How do i hook up stereo rig?

romanianreaper

Well-known member
I have a Keeley Halo pedal and use it in stereo to hear the full, ambient sound, etc. Tell me if this is correct:

- Effect loop of amp 1 into one input and output of Keeley Halo
- Effect loop of amp 2 into other input and output of Keeley Halo
- plug guitar into device that will allow outs to amp 1 and amp 2 input jacks simultaneously

Is this right? Any other way to do a stereo pedal with only one amp?
 
are you looking running the effects before the amps?

or after the preamps and before the poweramps?

If you're playing clean, you could easily run before the amps.

The stereo setup for both these methods is different

cheers
 
Is this the configuration? To the message above; I had phase issue until I used a Lehle pedal
676604CC-A408-47C3-B956-BDA266F730A3.jpeg
 
I have a Keeley Halo pedal and use it in stereo to hear the full, ambient sound, etc. Tell me if this is correct:

- Effect loop of amp 1 into one input and output of Keeley Halo
- Effect loop of amp 2 into other input and output of Keeley Halo
- plug guitar into device that will allow outs to amp 1 and amp 2 input jacks simultaneously

Is this right? Any other way to do a stereo pedal with only one amp?
That sounds right to me.
 


the compressor and 2 pedals are in the loop of the boogie and pretty common. comp and chorus in mono feed the tc tape delay tone print in stereo and ran one side back into the boogie return, and the other side into the fx loop return of katana which added it’s own sde-3000 style delay.
 
I have a Keeley Halo pedal and use it in stereo to hear the full, ambient sound, etc. Tell me if this is correct:

- Effect loop of amp 1 into one input and output of Keeley Halo
- Effect loop of amp 2 into other input and output of Keeley Halo
- plug guitar into device that will allow outs to amp 1 and amp 2 input jacks simultaneously

Is this right? Any other way to do a stereo pedal with only one amp?

This is a pretty unusual set-up, basically a dual mono thing since you are using two preamps left and right. A more typical approach would be like the one above, feeding the FX with a mono signal from one loop send and going left and right to both loop returns, respectively. Which means one preamp section is not in use, and that amp is just a power section. Are you using the two preamp sections in parallell now?

But stereo with one amp doesn´t work, unless that amp actually runs in stereo and has two power amps.
 
Is this right? Any other way to do a stereo pedal with only one amp?

This part confused me. I was going to reply but I'm certainly not an expert in this area and I cannot really answer your question outside of what was already mentioned about ground loops and phase issues. I've been through hell and back on those issues myself. Granted I'm not running in true stereo with my effects even though I usually have 2 amps running at all times.

One thing I do suggest you look into if you are looking for ambient ness would be the TC Mimiq. It is a 'doubler' basically and can be used with one or two amps but shines much better with 2. It uses a random algorithm to shift the input signal ever so slightly. It was designed to emulate 2 guitarists or double tracking. But what it does is it spreads your sound (phycologically) to the left and to the right.

It also has stereo inputs. Mine sits right behind my ABY pedal and it then feeds the two amps.
 
Thanks everyone for the help!! As mentioned, varies depending on if I'm going into clean or dirty. Obviously clean I could just go outs into each amp input. I'm going to have to revisit this when I get home later.

Appreciate the insight all!!
 
You can only do stereo effects with a stereo amp or two mono amps. If you only have one power section, it's physically impossible to produce two separate outputs.

As for how to run the HALO, there's a few ways you could do it.

You could try doing it like you mentioned, but as has already been stated, if you do what you're talking about in the first post, you'll have ground issues. You could resolve those ground issues with iso transformers though. Just plug an iso transformer between both preamps and the HALO, and then another set of iso transformers between the HALO and poweramps, so four isolation instances total. However, most iso transformer boxes you can buy have two sets of inputs and outputs for two signal lines, so you'd only need to buy two of those "two line" iso transformer boxes. They're pretty cheap, too. Don't run your guitar directly into them though because they kill the tone of high impedance instrument lines. But they have no effect on tone when run with lower impedance lines like effects loops and line level stuff.


The simplest way to do stereo delay would be to only use only one amp's preamp section, then run the effects send of that preamp to the HALO's input, and the stereo outs from the HALO to the effects returns of both amps. This would work perfectly well.

FYI: The only controls that would function on the slave EVH amp you have would be the Presence and Resonance controls. I believe the Volume control on the main amp would control the loudness on both amps. This is because the poweramps on EVH amps always run at full volume, and the volume controls themselves are just channel volume controls.


If you want to get super fancy, you could use a loop switcher to wire up the preamps of both of your amps as if they were individual effects pedals themselves, then route the loop switcher to the HALO, and the HALO out to each effects return jack. That would allow you to use each channel of both of your amps as you wanted. Again though, if you do this, you'll want to use plenty of buffers and iso transformers in your signal chain because it will be a ground loop nightmare without those things.
 
Last edited:
I'm using a stereo setup with two amps, EVH 5150III 50s and MT15.
323118885_831942404533657_1750034880283370885_n.jpg
326247659_2218205361684850_5514261784987946147_n.jpg
 
So I hooked up my Keeley Halo to my two 5150-III 6L6 50w heads (one stealth) and sounded glorious! I was just running into the clean channels with no use of an effects loop. Easy and probably the best way to use this pedal for me rather than messing around with a ton of cables, etc
 
Back
Top