I am wanting to split my guitar signal into an orange 1/2 stack and a traynor YBA1a for recording. I rely on amp distortion for for both of them and if i split the guitar signal, won't I be hitting them each with 1/2 the current of the signal? do I need to get some sort of booster/splitter to compensate for 1/2ing the current or is my brain wrong?

No.

An A/B box will work fine.

i use a morley a/b/y box with my amps and haven't noticed any sort of drop in level when both amps are on at the same time.

and if you did need some sort of "booster/splitter", wouldn't that just be a splitter and turning up the volume knob on the amp? out of curiosity, how hot do you have the volume on the yba1a? and what kinda cabinet?

I think that albini just used a y cable in his guitar rig

Ok, I'm still not totally satisifed. If I'm depending on the signal that hits v1 for distortion or at least to inititate the chain of distortion, then the less signal I come at it with, the less distortion I'm gonna get. Like if I turned down the volume knob on my guitar to 1/2, I would expect less distortion and a change in tone. I'm unsure why splitting the guitar signal would result in anything different unless by sheer magic 1+1=1.

I guess I'll just try a splitter and find out.

As for the YBA question, the volume's up to around 10 o'clock on both channels. With the inputs bridged, everything past around 9 o'clock is just distortion and saturation. I am repurposing a 70s ampeg 2x12 cabinet with Weber speakers for use with the Traynor.

areopagite wrote:As for the YBA question, the volume's up to around 10 o'clock on both channels. With the inputs bridged, everything past around 9 o'clock is just distortion and saturation. I am repurposing a 70s ampeg 2x12 cabinet with Weber speakers for use with the Traynor.

nice. i have a yba1a with a relatively new ampeg 4x10 cabinet, pretty similar i guess. i have the same experience with the volume knobs going into distortion a little above 9 o'clock. i haven't noticed the A/B/Y box messing with that.

something to consider is that the ABY box isn't just switches, jacks, and wires. there's at least some transformers in there, and i'm pretty sure there's some sort of gain going on too, maybe that's why it doesn't sound quieter.

a fun thing to do with the ABY is to run it into the two different channels on the YBA1A, and set them for different amounts of gain. and then of course you can play channel 1, channel 2, or both at the same time. fun. worth the $35 to $50 that you might spend on the ABY box.

if you are picky, a std a/b/y box may have shortcomings that you will be unable to accept

it sounds like you are picky. our guitar player is also picky, and when he uses two amps, he likes his loooper box pretty well:

www.loooper.com

i think he may use an mxr micro amp in front of the amp that needs it most, though. the loooper our gtr player has doesn't have makeup gain of any kind. it's just a well-made a/b/y box.

anyway, you're right that you will need some gain before the preamp if you want the preamp to get a signal similar to your unsplit gtr signal. if you are using preamp gain anyway, you might just turn up your amp's preamp and get close enough that way. but the interaction betw pickup output and preamp input is a special one that can be easily disturbed.

tmidgett wrote:if you are picky, a std a/b/y box may have shortcomings that you will be unable to accept

What sort of shortcomings?

And yes, I'm totally picky. Picky and indecisive - it is a really bad mix that can lead to days of knob-turning if I don't stop myself.

A vs B wrote:I think that albini just used a y cable in his guitar rig

This suprised me. It seems to me that this would cause an impedance change which would affect the sound somehow. I'm certainly no expert on these things. Can someone enlighten me?

C

you'll notice a difference in the sound only if the input impedance of either of the amps is too low. or, sometimes with older guitars with old pickups, the coils don't put out as much power.

with really high input impedances on the amps, you'll draw very little current from the guitar pickups. i'm sure with most modern (past 20 or 30 years) you won't have a problem with signal degradation.

so, either an A/B box or a y-splitter should be fine.