Board Games

Pedalboard problems solved

The background

Marc Drake, Guitarist reader: “I run a modest ’board consisting of the usuals – OD, fuzz, modulations, delay, reverb, etc – into a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe. What I’d like is to be able to add a second amp for wet/dry (sending all my drives and fuzz to both amps; the wet effects to one amp). However, I’d also like to use a rotary speaker sim in stereo with both amps. I don’t use a switching system at this point.

The questions

1. How do I achieve the basic wet/dry, two-amp setup? 2. Where would I add the rotary speaker to the above in order to get stereo from the two amps? 3. What if the rotary only has a mono input?

The answers

As always, there are different ways around this. It’s also dependent on what ins and outs your rotary pedal has, plus other potential issues of which to be aware…

1. You need something to split the signal and provide isolation from ground loop hum, and also give the option of phase reversal if one of your amps is out of phase with the other. The Humdinger by TheGigRig and most ABY switchers offer this functionality. A word of warning: some pedals can flip the phase between bypass and ‘on’ mode. The only way around that is to use a pedal switcher that has programmable phase reversal per preset.

2. If your rotary pedal has stereo ins and outs, you can route it like the diagram shows, taking care to check any hidden output mode settings: ie, you need to make sure it will pass separate left and right signal paths in bypass and effected modes. For us, having the rotary speaker sim as the last effect makes sense.

3. If the pedal only has a mono input, you could try doing away with the signal splitter and placing it between drive and modulation as your wet/dry split. You’re running the risk of phase and isolation issues with the two amps and non-ideal signal chain placement. If all else fails, just run it in mono on the end of the wet amp chain. It’ll still sound massive in conjunction with the dry amp.