2011 - the year of the Stereo Rig?

[starsailor803]

Hell yes! I'm definitely planning on a stereo rig this year. Just got my hands on a Marshall to compliment my Reeves. Just need a cab. I want to run the Marshall dirty and dry while the Reeves will be clean w/effects. At least it sounds good in theory. We'll see.

 

edit: actually my rig won't be stereo so much as just two amps set to vastly different tones.

 

[HeartfeltDawn]

for the guys using stereo rigs, are you just doing it for how the delay/reverb/pan/chorus sounds coming out in stereo, or is it more to do with blending two signal paths of different pedals/sending dirt to one and keeping the other clean?

For me, it's all about the chorus sound first and foremost. Just bought another chorus pedal tonight (MXR M-134 stereo chorus) and the Cmatmods chorus should be here this week. Stereo chorus is awesome.

I'm thinking of going with two stereo setups. One will be a Princeton Reverb in stereo with a Yamaha Fifty-112 solid state amp. Dirt through the Princeton, chorus and some other dirt through the Yamaha. The second rig will possibly be the ACC G60T solid state amp along with a Peavey Bandit and will feature a couple of cheap racks, the Ring Thing, and some other bits and pieces

[dandy13]

I use a Gibson falcon and a silverface Princeton in stereo. it rocks

[hotmess]

 

Nice. How is it wired?

 

 

Mono jack for regular rigs. Stereo jack splits the pickup signals. Separate volume and tone controls.

 

Really awesome stuff. I don't know why Ovation stopped making solidbodies.

[sommy]

I've been running stereo for years

[ChuckNorris1982]

I'm running a stereo power amp into a stereo 4x12 at the moment, but I'd like to get another 4x12 happening so I can get more spread. I figure if I get a 2nd 4x12 with different speakers, then I'll also have two nicely different tones going on simultaneously.

 

Also, I'm adding a mixer to my rack soon. The plan is that I'll be running my rack delays and reverbs through the mixer in parallel, and this will give me independent level, EQ and pan control over each component in my rig, including the dry signal. I figure this will be useful for on the fly adjustments at gigs where my presets might be too wet for the room, but it also gives me the opportunity to set all the pan controls to center to mono-ise the signal for when I encounter a grumpy sound engineer who refuses to mic up 2 cabs.

[JRBain]

 

Also, I'm adding a mixer to my rack soon. The plan is that I'll be running my rack delays and reverbs through the mixer in parallel, and this will give me independent level, EQ and pan control over each component in my rig, including the dry signal. I figure this will be useful for on the fly adjustments at gigs where my presets might be too wet for the room, but it also gives me the opportunity to set all the pan controls to center to mono-ise the signal for when I encounter a grumpy sound engineer who refuses to mic up 2 cabs.

 

 

That sounds like a brilliant idea. I could use that even in my little setup sometimes!

[ChuckNorris1982]

It is a great idea - I think a lot of the big fridge rack guys have being doing similar for years now, but they tend to use fancy rackmount line mixers which cost an arm and a leg. I just need the mixer to have 2 mono pre-fader sends and enough independent channels for my dry signal and stereo returns, so I figure I might as well go the cheapo route and pick up a 2nd hand mixer from ebay for about

[frenchji]

I used to run an ac30 with a marshall jcm800... it sounded awesome... to much to carry though. Now I've been running a Roland Jazz Chorus with a mesa 5:25.. soon to be replaced by a morgan dag15.

[V]

 

Mono jack for regular rigs. Stereo jack splits the pickup signals. Separate volume and tone controls. Really awesome stuff. I don't know why Ovation stopped making solidbodies.

 

 

Ah, so like the rick-o-system.

 

Mine uses two mono jacks. I didn't want to worry about losing/breaking/forgetting to bring/not having the right length stereo cable. You can always find a spare mono cable.

[starsailor803]

If mistersuperfly should happen to read this post: I remember you used to run a V-plex with your Hiwatt in a stereo rig. First, how awesome did they sound together? Second, did you run your effects and everything to both amps or did you do the dry/wet thing?

 

Anyone else who's had a similar set up feel free to chime in.

[delayed delay]

 

I did the stereo thing awhile back w/ a Rectoverb and a HW AC15.... it was fun. I'm actually just switching amps now though. I've recently experienced the awesomeness of the Z28 & Maz 18 pairing and can/will attest to its glory, but I don't quite have the funds for to pull it off for myself. So, likely, the Maz is coming and the '28 is going. Money aside, I just can't stomach having two $1k amps sitting here right now either. I'd love to, but that seems reckless for a mancave/church player like me.

 

 

Wow! Didn't know you were getting rid of your z28 in favor of the versatile maz 18. That was part of my dilemma as well with the galaxie I had. It sounded great, but with the maz, I just had soooo many more options.

[TheStallionMang]

I started using my Blues Jr with my old Fender Ultra Chorus in stereo via my Akai Headrush E2 and it really sounds good. I had the headrush for a while and never used the multiple outputs on it until last month. I'm not going back.

