Will this fry my amps?

[brandass]

I know you're not supposed to run one amp into the front end of another, but what about sharing a pedal in their effects loops?

 

In other words, a send from each amp into a Y cable into the pedal, and the pedal's output to a Y cable back to the returns of both amps.

 

Should I expect black smoke?

[Wyatt]

 

I know you're not supposed to run one amp into the front end of another, but what about sharing a pedal in their effects loops? In other words, a send from each amp into a Y cable into the pedal, and the pedal's output to a Y cable back to the returns of both amps. Should I expect black smoke?

 

 

I won't fry either amp to try, but you may find it doesn't work.

 

You're dealing with possible mismatches input and output impedance with FX loops, line-level versus instrument-level loops and/or effects, etc. Issues you could run into is neither amp will like the returning signal and it'll sound like ass...or one amp may sound like ass...or one amp will have a much stronger send and completely overpower the other,...the amps could be out of phase with one another...etc.

[Help!I'maRock!]

DON'T CROSS THE STREAMS

[ashasha]

I wouldn't be worried about the output of the pedals going into the returns. There should be enough signal there to feed both, but anytime that you combine two signals into something with a y cable its usually not as good as you would envision it being. If you can find something that would work like a simple mixer to feed the FX sends of each amp into and then take an output from that and feed the pedals I'd bet you could pull it off. And even better you'd have the ability to mix the signal level so if one is louder than the other or whatever you can tweak on it. Just remember that it's going to be two pre-amps combined though so it could sound glorious or like complete ass.

[brandass]

Thanks for the prediction that fried amp would not be served tonight.

I did the experiment, and indeed, no smoke.

Also as you predicted, the results were complex and not entirely pleasant. One amp dominated, but turning up the other actually worked pretty well. Sort of cool as a novelty. I'm going to leave the set-up intact and try it again tomorrow, maybe it'll have some staying power. If that's the case, will try the mixer to make it more tweakable.

Thanks!

[Wyatt]

 

Thanks for the prediction that fried amp would not be served tonight. I did the experiment, and indeed, no smoke. Also as you predicted, the results were complex and not entirely pleasant. One amp dominated, but turning up the other actually worked pretty well. Sort of cool as a novelty. I'm going to leave the set-up intact and try it again tomorrow, maybe it'll have some staying power. If that's the case, will try the mixer to make it more tweakable. Thanks!

 

 

So...may I ask why you are mixing both preamps to both poweramps?

[brandass]

A fair question. This was intended to be a cheap and easy way of getting two pedals (a reverb and a Hush) to work with two different amps simultaneously. Both amps benefit from the pedals, but I'd prefer not to buy duplicates if possible. They both work best in the loops of my amps, so it seemed like merging the loops at the pedals was the simple route forward, as long as it didn't damage the amps. And it went rather well, I think, for such an odd mxing of preamps and poweramps. I'll compare to a more typical solution (putting the reverb and Hush at the end of the pedal chain and then Y-ing out to the front ends of both amps); I'm guessing that if it's just the reverb alone the more conventional solution will sound better, but with the Hush it might go the other way, one of the preamps is noisy. In the end maybe I'll buy another Hush, just seems silly to do so without trying the alternatives first.

[WRGKMC]

You can use the preamp of one amp, pass it through the pedals, then split the outpur from the pedals

and feed both returns if you want. You cant effectively feed both inputs to the pedals and expect any kind

of independance there with a mono signal. Even if you used a stereo mixer, you'd need two sets of pedals.

[nicholai]

Pedal with two outs.