Jerry Rigging a Footswitch

[BeZo]

The footswitch to my Verellen is a single button switch to change from calm to kill. I plugged it into my new Mark V through the external switching jack to go from 1 to 3. Now, say I just bought a Y cable to split a signal to two sources (hypothetically, of course), would it switch both amps? Both are set to where open is calm (1), and closed is kill (3). Am I going to melt faces with a bitchin' stereo rig, or be bitchin' because I melted both amps?

 

[BSRIAudio]

The switch is just grounding a relay in both amps. If you want to do this a better way you could wire up a new footswitch and use different poles of the switch to handle each amp and then use an insulated jack for each side so the amps aren't electrically connected through the footswitch. That would also let you handle any polarity issues that arise if they aren't switching to the right channel together.

 

[GOHOINC]

The footswitch to my Verellen is a single button switch to change from calm to kill. I plugged it into my new Mark V through the external switching jack to go from 1 to 3. Now, say I just bought a Y cable to split a signal to two sources (hypothetically, of course), would it switch both amps? Both are set to where open is calm (1), and closed is kill (3). Am I going to melt faces with a bitchin' stereo rig, or be bitchin' because I melted both amps?

The amps must be isolated somehow. Years ago I tried hooking up two identical amps to one footswitch to try and channel switch both at the same time. Also tried two different amps that use the same kind of footswitch. It did switch the amps but also created a really loud and gnarly sounding ground hum.

Since then I use voodoo lab control switchers and a voodoo commander or a midi controller.

 

[BeZo]

I ran this experiment last night with mixed results. It worked as expected, but with a pretty bad ground hum once the switch was activated. I played loud enough to compensate though.

On the other hand, a Mesa Mark V and a Verellen Skyhammer sound crushing in stereo. It was worth the buzz. I'm not sure I want to take all that to gigs though. A single full stack per guitarist is plenty. I might build a footswitch for it though.

 

[the recluse]

I built a foot switch to change channels on a Tremoverb and Stiletto with a single stomp. I required TRS jack and cable that split into a Y cable to split to the 2 amps. While it worked, I had to get a hum isolator to run one of the inputs to one of the amps through, otherwise I got terrible ground loop hum.

Once I sorted that, the two of them together sounded gorgeous, and being able to switch channels on both with one tap was rad.