A/B-Y Box(es) and not two but THREE amps.

Startouch A/B-Y Box

It's my understanding that luminaries such as Stevie Ray Vaughn and Keith Richards achieve(d) their unique tone using two amps at once: one dirty and one clean, or some other such dichotomy. I reckon to do that they use a device such as the one in the above web-link.

A few weeks ago I saw a band called the Youngs, from Seattle. Intense stuff... though they sound way better live than on the CD I bought. It looked to me that the guitarist was running an Orange 4x12 combo alongside... uhhhhh... either a Fender 1x12 or 1x15. It sounded INCREDIBLE. The guy was damn good, too, of course.

I also know that back in ye olden days, when bands like Zepplin and Sabbath began filling the big arenas and before concert PA as we know it existed, guitarists would run as many as six full stacks!!! :eek: I believe that even as far back as the 1950s, guitarists would run six 2x12 combo amps at once if they were playing a large hall.

What do I need to do in order to run not two but three amps at once?

Well, the set-up I have in mind might seem goofy to some, but here's roughly what I'm after (assuming I had the $$$ to throw around):

1. There's this Hughes & Kettner head I saw that can alternate between running at 100watts and 50watts... talk about versatile! Furthermore, every last tone imagineable can be dialed in. Sweet! I'd run it through this 2x12 Genz Benz cab I read about that reputedly overtakes many a half stack. I'd run effects (wah, weird pedals like octave/pitchshifters, etc.) through that'un.

The tone I would dial in on this one would be... uhhhhhh... somewhere between metal and Texas blues... errrrrrr....

Imagine a Clint Eastwood Spaghetti Western guitar soundtrack (so how do you do that, anyways?) meets "Voodoo Child" meets the opening riffs of Megadeth's "Sweating Bullets" meets Dick "Surf King" Dale meets Tony Iommi (of Black Sabbath) meets Angus (of AC/DC) on Hell's Bells...

...tuned down to about C# (like Iommi had it) on an H-S-S Stratocaster with heavy 13 gauge strings and a big hard thick pick with (three) fingerstyle thrown in here and there...

...uhhhhhhh... something along those lines. Uhhhhhh... yeah.

2. A Fender 1x12 60watt combo tube amp. Or maybe the 1x15. This one would be all famous Fender cleanness, all the time, and wouldn't have any effects or distortion or anything... except maybe for some of that equally famous reverb now and then, dialed in on the amp itself rather than from a pedal.

3. A Madison 1x12 combo... not sure of the wattage but Madison is, these days, quite renowned for its extreme death/puke/grind distortion/oomph and how everything shines through in spite of the extremity of it all... though they can also be clean as a bell.

Don't know if the three could go together without clashing into awful muddy soup... but I've been entertaining the notion heavily. Okay... so it's something of an obsession.

So anyways, this is where the techie stuff comes in: how would I do it?

I'm thinking two of these A/B-Y boxes with the second one being plugged into the "B" hole of the first.

So, the box that runs the two 1x12 amps would receive the signal through the "B" socket of the first box. Then the head + 2x12 cab would get the signal from the "A" socket of that first box. Then I could cut out the smaller auxilliary amps at will... add 'em in when I like... and then alternate between the two auxilliary amps or run 'em both at once or... yeah!!!

Is that even possible? Or would something fizz out or explode or something? :confused: Do they make an A/B/C-[trident] box that would do all that?

I know it's been done before! With several more!

I hope I wouldn't have to go and dig up equipment that they stopped making in 1974. :(

Originally Posted by: Vegas Wierdo... I'm thinking two of these A/B-Y boxes with the second one being plugged into the "B" hole of the first.

So, the box that runs the two 1x12 amps would receive the signal through the "B" socket of the first box. Then the head + 2x12 cab would get the signal from the "A" socket of that first box. Then I could cut out the smaller auxilliary amps at will... add 'em in when I like... and then alternate between the two auxilliary amps or run 'em both at once or... yeah!!! ...

That'll do it. Things get seriously out of hand if you want to allocate certain combinations of effects to each amp, especially if some effects get shared.

You may need to go with some kind of midi-controlled ubergadget. Too much tap-dancin' for my taste.

