 12 dB of attenuation. With the level control at maximum, you should still expect this intentional level drop. Since it’s passive, the control can only reduce the signal further—it can’t add gain. For now, ignore the Z (impedance) control and set it to MIN while we dial in the levels.

The Return

On the right-hand side of the RA-100 lives the active return preamp. With the control at MIN, the preamp adds no extra gain—it simply balances the incoming signal and passes it to your interface’s line input. At MAX, the preamp provides up to 26 dB of gain, more than enough to boost even the quietest pedals back to line level.

The Setup Procedure

I’ll assume your RA-100 is already connected correctly to your audio interface, with true unity gain line inputs and outputs. (If you’re unsure, check the RA-100 manual [here].)

1. Connect the RA-100 send directly to the RA-100 return.
   

2. Create two mono DAW tracks: one to feed the RA-100, and one to monitor its return. Insert a signal generator plugin on the send track.
   

3. Send a 1 kHz sine wave from your DAW into the RA-100 input. The level doesn’t matter, but I’ll use –12dBFS as an example.
   

4. Turn the RA-100 input level control to MAX.
   

5. Raise the output gain control until the return track matches the send track (–12dBFS in this case).
   

You can stop here and this gain staging will work really well. However if you find you want a little more room to breathe in the headroom department, and/or the ability to push harder into the pedal chain later, perform these two additional steps!

1. Reduce the input level control by 6 dB, or until the return track meters –18dBFS.
   

2. Raise the output gain control until the return track once again meters -12dBFS.
   

After this procedure, you’ll know the re-amp is attenuating the incoming signal by 18dB, a great starting point for most pedals, while the return is compensating for that exact loss. From here, you’ve got an extra 6 dB available on the re-amp if you want to drive your pedals harder, and plenty of gain in both directions on the return for when things get a little wild.