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Dual Amp setups


MarkJarvis
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Hi All

Wanted to see how you are using dual amp setups. I have been experimenting trying to get a tone

I like using two amps hard panned. Since I play in a three piece (Guitar Bass, Drums) it gets kinda thin

sometimes so I tried doing some effects on one path or the other which ended up sounding pretty cool.

 

This video was set to our recent online live session and has this kind of dual path setup described above.

 

Path A Soldano Lead Panned hard right with a tremolo in line

Path B Rectifier With a Pitch Whammy panned hard left

 

I leave the mix so that the Guitar path stays complete while leaving the effects to create a kind of 'been over dubuded' sound but still only the one live performance

 

 

 

 

 

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Wow!  I'm really impressed!  That's a very creative patch (with great improvising) and I have not tried using a dual path the way you did, so thanks for a cool idea.  I love the music, which serves the video well (or maybe you prefer that the video serves the song!).  And of course doing this live online from different locations makes it all the more impressive!  Is that a clip from a movie?  Great job - I really enjoyed it!

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This inspired me quite a bit over my past efforts, and I went right to blending a Soldano OD with a Hiwatt, both driven hard on the power amp side.  The results were quite fantastic.  I don't hard pan though, I like to let a little trickle over to each side to give the sound a sense of balance along with space. 

 

Great work, thanks for the inspiration!

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The Video is stock footage..its nice Video for sure! I wasnt planning on distributing the patch but I can say its a work in progress

and if you have questions of the block usage, eq's or settings I can comment on that too.

 

Thanks!, interested how you guys use the dual paths...

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Yes, I'm doing dual amps and panned hard left and right. I'm currently using a JTM-45 on the left with a Plexi bright on the right.

 

I don't have a picture handy but I'll try and explain as simply as I can.

 

Guitar signal comes in on Path 1A and goes to a pitch whammy, FX loop 1, Volume, tube screamer, Dyna-comp and a 10-band EQ then it splits. 

 

On path 1B is script phaser to a timmah over drive to the jtm-45 and an IR then out Left.

On path 2A is a plastichorus to the Plexi  to a tape echo then to an IR then out Right

 

path 1A split routes to path 2A.

Path 1B split routes to the Left multi out.

Path 2A (input set to none) routes to the Right multi out

 

I use the pitch whammy for on the fly detuning, the FX loop is my wah pedal, tube screamer is lead tone, the dyna-comp is my secret sauce, ratio at 5:1 level at +8db as this drives the amps just oh so nicely. The EQ is for rolling off low and high and boosting the overall level a little bit more. I like this because this part of the signal chain affects both amps.

 

The timmah is just for over driving the jtm-45 a bit more, the plastichorus on just the Plexi with the tape echo between the amp and IR is just awesome. 

I really prefer to use my effects for creating a tone vs "oh, that's chorus" or "oh, that's phaser". I like it to blend in and others have to ask what the heck I'm using.

 

The amp gains and volume's are on 10 and the bias is around 7, most of the other settings are default, a little extra mid on the plexi.

 

 

and your guitar sound in the video is awesome.

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Thanks for the reply, regarding 'The EQ is for rolling off low and high and boosting the overall level a little bit more'

 

I have heard many people tell me they do this but so far I have not been able to get my ears liking rolling off the highs and lows

in fact I generally boost them..but trying different versions for sure...

 

Also, regarding 'I really prefer to use my effects for creating a tone vs "oh, that's chorus" or "oh, that's phaser". I like it to blend in and others have to ask what the heck I'm using'

I agree with that, I want an over all picture..

 

MJ

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Thanks for the reply, regarding 'The EQ is for rolling off low and high and boosting the overall level a little bit more'

 

I have heard many people tell me they do this but so far I have not been able to get my ears liking rolling off the highs and lows

in fact I generally boost them..but trying different versions for sure...

 

MJ

 

 

I'm using the 10-band EQ and I totally cut out the very low and very high, those really aren't there for a guitar anyway so I yank them out completely. I then will bring down 4K to taste (1 or 2 db, its subtle) and boost 1K about .5 or +1db. I just want to pull off a tiny bit of that edge on the highs but not so much that it reduces the presence of the guitar.

 

250hz I'll bring down a bit to remove some boomyness and make the low end feel tight but this is also to taste. Mostly it's the outer frequencies of the guitar that I'm just trimming lightly and a little extra bump in the middle just makes the notes in the middle of the guitar pop better in the mix.

 

Then just some extra level, about +1db or so to give extra life to the guitar. 

 

I put this right before the amp as I'm interested in affecting how the guitar signal appears before it hits the amp. I don't really care for it at the end of the chain personally.

 

I also roll off the low and high in the IR's but I don't get extreme with that, just get the frequencies that are more "noise" dipped out. I don't really go below 8khz rolling off the high in the IR for example. The IR is the last block in my chain.

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Do you guys use the two amp patches live or just for recording. I listened to the original video through headphones, so I really got the effect. It seems like you'd lose most of it live, unless you were going through FOH. Trying to hear it back on a monitor might change the playing dynamics.

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So for me, i do everything 'in the studio' but its a live performance over the internet. I am in No Cali, Bass is in Denver CO and the Drummer is in Canada. Its all in stereo with Headphones on. In fact other than I ahead of time will put together a few patches for the jam session everything you heard was live on the fly improvisation. I guess if i ever actually played live I would use both FOH and a stereo amp setup for the stage...I currently plug in the XLRs from Helix to the Focusrite liquid pre's for the best sound. NOTE I tried the Line 6 USB driver and that was awful latency. i used the SPDIF outs and that was good but the focusrite pre's sounded the best.

