Building a Direct to PA Rig with the Dept. 10 Dual Drive
If you’re a gigging musician with a need to travel light, you could consider going amp-less for some gigs. Now, I know, I know… loud amps sound better, but hear me out.
The Dept. 10 Dual Drive offers you a fantastic dual channel pre-amp that you can use to plug straight into the PA system and get all your favourite Blackstar Amp tones without carrying any heavy amps!
In this lesson and accompanying video, I’m going to talk to you about a small, portable rig that I’ve been gig testing which is built around the Dept. 10. The whole idea is to build a very small, very portable rig that can cover a huge range of tones with minimal weight and minimal footprint.
I’m using the Dept. 10 Dual Drive like a 2-channel guitar amp. I’ve got one side set to clean and the other set to crunch. The pedal is feeding the PA system (Or in the case of the video, my audio interface) via the XLR output on the rear of the unit. This is running a power amp and cab sim via the Cab Rig software. I use the pedal in this way as if it’s a live amp on stage.
Going into the input of the pedal, I have my Analogman King of Tone which is a dual channel over drive pedal. This gives me different gain stacking options that I can mix and match with the two channels of the Dual Drive. It allows both the clean and drive channels of the Dept. 10 to have 3 different gain stages pushed into them, low gain, higher gain and stacked.
The Dept. 10 Dual Drive also has a built in effects loop, just like a real amp. This means any time based, spatial or modulation effects can be run into the loop, sitting them after the pre-amp stage of the circuit, just like a real amp.
In the loop I have the Boss MD200 multi modulation pedal running 4 different presets for Tremolo, Rotary, Chorus and Uni-Vibe. This gives me all the modulation tones I need for a gig.
I also have the Walrus Audio R1 reverb to give me extra ambience if needed. The Cab Rig output includes some room ambience, but the R1 allows me to switch in extra reverb when I want to add more space to my tone.
I have been gig testing this setup for a few weeks now, playing with no live amp on stage and the whole band running on In Ear Monitors and I love the results.
If you own, or are considering a Dept. 10 pedal, you can use it as a direct replacement for your amp, or pair it with your amp and use it as a drive stage in your signal chain.
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About the Author
This article on building a direct to PA system rig with the Dept. 10 Dual Drive was written by Leigh Fuge. Leigh is a professional guitarist and content creator and also works alongside musicteacher.com to create guitar focused, educational and entertainment content.
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