Stereo Rig Approaches - Plus Get All Your Chan Voicings

[rarebitusa]

A stereo rig... yea it's pretty awesome. Some may remember the infamous 80s Steve Lukather Starlicks vid. The IIC+ fuzzbox and Coliseums. I actually still have that VHS tape somewhere. Really drooled over that rig back in the day (still do). At this YT vid timemark Luke goes over the rig for a few mins, indeed as he says a stereo rig really "widens the sound"



Sticking with the stereo theme here, there was this post / thread that had a cool vid @Doug Doppler did WRT to a JP2C stereo rig build. A bit involved but pretty cool nonetheless.

JP2C Combo Stereo Rig

A gear lacking player, for stereo I've been running a mimimalistic, low hanging fruit implementation. Essentially taking a stereo out from the GT-1000 Core and running that to a very neutral, solid state combo. It's a simple addition that just requires some additonal dedicated patches to implement. The Tech 21 could be replaced by a more capable tube amp tone like my Ace if I was motivated to load it in the SUV


Ok now the segway... just stay with me... it will hopefully make sense. Say you've got a 2 chan amp with 3 voicings on each chan, ie: Stiletto, Badlander but you want access to all 3 voicings at the tap of a footswitch. Well I actually modded my Stiletto Ace to implement voicing selection, outlined in this post below, but it has the drawback of having to find a TMB and gain settings compromise between the voicings, not optimal but it does work.

Stiletto Voicing Control Mod

Now how about having a rig that provides a solution for both stereo and all voicings? Well @Doug Doppler has come up with a cool proposal using dual Badlander combos. In short if I understand it completely Doug runs an midi controlled A/B up front, then sums the preamp sends to mono and into the loop effects ie: stereo delay which splits into L/R and back into the amps fx returns. With midi chan switching on each amp and 4 chans you get those 3 voicings and the caveat of one duplicate which can be setup differently. The choice of a pushed Clean voicing would be cool.

The hopeless gear nerd in me was like oh yea cool worth posting this.

 

[Doug Doppler]

A stereo rig... yea it's pretty awesome. Some may remember the infamous 80s Steve Lukather Starlicks vid. The IIC+ fuzzbox and Coliseums. I actually still have that VHS tape somewhere. Really drooled over that rig back in the day (still do). At this YT vid timemark Luke goes over the rig for a few mins, indeed as he says a stereo rig really "widens the sound"



Sticking with the stereo theme here, there was this post / thread that had a cool vid @Doug Doppler did WRT to a JP2C stereo rig build. A bit involved but pretty cool nonetheless.

JP2C Combo Stereo Rig

A gear lacking player, for stereo I've been running a mimimalistic, low hanging fruit implementation. Essentially taking a stereo out from the GT-1000 Core and running that to a very neutral, solid state combo. It's a simple addition that just requires some additonal dedicated patches to implement. The Tech 21 could be replaced by a more capable tube amp tone like my Ace if I was motivated to load it in the SUV

View attachment 5445
Ok now the segway... just stay with me... it will hopefully make sense. Say you've got a 2 chan amp with 3 voicings on each chan, ie: Stiletto, Badlander but you want access to all 3 voicings at the tap of a footswitch. Well I actually modded my Stiletto Ace to implement voicing selection, outlined in this post below, but it has the drawback of having to find a TMB and gain settings compromise between the voicings, not optimal but it does work.

Stiletto Voicing Control Mod

Now how about having a rig that provides a solution for both stereo and all voicings? Well @Doug Doppler has come up with a cool proposal using dual Badlander combos. In short if I understand it completely Doug runs an midi controlled A/B up front, then sums the preamp sends to mono and into the loop effects ie: stereo delay which splits into L/R and back into the amps fx returns. With midi chan switching on each amp and 4 chans you get those 3 voicings and the caveat of one duplicate which can be setup differently. The choice of a pushed Clean voicing would be cool.

