Anyone Using Amps In A Stereo Rig?

[refin]

I have several old Fender amps,and I am going to start using 2 onstage with some stompboxes...I will be using this with 2 solid state Fender Yale Reverbs in stereo also.
Anyone else running a pseudo-stereo rig with 2 real amps onstage?
I say pseudo because the guitar is a mono source for most cases.
The amps I will be using are a '59 Bassman and a '56 Pro Amp.Let's trade some ideas and settings!

Moderators---I goofed and put this thread in the wrong section (doh!)---please feel free to reprimand me and move it. :ROFL

[Crunchyriff]

I did a stereo setup for many years: two stacks/ half stacks according to venue; and a triamped (wet/dry/wet) rig for quite a few years afterwards.

It can sound quite huge & be quite fun (well, schelpping the gear isn't so fun...) But I've gone back to a two and three amp purely 'mono' rig these days. And it's still no fun to cart. I need to get another pro gig- tired of schlepping gear... (har!!)

I may strip it down to something pretty streamlined like a 2-channel Legacy and a TC Electronics G-Force and one 4x12 cab; along with my stompboxes and switching sys. But I digress- sorry!

Yep, running stereo is fun, but the only one who really benefits is YOU, unless you are doing the pro circuit like I was where you could get a nice spread of all three "wet/dry/wet" cabs across the stereo FOH mix. The audience isn't really going to notice the difference; that is unless you have some frontline listeners sitting in the throw of your sweet spot.

Play with it, do all sortsa weird, different things with it. You might go one clean amp, one dirt; and do a stereo pan pedal between the two. This can be real cool. Experiment!

Enjoy the music!

[kewlpack]

Ya... on a MUCH smaller scale, I like stereo setups too. But like Crunchy says, it only benefits the person in the sweet spot. Everyone else just hears the tone coming from a predominant direction.

Still, for small venues where you could separate pretty easily... why not?! :)

Part of the magic is when YOU are immersed in your tones... right? ;)

Of course, stereo amps mean luggin' double the gear sometimes. :-s

[TheBigKevDogg]

when you guys do stereo, what effects do you usually use? a dirty amp and a clean one with pan, ping pong delay, or do you have stereo modulators that swirl around? this is making me want to try out my chorus pedal with both amps in stereo mode.

[kewlpack]

I like a stereo pan/pingpong delay (600-900ms depending on the ambient feel I'm looking for).

For chorus, I use the Stereo1 Chorus in the GT8 with slow speed and moderate depth - nice and thick.

For amps, I really just use whatever I got at this point. I don't have two "uber" amps... just moderately good ones.

[refin]

When I did it before, I put about 6ms delay between each amp....this stayed on constantly.Then I had various longer delays and effects that would seperate between the amps.
I am pretty much a purist,but it looks as though we will be a trio with a singer for awhile. I want the guitar to sound wider than normal,but still organic (don't overuse the effects),plus a stereo PA system.
I was listening to Eric Johnson on the Crossroads festival DVD with headphones,and his spread is nice---just like on his live album, "Alien Love Child."Just enough to give more width and size.
BTW,he is stupid good live.

[prscustom24]

My rig includes a Digitech GSP-2101 -- still one of the most flexible processors around -- driving a Marshall dual monobloc tube power amp and a pair of Tonemaster cabs. I can do manual or auto pans across the stage and, if the sound guy will give me an extra channel, through the mix.

Still, it's a lot to set up for something that prob'ly should not be used more than once per set, else it just looks like you're showing off. Unless you're doing it as refin described, spreading things subtly by just a few milliseconds.

[Crunchyriff]

BigKevDogg-

The triamped rig I used was based around a Soldano top. The Soldano powered a 4x12 cabinet totally dry. I took the slave out of the Soldano and ran it through my rack (1st Gen Quardraverb, Roland RSP550); the QV'b would split the signal to stereo, then send the stereo signal out of the rack stuff, and into a 120/120 Tube Power amp, each powering one (or more) 4x12 cabs, with effects. So my cabs were: "left wet, center dry, right wet".

Of course I have quite a few patches built up using a Digital Music Corp ground control system (MIDI controller), which would select presets on each rack piece, and switch channels on the Soldano all at the touch of one button. I'd have a bank or presets for cleans, a bank for dirt rhythm, and a bank for solos. Some had delays and/or verb, ping pongs, etc chrous, Dimension D, etc- all very different per patch on the controller, PLUS I had my onstage 3db volume boost for solos. My eq (in the rack fx) would also vary on my solo patches, sometimes dramatically.

The strategy in my particular triamped rig wasn't to get a "swooshing sound" (though this certainly can be done), but to get the effect of say, triple-tracked studio guitar fatness, along with the studio-quality processing, WITHOUT sacrificing a great dry tone. So my FX setups were configured accordingly to accomplsih this. And it worked marvelous. There is nothing like having real all-tube studio-quality guitar sound onstage.

So I went from stereo (that I'd done for about 10 years) to triamped for nearly another 10 yrs.

One day I just wanted to ditch it all. Funny thing is, I still ended up using three seperate amps for each clean, dirt, and solo "channel"- so I saved a bit of gear schleping, but not by much...and I still have studio quality sound so to speak, but it's all in mono, and a bit more organic.

I learned I could live without it (stereo) just fine.

Now doing something like a dirt amp and a clean amp w/a pan pedal makes for some VERY interesting stuff, in a whole different way! VERY COOL!!