[Emory]

I have 2 stereo guitars: Ovation VXT and Parker P-36, both with the piezo bridge and mag pickups. Clean acoustic to one amp, dirt to other. Plus over here we do mini-concerts for charity on beach (no big thing, really). So must use battery amps. I have a Roland Microcube RX and Vox Da-5 that seem to work. That way I get all of 10 watts instead of 5 with one amp. I love that spread so much got a Korg muliti with stereo output to use with "normal" guitars. 1+1=3 when it comes to stereo, imho

[Cirrus]

I went dual mono/stereo with my rig for a few months last year - an AC30 and Night Train. The split happened straight away, so there were seperate distortions/overdrive/compressor etc going into each side of a Mod- and Time-Factor, then on to the amps. The idea of stereo modulation and delays really appealed, as did having the flexibility to mix clean and distorted sounds - Being the only guitarist in the band, I thought it'd be a great way to get bigger sounds.

I observed a few things;

- Sound guys generally don't like it, to the point where despite being very polite and explaining how the rig was set up, a number of them point blank refused to mic up both amps. The occasional forward thinking visionary (joke!) knew what I was going for. But a lot of the time even if both amps were mic'd, they'd decide one amp sounded better and feature that over the other.
- Stereo isn't stereo if you're going through a mono PA system. A lot of them are. And if it's a stereo PA system + your amps are panned, you face another issue: those on the left of the stage can't hear what's going on through the right amp. So if you've got a rhythmic delay that's a dotted 8th on one side and a quarter note on the other, some of the audience aren't even going to know. Ditto if you've got fuzz coming out one amp and a clean sound for clarity from the other.
- If you're running seperate overdrives after the stereo split, stomping on an overdrive or volume boost only has about half the effect you want it to as it's not affecting half your tone.

Some things are cool though - stereo chorus is lush and somehow sounds more real that mono. Delays are also cool because they really emphisise the spaciousness of a stereo guitar tone. Ultimately though my feeling is that unless you've got your own sound guy you can trust, it's not idiot proof and that's important for most bands that play out and about at pubs, bars etc. With only one mic on one amp, there's only so far a sound guy can deviate from what you intend the audience to hear (excluding stupid mix effects i suppose).

Now I've got two AC30's, and using them together is great fun but it's a question of who the audience is - If it were all for my benefit I'd do stereo all day, but since I can never be sure what the audience are actually going to hear with a stereo rig in a strange sound man's hands, I'd rather not run the risk. Recording is a different matter - I'd use stereo in a heartbeat there if it's the sound I wanted, because you've got the control to make sure the final mix is as you intend.

So, PUNCHY CONCLUSION:

Stereo is fun, but prone to problems unless you do your own sound.

[thezeng]

^^ good post, thanks for that

[spoonie g]

I toured with an a/b rig for years. Though I don't think I ever had a sound guy refuse to mic both amps, I'm positive there were a few times they didn't run both through the P.A. I ran an ac-30 for clean and a jcm-800 for distortion.

[Cirrus]

I toured with an a/b rig for years. Though I don't think I ever had a sound guy refuse to mic both amps, I'm positive there were a few times they didn't run both through the P.A. I ran an ac-30 for clean and a jcm-800 for distortion.

 

I bet that sounded epic.

 

To be honest, some of the sound guys I've met barely qualify for the "guy" part, let alone "sound". And I don't mean they were girls, the one female sound person I've met was wicked. I mean they weren't human. Guess it makes it all the more rewarding when you meet people who are good at live sound, which isn't actually an easy skill.

 

Stereo's a funny one. We view it as better than mono because stereo is the default music delivery format that's been dominant for the last 40 years. But why is it better?

 

Instruments are generally point sources, basically mono, until you get very close to them. Even drum kits, spread wide as they are in many recordings, are mono until you're closer than a few meters from them. Singers are mono. Trumpets and violins are mono. One guitar into one amp is mono. Acoustic instruments that are wide enough to be stereo are only really stereo when you're actually playing that instrument - a piano for example. For that reason I think musicians think about music in stereo a lot more than your average listener.

 

We think of stereo as being closer to real life than mono, but it's not really. It's a very crude approximation, with the sound strung between two points. Maybe it's because we've got two ears that something resonates with us when we think about stereo? That kind of makes sense, except we don't hear in stereo - we can tell up and down, back and front, stereo doesn't give us that. In real life we generally hear mono sources in a 3d sound field that we create in our brain.

 

There was a thread recently, can't even remember what forum it was in, where someone was saying George Martin couldn't possibly have been a very good sound man because his stereo Beatles mixes were awful - drum kits hard panned, singers out on their own on the other side, etc. But it took several years of experimenting to actually work out how to use stereo at all - it wasn't obvious and now we have some very specific rules about how to use it without wierding people out, because it's not a very robust system and it doesn't always stand up to real world listening conditions. We need to put the bass in the middle, don't hard pan anything important in case the listener has one channel going into another room, etc.

 

I think it's interesting that quadraphonic/3d sound was actually being developed around the same time as stereo - like the engineers weren't happy with the limitations of two speakers and the only reason it stuck was that two was the most speakers most people were happy with on the shelves in their living room.

