ABYing Two Different Amps?

[iHatePop]

Hey does anyone ABY two of their amps to get a cool sound? I wanna hear some rigs and the tones you get!

I ABYed my Mesa DC-5 and my Marshall JCM 800 2205 together into my stereo Marshall 1960BV with V30s and wow. It sounds HUGE!

I know many of my favourite artists do this to achieve some of my favourite tones such as Godsmack, who used to run Marshalls and Dual Rectifiers to get their sound, and Green Day who runs two modded Marshall Plexis, one with a tight 80s metal sound and one with a big, bassy bottom end to get the massive tone.

I would never use this live (unless I got super rich and could hire roadies) but for recording or messing around at home it's super fun!

I love the crunchy treble and mids of the JCM 800 mixed with the gain and big bottom end of the DC-5. The JCM 800 has the tighter top end to keep any palm mutes clear, but the Boogie has the massive frequency range to make the notes ring out smoothly and sound full.

 

[lowercasee]

Sounds like a great combo you have going on there! I am currently ABYing my 2 Jet City 20 watt heads through my Jet City stereo 4x12 (with Eminence Legend copies) and it sounds awesome. The JCA22H head has a bright, biting modern metal tone and the JCA22 Custom head is darker, deeper and more British voiced. The combined sound is HUGE and very cool!

I use a Radial Twin Cities ABY box since for the splitting since it has the ground lift and 108 degree phase shift to balance the signal. My next plan is to put the speaker wiring in the cabinet in an X pattern for an even fuller sound. Planning on trying my Mark III (blue) and the JC 22 Custom together next, that should be a cool sound too.

 

[iHatePop]

That sounds rad! Eventually, once I get my other 4x12 back from my band's jam space I wanna ABY both my amps into different cabs and actually turn em up and get a huge sound at a nice high volume. Unfortunately, I live in a townhouse and can't turn my amps up much, but it's still fun!

Funny enough, I actually just use my Boss NS-2 as an ABY, as awful as you'd think that'd sound, but it does the job at low volumes. Just use the Send and Output to each amp. Eventually I'll get a proper ABY, but for messing around at home the BS2 is a way to experiment.

 

[lowercasee]

I used to use my stereo chorus pedal as a splitter. It was fine for cleans and lower gain, but as soon as volume or gain got anywhere near "fun", there was way too much squealing and the amps were out of phase. Give the Radial Twin Cities a try when you get your ABY, it works great and removes the ground loop noise and corrects the phase.