The hopeless gear nerd in me was like oh yea cool worth posting this.

Hello again @rarebitusa - thanks for the shout out - appreciated, as always. NOTE, the top of that livestream had a few challenges, so scrub the 2+ hour timeline if you dare!

That crafty Stiletto mod - I take it that could work on a Badlander as well?

Per the Badlander 'hack' - I wanted to be able to randomly access all three modes via a pair of the 50 watt combos. Boogie Switch Track A/B gives me access to inputs on both amps. channel switching done via a MIDI Matrixi via an RJM PBC/6X. As you pointed out @rarebitusa, I'm summing both FX sends via a Lehle P-Split III, and in turn that goes into a GigRig Underliner to I can have 3 levels to toggle between. That goes mono into a BOSS CP-!X (never tried a stomp compressor in the loop before) > BOSS NS-1X > a trio of UA pedals in stereo to mimic what I use in my DAW (Astra > Starlight > Golden) > FX Returns with an Tekwerk ISOLATOR 1 prototype on one of the returns. Tekwerk is Maddi Schieferstein's company. He's John Petrucci's longtime tech and his gear rocks!!!

...and here's one of Luke's amps and cabs that came up for sale $20,000 a with halfback cab - looks like the same gear as the video

 

[Doug Doppler]

@rarebitusa...

 

[rarebitusa]

That crafty Stiletto mod - I take it that could work on a Badlander as well?

Well I honestly thought about it but without a schematic I am less adventurous. However I can't see why a similar approach of footswitched relays couldn't get one there.

I am curious how did you arrange the Badlanders voicings? Which voicing did you end up duplicating?

.and here's one of Luke's amps and cabs that came up for sale $20,000 a with halfback cab - looks like the same gear as the video

Oh my... and it sold LOL I never recall seeing that Mesa ad with Lukather, very cool.

Thanks for posting those rig details, a very cool rabbit trail.

 

[DECEMBER]

I have a 2-amp stereo setup that lets you switch between the two amps' preamps as if they are channels of one amp, while whichever amp is selected plays thru both power amps/speakers in stereo.
Gtr -> front-of-amp pedals -> y-splitter to both amp inputs (with a buffer and/or line isolator w/ground lift on one side of the split).
Both amps' FX sends -> Saturnworks A/B switch, single output -> FX loop pedals (becoming stereo) -> both FX returns.
This way, the same pedal chain is shared between both amps and both power amps are always active, and between the amps' footswitches plus the A/B switch, you can access all channels of both amps. All it takes is a $10 y-splitter adapter and $30 A/B switch (and a line isolator or buffer if you end up with a ground loop).
Now I'm running stereo wet/dry/wet with a Mark V or Carvin V3 as the preamp, A/B switch first in loops selects the active preamp, then signal splits after EQ in the loop, one to dry return (Mark V power amp, top 2x12), one thru FX loop chain, becoming stereo, returns to the stereo FX return of a Line 6 Flextone III XL 2x12 (which is driving the bottom 2x12) just for the stereo solid-state power amp. The V3 has a load box instead of speaker so it can just be a preamp running thru the Mark V and Line 6 power amps.
The Seymour Duncan Power Stage 100 stereo would be good for this, too, I'd like to get one.
I just ordered a Rectifier Badlander 50, which will be replacing the V3 in this rig. With the 2x2x12, I can also set it up in dual stereo wetL/dryL/dryR/wetR by placing another stereo chorus after the dry side of the FX loop split. With the Mark V & Badlander (or V3) power amps as the "dry" stereo pair and the Line 6 as the wet stereo pair, with one 12" speaker on each of the 4 power amps. Top 2 dry, bottom 2 wet.

 

[rarebitusa]

I just ordered a Rectifier Badlander 50,

awesome

 

[Eevil]

Well…

last week I hooked up my stereo setup

Marshall 2203 and Mark V to 4x12 Recto trad L/R. For routing etc. there’s Boss GT1000 and Mark V channels are handled by em custom stuff.