 

So I've gone wildly off point here, must apologise! I guess what I'm trying to say is that to me, a stereo rig can be a very awkward thing - it's a little string of artificial spaciousness in a very real 3d world of mono point sources, and unless the listener stands in just the right spot, they're not going to hear it the way you want them to. With one speaker I guess all you've really got to worry about is the treble beam and off axis response.

 

Meh, I'll stop blabbering on now. :blah:

 

I think playing two amps is really, really cool and you can mix and match some great tones that way, but I also think you need to be careful to make it so each tone works in isolation, and that the two amps, summed together in mono, still sound good without the space between them. Then you'll have a multi amp rig that's pretty much bullet proof.

 

Hopefully I've not just killed this thread...

[V]

Well, with a stereo guitar rig you aren't trying to make it sound more "real" at all. Most guitars are in mono. What you're usually trying to do is make the guitar/effects fill the room more with either motion (panning and stereo time-based effects) or by using two complimentary static sounds that fill out the sound spectrum or sound more like two guitarists playing at the same time. I don't think there's any element of recreation involved at all, but rather just a bigger fuller sound that is helpful for a lot of types of music.

[Cirrus]

Yeah, I think you're right. Philosophising about stereo is pretty pointless, in retrospect. Everyone just go around my post.

[V]

Yeah, I think you're right. Philosophising about stereo is pretty pointless, in retrospect. Everyone just go around my post.

 

Ha ha well, I think you're right in a certain way, though. The reason a stereo guitar rig (or a leslie speaker) sounds impressive is partly because most other instruments are pretty much in mono. It is unexpected and ear-catching to hear one person make sounds coming from various places and that's part of what makes it fun.

[spoonie g]

I bet that sounded epic. To be honest, some of the sound guys I've met barely qualify for the "guy" part, let alone "sound". And I don't mean they were girls, the one female sound person I've met was wicked. I mean they weren't human. Guess it makes it all the more rewarding when you meet people who are good at live sound, which isn't actually an easy skill. Stereo's a funny one. We view it as better than mono because stereo is the default music delivery format that's been dominant for the last 40 years. But why is it better? Instruments are generally point sources, basically mono, until you get very close to them. Even drum kits, spread wide as they are in many recordings, are mono until you're closer than a few meters from them. Singers are mono. Trumpets and violins are mono. One guitar into one amp is mono. Acoustic instruments that are wide enough to be stereo are only really stereo when you're actually playing that instrument - a piano for example. For that reason I think musicians think about music in stereo a lot more than your average listener. We think of stereo as being closer to real life than mono, but it's not really. It's a very crude approximation, with the sound strung between two points. Maybe it's because we've got two ears that something resonates with us when we think about stereo? That kind of makes sense, except we don't hear in stereo - we can tell up and down, back and front, stereo doesn't give us that. In real life we generally hear mono sources in a 3d sound field that we create in our brain. There was a thread recently, can't even remember what forum it was in, where someone was saying George Martin couldn't possibly have been a very good sound man because his stereo Beatles mixes were awful - drum kits hard panned, singers out on their own on the other side, etc. But it took several years of experimenting to actually work out how to use stereo at all - it wasn't obvious and now we have some very specific rules about how to use it without wierding people out, because it's not a very robust system and it doesn't always stand up to real world listening conditions. We need to put the bass in the middle, don't hard pan anything important in case the listener has one channel going into another room, etc. I think it's interesting that quadraphonic/3d sound was actually being developed around the same time as stereo - like the engineers weren't happy with the limitations of two speakers and the only reason it stuck was that two was the most speakers most people were happy with on the shelves in their living room. So I've gone wildly off point here, must apologise! I guess what I'm trying to say is that to me, a stereo rig can be a very awkward thing - it's a little string of artificial spaciousness in a very real 3d world of mono point sources, and unless the listener stands in just the right spot, they're not going to hear it the way you want them to. With one speaker I guess all you've really got to worry about is the treble beam and off axis response. Meh, I'll stop blabbering on now. :blah: I think playing two amps is really, really cool and you can mix and match some great tones that way, but I also think you need to be careful to make it so each tone works in isolation, and that the two amps, summed together in mono, still sound good without the space between them. Then you'll have a multi amp rig that's pretty much bullet proof. Hopefully I've not just killed this thread...

 

Stereo is awesome, but it hardly ever gets translated that way unless you have a sound guy that knows exactly what you want. Believe me, I know. That one rig used to be stereo til I realized either the sound guy could give two {censored}s or was just an evil mofo, because they almost always panned to the same area or reduced the guitar in the soundstage to make up for the other instruments.

[dcooper830]

Yeah I love running stereo. I do it a lot when I'm jamming at home.

 

But I never do it live for all the reasons mentioned. You gotta have a sound person who will do your stereo-ness justice.

 

And even then.... people on one side of the room are gonna hear you differently than people on the other side.

 

But check this out..... here's a clip I did trying to re-create what it's like when I run my Lexicon MPX-550 through 2 amps in stereo. It sounds awesome!!

 

 

 

[video=youtube;eYaw-iYPF48]