How to Build a Stereo or Dual Mono Rig
When it comes to building guitar rigs, there are a few ways you can approach signal flow. Each has a unique offering to your overall guitar tone. One method that many plays like to use to help get a bigger guitar tone is using multiple amps at the same time.
There are a few different ways you can use dual amps. In this lesson we’re going to look at a few different ways to set up your dual amp rig.
Mono
Mono is the simplest of all setups. This is using one amp. The idea behind a mono signal chain is to have one continuous path from input to output. That means your guitar goes in, via your pedals if you have any, and out to a single guitar amp.
The advantage to this setup is that it is simple, quick to setup and you can easily change amp or effects without needing to do much re-wiring or changing the overall flow of the signal too much.
Dual Mono
A great way to start using dual amps is with a dual mono setup. A dual mono is a “fake stereo”. You get the added width of a stereo style guitar signal, but without the actual movement of stereo.
In a dual mono rig, you can use an ABY pedal to split the output signal on your pedalboard to send it to two different amps.
The reason this is dual mono and not stereo is because the output signal going to both amps is exactly the same.
Dual Mono – Wet/Dry
With this setup, you can also play an effect, such as a delay or reverb, after the splitter but in front of one of the amps. This gives you a wet/dry setup with one amp being totally dry and the other being totally (Or just partially) wet. This is great for creating some width and ambience.
Stereo
When you move to a full stereo setup, you will experience movement between the two speakers. The most common ways to do this are with a stereo delay or modulation pedal which has some form of movement from left to right. This could include a ping pong delay or a flanger that sweeps side to side.
In a full stereo rig you will hear movement that you do not get in dual mono, this is because both outputs of the stereo pedal are sending slightly different pieces of information to each of the amps.
The downside to using a stereo rig is that if one amp goes down, you lose half of your stereo field.