The preamps are routed to GTs loops and returned to fx returns. Then in GT there’s this divider which allows to select which route to use (mono) or use both panned to L/R.. usually first is in use. Setting the levels for everything is a bit of a chore but doable. Also ground loop was there but that was fixed with some trsnsformer box.

It’s actually nice to have all the spacey stuff coming from different sides

Would I haul all this to gig. No way but it’s fun to tinker a bit now and then

 

[bandit2013]

I took the expensive route. Depends on how much of my hearing I wish to lose. My tolerance is just two amps but have run two pairs of amps at the same time. For a good non-competing arrangement would be to have two of the same amp. That way you can make use of a single stereo effects unit (run the loops of both amps, one loop in the left and the other in the right). I have tried pairing up the JP2C and a Mark VII, sounded ok but the one amp had more influence than the other in the effect unit so it was not balanced. I learned this early on with the two Triple Crown amps TC100 and TC50. That will work fine. Running different amps as a stereo rig like a Roadster and MWDR just did not balance out right. The crown jewel was the pair of RA100s. The reason why I stopped using the Mesa 5BGEQ is that it is a mono effect. Boss EQ-200 is full stereo. Anyhow, it matters how you arrange the amps and cabinets. I tried a staggard approach BAD, VII, BAD, VII and that was not as rewarding as the BAD, VII, VII, BAD setup. No rules what you use in the loops, keep the two pairs of the same with their own FX units. When using two pairs, you can address the side amps with a different set of parameters in their respective loops, delay with ping pong effect is really cool. Just note that running this rig at full power is excessively loud.

At the moment, I shrunk the rid down to just the two Mark VII as I am figuring out the Strymon BigSky MX unit. The key ingredient is to keep the amp's inputs isolated from each other. Mesa switch track will do that. I now have two of them, I can run a mono to stereo effect on the front end as well.

Now for a dry/wet/wet rig setup, That can be done with a splitter on the one FX loop of the dry rig. I would recommend a Lehel P-split since one of the outputs is transformer isolated so that would be used to an FX unit that ties into the input of the stereo power amp. This is just to prevent unwanted ground loops forming from an input of one amp to the ground circuit of the other. I would also recommend using the P-Split or an ABY switcher that has at least one isolated output to prevent damage if you are going to use a solid state amp as one of the channels in a stereo rig. I had tried using an FX unit for splitting a mono to stereo signal and burned out the fx unit, Copper traces were literally vaporized due to DC coupling between the two amps. Isolation transformers will prevent that from happening.

As it seems, running three amps as a wet/dry/wet rig does have its challenges. Usually what is in the middle tends to be a power adder or contradictory attenuator if the amps are out of phase. I did not have any issue with this rig though. I basically uses a Lehel P-split to isolate the amp in the middle and ran the outer amps using the Mesa Switch track. Stereo FX loop with the two RA100 and the 2555x was used as a dry rig.

There are many ways to hook up a complex stereo setup as previously described. Since I do not have a stereo power amp, I will make use of what I do have. Actually, running the preamps of all of the amps in the chain can result in some really good sounds.

Some amps may not like to be slaved into if they lack any channel or global master following the FX loop. Some can be tricky to slave out as you may find there is no volume control from the preamp. Badlander has its channel masters following the FX loop so slaving out to an input of another amp, you will not be able to adjust the volume (it will be almost at max) unless the amp used as a power slave has a volume control following its FX loop or input. Most amps do have some volume controls after the FX loop. The RA100's do not have any volume controls after the FX loop as the channel masters are in front of the loop. So, slaving a BAD into an RA100 will be extremely loud experience. Knowing your gear will help you make the right decisions. Sure, a volume pedal used between the BAD and RA100 would work (assuming it is suitable for the line level signal).

Experiment away, we learn from our mistakes and sometimes we get something in return.