Musician Gear & Tech Discussion

I currently own two Fender Blues Jr.s that I use with a Boss GT-6 pedal board with stereo outputs. I love the stereo imagine that's produced from this small traveling rig.

I also have a pair of Marshall Amps (JCM900 100 and JCM200 TSL 100) with individual cabs that I use in my home studio individually. The question on my mind is what would be the best way to setup these amps in stereo without using the Boss GT-6 pedal board as the stereo preamp?

I tried the ToneBone ABY pedal. It's not stereo. I tried Boss Digital Reverb RV-5 with stereo outputs. It only works when the pedal is on. I also tried the Boss Digital Delay DD6 with stereo outputs. The same results as the Reverb pedal.

I hate the ideal of using a separate preamp like Lexicon or Line 6. I prefer to keep my sound as is.

Show some love, please advise.

I have a Whanmmy pedal and run out of the two outputs. One is wet one dry gives a fake kind of stereo effect. Set the pedal for detune and you get a real think sound.

Lately I just slave one amp to the next, for live playing all that stereo effect gets lost anyway.

I have an Arion Analog Delay (SAD1) pedal with mono and stereo out, I used that and a 100 watt 4 channel Radio Shack PA amp with my Peavey MX before I got the Super Reverb. I ran the SAD1 through the effects loop of the MX so I already had EQ and effects, one output back into the effects loop, the other output to the PA amp and speaker on the other side of the stage. That gave me the same sound on both sides of the stage, the effects loop is placed after the EQ and preamp, so I had both clean and gain channels, effects and it was already EQ'd. the PA amp had no EQ so that was good. The bass player loved it, he was always complaining he couldn't hear me until I started running stereo. I'd stand at center stage and have someone turn the PA up slowly until I heard it in stereo, then never touch it again, all changes in the MX went through to the PA, no volume changes necessary once it was balanced the way I wanted it.

Paleopete,

Thanks for the advice. You touched on a very common problem that I've thought exists. Most guitarists are glued to their amps. The moment you walk away from your amp, like to the center of the stage the sound gets lost. And the first thing you naturally reach for is the volume on the guitar, only to hear from the other musicians " turn your volume down". I personally don't like the sound coming out of PA speakers. They seems to work better for keys and voices, which is why I like the stereo setup. I also agree with you that having sound coming of both sides of the stage helps the drummer, bass player and key players. It fills in the gap when playing chords and solo without throwing the entire mix out of balance.

Larry Carlton uses this approach.

I'm dying to get another Super Reverb and another MX and some sort of delay or whatever with stereo out so I can start running stereo again...I really miss it, but with the dual amp rig I have right now, stereo wouldn't serve my purposes. I run one for clean, the MX, and one for raunch n roll, the Super Reverb. I put an A/B switch between volume pedal and amps, it works great but isn't stereo.

I'm coming to the conclusion that the only way to get true stereo is to connect a stereo preamp / processer in front of the amps, like my Boss GT-6 or use an effects rack unit like Lexicon MPX1 or TC Electronics thru the dual sends and returns of the amps. Additionally, there's only a few stereo sounds that exists such as: delay, chorus, reverb, flanger and shifter. Outside of these types of sounds, everything else is mono. Even when using a separate preamp / processer / effect unit, the output of a dry, mono signal into two amps is still mono 2xs.

The quest continues!