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So for me, i do everything 'in the studio' but its a live performance over the internet. I am in No Cali, Bass is in Denver CO and the Drummer is in Canada. Its all in stereo with Headphones on. In fact other than I ahead of time will put together a few patches for the jam session everything you heard was live on the fly improvisation. I guess if i ever actually played live I would use both FOH and a stereo amp setup for the stage...I currently plug in the XLRs from Helix to the Focusrite liquid pre's for the best sound. NOTE I tried the Line 6 USB driver and that was awful latency. i used the SPDIF outs and that was good but the focusrite pre's sounded the best.

 

That would be an interesting show... I'm imagining maybe 3 screens.... A screen in the middle with the video, a screen on the left for drums, and a screen on the right for the bass player, with you in front of it all on the stage.... All playing live for an audience.  Even better if it was 1 show in 3 cities at the same time for each artist....

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Regarding'That would be an interesting show... I'm imagining maybe 3 screens.... A screen in the middle with the video, a screen on the left for drums, and a screen on the right for the bass player, with you in front of it all on the stage.... All playing live for an audience.  Even better if it was 1 show in 3 cities at the same time for each artist..

 

A) You can actually do that with the software we use, you can stream to facebook or youtube and its hd video (three boxes with multiple layouts) the only thing is it looks webcam' ish so we dont use the video very often for performance, we do use it sometimes to see each other and get visual queues.

 

Thanks for the comments..we have been doing this online jams for a few years now and finally getting to a very satisfying result.

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 NOTE I tried the Line 6 USB driver and that was awful latency. 

Did you have your monitors connected to the Helix, and your recording track muted in your DAW while recording? If you don't do this, then you will have latency because your signal has to go through Helix, to your interface, PC/Mac, to your interface, to monitors. 

 

If you connect Helix to your DAW via usb, connect your monitors to the Helix, then there is zero latency. 

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Regarding'That would be an interesting show... I'm imagining maybe 3 screens.... A screen in the middle with the video, a screen on the left for drums, and a screen on the right for the bass player, with you in front of it all on the stage.... All playing live for an audience.  Even better if it was 1 show in 3 cities at the same time for each artist..

 

A) You can actually do that with the software we use, you can stream to facebook or youtube and its hd video (three boxes with multiple layouts) the only thing is it looks webcam' ish so we dont use the video very often for performance, we do use it sometimes to see each other and get visual queues.

 

Thanks for the comments..we have been doing this online jams for a few years now and finally getting to a very satisfying result.

 

Nothing wrong with webcammyness.... (Think Blair Witch, etc.) :)   But you're probably right, it could get distracting.  But, with a bunch of effort there could be some cool video effecty stuff... I'm imagining big hits and the drummer's screen kind of explodes apart and then comes back together.... the bass player kind of swells to the beat of his bass... stuff like that... A next level live performance video with a live performer present.

 

(It's been a long time since I went to a big venue concert, so I have no idea what they're doing these days with video on stage.  But this is different since not all the musicians are on stage)

 

  I didn't think it would be easy, but I bet it's coming.  I just thought it would be kind of novel, a little avant guardey

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Do you guys use the two amp patches live or just for recording. I listened to the original video through headphones, so I really got the effect. It seems like you'd lose most of it live, unless you were going through FOH. Trying to hear it back on a monitor might change the playing dynamics.

 

Primarily I use it live but my PA is also stereo. We have two guitars in the band so panning them out a bit in the PA is nice.

 

The XLR's go to the board and I use two powered monitors that I feed using the 1/4 outs from the Helix so I still have stereo all the time. I can also skip the 1/4's and use a pair xlr bus sends from the mixer if I need to mix in my vocal. Always depends on how the setup goes, how much room, etc. Eventually I would love to get stereo IEM's but that's $$$ I don't have at the moment, maybe eventually.

 

My primary main reason for using a dual amp patch is the tone I get from it. I really dig being able to have a effect on one amp and not the other, have one with more gain, etc but I want it to compliment. There are just so many possible things that the dual paths opens up, I was messing with the bubble tremolo on just the plexi side last night and getting this cool swimmy kind of thing.

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It sounds great and I want to mess around with what you guys are doing, for a recording patch. But I can't see me ever wanting to haul two monitors to achieve that live. Plus, no matter how good a particular sound is, I wouldn't want to use it all night. But I'm a tweaker, so I'm going to use some of your tips and see what I can come up with.

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It sounds great and I want to mess around with what you guys are doing, for a recording patch. But I can't see me ever wanting to haul two monitors to achieve that live.

 

I totally hear you, I want my rig to be as compact and light as possible. Too many years lugging tube heads...but, I got the Alto TS212 monitors recently and it's crazy how light they are and how good they sound for guitar at the same time.

 

But someday....In Ear's....oh yea.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 1 month later...

As a new Helix user I am curious how the best way is to make a dual amp patch template then using either 8 or 4 snapshot to go between clean, crunch and lead tones. I have watched a lot of tutorial videos but I'm looking for a generic patch to cover the basic tones with a variety of effects perhaps some in parallel. I have no idea of how much processing power it mat take up. Will eventually be running it through an FRFR rig but for now it'll have to go thru my mixer L/R. Any suggestions are warmly welcomed, Thanks :-)

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