Hey guys, need some advice, guidance and or direction here.
Iv recently implemented the use of a patchbay to use with my synths both soft/hard
i have 2 outs and ins from my AI coming out/into the patch bay
my question is whats the best way to interlink mono and stereo pedals?
my immediate thought was just use the mono pedals first and end the chain with the stereo pedals using a signal/cable splitter then from the pedal going back to my AI using two outs from the pedal to two ins on my patch bay going to the AI?
am i on the right path? do i need the splitter or can pedals split a mono signal to both their outs, my main pedals that i would want stereo outs are specular tempus, big sky and DIG
I know that the big sky only needs a mono in the left input and will still output in stereo. Most modern stereo pedals should be the same, so a splitter cable shouldn’t be necessary.
Yeah I think that depends on the pedal but as mentioned, most of them will work with a mono input, just have to take that into consideration with your signal chain, or accept that some stereo pedals will go mono, or take advantage of that and run a stereo pedal into two separate mono pedals and see what happens.
But if you connect both pedal inputs to the patchbay, wouldn’t that prevent you using the stereo pedal with a mono input? Because from the pedals pov, both inputs are in use. I think a splitter might give you the most flexibility.
You’re probably right but again that may depend on the particular pedal. Worst case, you just unplug the cable from the pedal itself and have it set up on the patchbay when you need it. I don’t think it’s worth getting a splitter cable. You could try one but I wouldn’t buy a bunch without testing.
It might actually make sense to use a TRS Y-cable with the SplitMix4 and your stereo pedals because each of the 4 channels on the SplitMix4 is actually a stereo channel.
I was imagining both ins on the stereo pedal have a corresponding patchbay connection. Then at the patchbay, if you have a mono out that you need to route to a stereo you could use a splitter cable instead of your normal patch cable.
A potential problem is what my guitarist friends call “tone suck”. And worse case scenario you might end up with ground loop. But I would definitely try it first, because it might be fine, depending on your setup. If you have enough free io’s on the patchbay, you could even hook up the split there in the back.
For a more advanced setup, I can recommend the “Lehle Little Dual II”. its a really cool looking ABY type switcher/splitter. Its not cheap, but after comparing it with a few others I chose it because it was the most transparent.
Just make sure you plug the guitar into a good buffer first, and you won’t have any tone suck. That’s the point of buffers after all. If you plug straight into a mixer, for example, that will buffer your signal.
But with a mixer, you’ll be sending line-level signals to your pedals. IME that’s usually not a problem, except with some fuzz-type pedals.
Generally I think this is good advice, but its not a fix-all solution. I found that sometimes splitting the signal with a simple Y cable adapter to feed a stereo input introduced unwanted hum. Not always. Depended on other factors. To fix the hum I tried an ABY pedal. It worked, but I noticed a high frequency roll off as a result. For some situations this might have been too minor to care about, but I wanted to see if I could improve on it so I tried a different ABY until I found one that worked better (lots of different circuit designs are used in these pedals - active, passive, combination etc - which probably accounts for the wide range of prices).
I think you just have to be prepared to try stuff and see what works for your particular setup.
Boss ES-8 is a fairly popular choice as a signal switching system. It can run FX loops in parallel - thus effectively acting as a splitter. It also functions as a MIDI switcher.
Two disadvantages I can think of:
It costs 10x as much as a SplitMix4 if you just need, well, a SplitMix4
The MIDI switching does not work with Empress Zoia (one of my fave pedals), without modification to the Zoia motherboard.
If this is in response to my SplitMix4 post, well, I can’t think of another practical way to connect, say, my H9 Left and Right output to a SplitMix4 stereo input other than an insert Y-cable.
I prefer to set up my sound in mono when playing with the band, because that’s less stuff I have to transport (don’t need 2nd amp, don’t need the Mackie) and my job is to complement the singer/guitarist, not invade the stereo field.
When I do want to experiment with stereo FX, I use my trusty Mackie mixer, albeit using one input channel per pedal output, thus using 4 total channels = 2 from H9 + 2 from Zoia.
Similar setup here. This works pretty well for me. I like to experiment though, so the Lehle ABY splitter and a JHS Summing are useful little utility pedals to have lying around.
Regarding the tone suck thing… I guess the term gets thrown around when ever anyone notices that something has changed the tone. I also play guitar a bit, and I’ve read lots of buffer advice, but I’ve also found that sometimes combining pedals in certain ways has surprising results - which is half the fun… sometimes.
I have a few pedals in the mono loop of an Eventide MixingLink, which acts as a buffer, and also sends a line level signal to my Mackie mixer.
Then, I have an Eventide H9 hooked up to one of the Mackie’s aux sends (via a patchbay). The sends are mono, but the return is stereo. The H9 handles that properly.
For me, this setup works great. I rarely want to send a stereo signal into the H9.
One downside is that you can only plug one input cable into the H9 for it to take a mono in>stereo out path. However, I still have a stereo connection (two cables) from the patchbay to the H9. I just leave one of the cables unplugged on the H9 until I need stereo in.
My current band rig is Polytune3 -> Deep Six Compressor -> CB Condor -> VFE Klein Bottle -> amp
I have Klein Bottle FX loop 1 connected to Zoia, left side only for send/return, and have experimented with other devices connected to the other 2 FX loops. Klein Bottle is mono-only.
I originally got the SplitMix4 because my Mackie has only one aux bus, and it was a cheap way to get 3 extra busses, although when I had channels available, I just routed the outputs of my stereo devices to mixer channels instead of SplitMix4 returns. I haven’t played out with the Mackie-centric rig since the case I used to carry it, the H9, and the OP-1 got busted up. It was a silly gamble to fly with that cheap case (most definitely NOT a true flight case) to Vegas and back to play our gig - the survival of the Mackie and H9 is a testament to the rugged construction of both products. OP-1 did ok too because it was in its own case inside the other case.
At the Vegas gig, they backlined a Roland JC-120 for me, which is the amp that the singer/guitarist had requested for her guitar because her own amp is a JC-120 - she got a Marshall stack instead. I’d requested a keyboard amp because I’d figured that would be the best fit for my electric violin and OP-1 sounds. Then the sound guy mic’d the JC-120 and didn’t get a feed from my Mackie into the FOH system like just about every other venue. Sound guy left it up to me to manage my own sound level in the band mix. Fun times.
