i've found ground loop hum to be the biggest issue in my experience with using more than one amp at once. you can get rid of it by defeating the ground on the amps which kinda scares me everytime i do it. sometimes you gotta figure out a specific pattern of defeating one ground and leaving the other and playing with the ground switches on your amps (if you have them) which is all a bit of a pain in the ass. i've shocked myself a couple times doing it live (on the vocal mic both times. not badly by the way.... just zapped a bit). of course i might be doing things the stupid way.... it's the only way i know of or heard of (defeating the ground i mean).
but it sounds pretty cool when you get a couple different amps going. i played through 4 amps on my band's recording (which of course can be heard
here if you care to listen. each amp was panned to a differen spot in the stereo spectrum. but anyway... ground hum sucks.

I think this is a touchy subject. Mr. Albini has been using an IVP into a PA cab since the early 80s and it wasn't until the late 90s until anyone else really used that setup.

While many people use Les Paus and Marshalls or Teles into Fenders, this practice started almost immedeately after that specific gear was introduced. When Marshalls came out, most the big rock stars in the UK (except the Beatles) switched; Townsend, Clapton, Hendrix, etc.

So on one hand, I can see where people might view running a rig similar to Albini's is more copping a sound than using the Gibson in to a Marshall. In addition, so much of the music made by Albini is very "sonic" in nature, where tonality is as important as (and sometimes more important than) the notes.

However it's a valid sound. The trick is not to mimic the band. For instance, I was in a band in the 90s that aped Shellac. The guitarist used a Marshall, Sovtek, or Fender amp and a number of silvertones and fake Teles. The bassist used a P bass or hollowbody Aria int a GK with a 2-15 and 2-10.

So on the other hand, it's not the gear, it's the material.

However. If you use something similar to something that someone iconic uses, be prepared to face a comparison. For instance, if I had Jerry garcia's Luthier friend build me a guitar just like Jerry's, I'd probably get a lot of comparisons, even if I played black metal. I'd be the dude playing black metal of the Grateful Dead guitar.

Cheers.

Ben Adrian

hell all i wanted to know was the pro's and con's of bi amplification. I've learnd that perhaps ground issues may be a problem for me if i decide to try this out. but if i get an aby box that has isolated transformers in them i shouldnt have as much of an issue. not lets stop sacking eachother for who's doing what or who's aping what sound or whatever. fuck it it's totaly pointless shitting on someone over something so trivial. maybe none of us are original due to the fact that were all copy'ing les paul and using electronics to amplify our signal. damn sorry les.

lets end this thread

sonikBOOM wrote:hell all i wanted to know was the pro's and con's of bi amplification.

Oh, i dig it. I use a Champ and an Epiphone Valve Jr. in Stereo to good effect. I also am building a Vox/Marshall hybrid circuit amp to use in tandem with my Pro Reverb for louder music.

In the past I've used a Mesa DC-5 with a Laney VC30 and it was awesome. Also, I used a Yamaha T-100 C and a Fender Ulimate Chorus. The Ultimate Chorus was not that great.

If I'm the only guitarist in a band, I try to use two amps. When I'm one of two guitarists, I'm happy with one amp.

Cheers!
Ben ADrian

thanks ben. ill be the only guitarist in this up coming project( if it ever gets off the ground) so i may just give it a try. im running a garnet bto 400 into a garnet 4x12 cab, i dont have a second amp or anything for this experiment yet. so im not even sure what I'm going to try with regards to that. maybe a 2x10 with a horn bass cab i saw at a pawn shop for pretty reasonable. or i may just try my hand at building a cab 15 with some bullet tweets or something. that way i can use it with my bass rig too. whooooo knows

A vs B wrote:why is everybody being so annoying? just let him have the kind of rig he wants to have

Too easy.

phildotidiot wrote:i've found ground loop hum to be the biggest issue in my experience with using more than one amp at once. you can get rid of it by defeating the ground on the amps which kinda scares me everytime i do it. sometimes you gotta figure out a specific pattern of defeating one ground and leaving the other and playing with the ground switches on your amps (if you have them) which is all a bit of a pain in the ass. i've shocked myself a couple times doing it live (on the vocal mic both times. not badly by the way.... just zapped a bit). of course i might be doing things the stupid way.... it's the only way i know of or heard of (defeating the ground i mean).
but it sounds pretty cool when you get a couple different amps going. i played through 4 amps on my band's recording (which of course can be heard
here if you care to listen. each amp was panned to a differen spot in the stereo spectrum. but anyway... ground hum sucks.

there's a thread on this forum that addresses ground loops:

i've gotten rid of hum simply by plugging both amps into the same powerbar (i think it's because then they share the single reference ground coming out of the socket). i don't know if this works every time, but guess it's the simplest and safest thing to try.

remember not to get rid of both grounds, if yr gonna use a lift, or you might kill yourself... i don't know from experience but so i've read...

i find i like 2 amps, one clean, one dirty. can keep the low-end from getting muddy with distortion. depends on what you want to do, i guess.

I think *everyone* playing a guitar should fucking use Steve's set-up.

scott wrote:

vance wrote:When is your band playing out next? I'd go to see you just so I can say that you are a clone of whatever influence that I can hear in your music. I wont do that really, but I hope you get the point.

I wish you would do that. As far as I know, as of right now, I'll be playing a show in April and another in May. I'll let you know about at least one of them.

If you're familiar with a guitarist who plays a Lado Falcon into two YBA-1A's, by way of a Super Duper and a Black Dog, and I've done everything I can to directly steal his signature tone, and my music sounds suspiciously like it could be the new album by his band, then yeah, tell me I'm a clone of that guy.



Obviously I don't get you point, do I?

How's that super-duper? I've looked at the online demo and thought it was pretty cool. Seems more "meaningful" than a tube screamer or something.....

full point wrote:How's that super-duper? I've looked at the online demo and thought it was pretty cool. Seems more "meaningful" than a tube screamer or something.....

I love it for its ability to control the breakup of a tube amp. In a nutshell, it lets you have the volume knob on your guitar, instead of going from 0 to 10, go from 0 to 100 or something.

And it has no sound. The tubescreamer, or overdrive/distortion/fuzz pedals in general, have some kinda sound to them. The Super Duper doesn't really. It just makes your amp sound bigger, or makes your amp offer up its distortion more than it would without the pedal turned on.

Oh, and another fun thing it does, to tie this all back in to the subject of this thread, is offers you the ability to switch your amps out of phase relative to each other, if you're using two of them, without grossly affecting the tone.

This will only work if you implement the Super Duper on one of your two signal legs *after* you've split your signal (to get to your two amps).

When you engage either one of the two channels on it, but not both, then your amps will now be out of phase relative to each other. Each of the two channels on the Super Duper reverses the phase of the signal. As do many (but not all) other effects pedals, so really you could use any of a number of distortion/fuzz boxes set for no distortion/fuzz and accomplish this same thing:

I have mine set so when I engage one of the two channels, it's basically flipping the two amps out of phase relative to each other, and with just a slight bit of gain, so it actually doesn't sound wimpy, it sounds big, and spaced out. And I have it set so if I engage the *other* channel instead, it does the same thing only it sounds even bigger, and still spaced out. With both channels engaged, the phase ends up the same going out as it was coming in, so it's just gain with no cancellation and no space. Just boost, no phasing.

One thing I would say about the Super Duper, or any expensive fancypants pedal like it, is that your money would probably be better spent towards a kickass amp if you don't already have one. It's like, if your amp sounds crappy, the Super Duper isn't gonna make it sound great. It's gonna make it sound like a more full/present crappy amp.