Is a high gain amp switcher what I need?

[Buster Leggs]

I have plans to run a C+ and a Heartbreaker together with a 4X12 cab. I was thinking about a radial head bone to do this with but I recently acquired a studio 22+. I absolutely love the clean channel on the 22 with volume 1 on 10. It has a sound that's similar to the Who (to my ears) and if I get the gain mod it should provide even more options to me. The head bone only switchs between two amps. Is a high gain amp switcher what I need to run these 3 amps? Is there something else that will meet my needs that I should look into? Thank you in advance for any help or advice you can offer me !!!

 

[a2dconverter]

Hey Buster...

The MESA PRO (HGAS) HIGH GAIN AMP SWITCHER only switches preamps...

You would feed all of your Heads FX sends, (or Slave outputs if your amp has them) to the HGAS, allowing you to switch and combine any of those preamps to a single return that you would send to your Time-based FX and then back to one of the head's FX Returns using that one Head's Power Amp Stage or a separate rack-power amp as shown.

Again, with the above set-up, unless your heads have Slave-out as shown above, and since you are not using the FX returns of the other heads, those heads will have to have load boxes on the speaker outs so that you do not fry your Heads.

The other complication is that the MESA HGAS requires contact closures from a control switcher to operate...which is another piece of equipment that becomes another single point of failure therefore reducing your reliability.

The easier way to switch those heads is how you mentioned... by using something like the Radial that switches speaker out's... But you need a 3 input one that will switch 3 Amp speaker outs to one cabinet....and I have never seen,
or don't remember, one like that.

So you will need to track down one of the other 3 or 4 output amp switchers that will switch your guitar to 3 or 4 amplifier inputs... (in that case, you will require a cabinet for each amp)

Here's a few that switch the guitar to 3 or 4 amplifier inputs and transformer isolates the amps to eliminate hum problems...(very important!)

http://www.frampton.com/3banger.html

http://lehle.com/EN/Lehle-1at3-SGoS

http://voodoolab.com/ampselector.htm

PS: using the above complicates FX insertion unless you are using some type of control switcher (Voodoo Lab GCX or RJM Effects Gizmo) to switch the FX in conjunction with the Amplifier Switch.

I hope this helps!

seeya

Joe

 

[Buster Leggs]

Joe, thank you so much, this is exactly the info I need. The high gain amp switcher is something other than what I thought it was and doesn't suit my needs at all. I've got it narrowed down to the framptone and the voodoo amp selector but leaning towards the voodoo. I need to research them both a little more to understand what they both can do and which one is best for my application. You've helped steer me in the direction I need to be heading in. Joe, thanks for taking the time to gather the information to put me on the right path.