Advice- keyboard(ish) tones from guitar

Hi, I’m looking for some advice on how to tie a board together. I’m running my guitar into a splitter that feeds two separate boards- one is just a standard guitar chain, ending with an iridium > deco > radial JDI.

The second chain is for keyboard tones- the split goes into an SP compressor that feeds a parallel pedal with one loop going into an EHX Key9 for rhodes/wurli sounds and one loop going into a boss sy-200 that is used for both organ sounds and various synth sounds, also in this loop is a keeley rotary to add some movement to the organ sounds. The output of the parallel pedal hits a reverb and then out to a radial JDI.

The output of the “keyboard” chain is a bit low obviously since these are guitar pedals meant to be going into an amp but I’m looking for some input on how to achieve the extra level.

I’m thinking either put a clean boost (something like keeley katana mini) or some kind of preamp or an amp sim at the end of the chain before the JDI. Im open to hearing points for just boosting the level or boosting the level while adding character but the goal is get close-ish to these keyboard tones.

I’m not looking to spend a ton on this but also don’t want to go cheap and introduce noise or make it sound cheap. Also would prefer mini pedals bec of limited space but open to any ideas.

So TLDR - clean boost, preamp or amp sim after key9/sy-200 before DI for a more useable signal level out of DI.

Thanks!

Posted Jun 13, 2026, 5:29 PM UTC

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