When bassists do this (there's been a few notable examples), it's the norm to run all one's effects and other tweakings (distortion, compression, etc.) through amp #1, and have nothing but pure clean untouched tone going through amp #2. I'm looking to do this with my... uhhhhh... fretlesses :D Though it's been done (Mudvayne, Primus, Cephalic Carnage, etc.), fretlesses are generally not built for heavy music and sound like total barf if you, say, just run it through a single amp with mounds of distortion and overdrive. Chords (played fast with three finger technique) help, and slap/pop can be done though it's much trickier than on a fretted. Normal fretless technique is more delicate and a pick would make the strings waver/flop/wobble too much... as you can't have very much string tension unless you've got a Terminator cyborg left hand. Also, frets give it "bite."

Fretlesses are built for running clean... ideally through a '18 subwoofer (real lousy for heavy slapping, chord raking, fast/hard picking, etc. [which is why bass cabs more often come with '10 speakers] but otherwise ideal for tone and presence). So you get that smooth growl that makes tone freaks pucker their nether-regions, buuuuuuuut... switch on the distortion and overdrive and it sounds more like a 400 lb. vegetarian farting on a pinwheel. Chords, whatever slap/pop can be done, and lots of compression can help... but fretlesses are meant for slides and bends (ohhhh yeah) so hopefully if I had a second amp, running clean with no effects or anything, I'd be able to pull off what I'm after.

But all that, of course, is for another board.

For guitar, I think if I kept the effects limited to the main amp and left the other two 'pristine' it would work without too much... uhhhh... overwhelmingness. I'm kind of a minimalist when it comes to effects anyways, unlike this guy, the infamous Agata of Melt-Banana:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melt_Banana

My brother saw them live down in San Diego... says he was stomping on some pedal or another every two or three seconds, and instead of a slide was using what my brother described as "a piece of metal he found on the ground." It sounds like... a grizzly bear trying to eat a Moog machine.

Now... if I only had the cash!!!

A slightly more budget-friendly version of the above is a Traynor 2x12 for main (from what I understand, similar to Fender but better at dirty, whereas Fender is better at clean), a Fender 1x12 for clean, and... maybe something by Peavey in 1x12 for extreme. Yeesh... that's not too much friendlier....

lol all that looks like a bad idea to me, i'm all for pedals but not being THAT dependendant on them! what if one craps out, the "tap dancing" skills are going to go to waste then aren't they.

Well, Agata isn't exactly a conventional player. Melt-Banana is considered a "noisecore" or "noise rock" band like the Locust, Wolf Eyes, and other weirdos. Basically taking what all Sonic Youth, Swans, James Chance and the Contortions, D.N.A., and Big Black did to extremes... and blending it with thrash, grindcore, Japanese noise (e.g. Merzbow), and so forth. Sometimes his guitar sounds like somebody hooked a theremin up to a death metal pedal, other times it sounds like an elephant being shocked to death on one of those Jurassic Park-sized electric fences, other times it sounds like a komodo dragon violently trying to escape from a giant bird cage, and other times it sounds like someone is murdering a shrieking grandmother with a belt sander.

That's the whole point... abstract, highly abrasive, atonal, anti-musical... insane! He achieves this with the jagged piece of metal he uses as a slide, and all those weird pedal combinations going at once.

Here's a link to Melt Banana's official site.

http://www1.parkcity.ne.jp/mltbanan/

On the "Ear" section in particular listen to the song "F.D.C. for Short." It's all done with guitar and effects... no synths or computers or anything whatsoever.

Now, for any who'd say that it's "not music", well...

...when dadaist Marcel Duchamp submitted his artwork Fountain (consisting of a urinal toilet laid on its back) to the Society of Independent Artists in Paris, 1917, and was challenged as to why they should even consider it 'art', his reply was as follows: "because I say it is." Thus was the Occidental aesthetic upset for all time... and noise music is but a continuation of that precedent.

To run 3 amps just get 2 AB/Y boxes. Box 1 goes amp1 and to box 2, box 2 goes to amp 2 and amp 3. You can run your amps in any combo or all together.
I like to run my 65 twin reverb clean with some reverb in the background and then all my effects go through my Cyber Twin in Stereo out to my 2 marshall 4x12s. The first time I did this it totaly blew me away at what I was hearing. Any nasty sound effect with that clean sound in the background is amazing. I love that surf sound so I have the reverb cranked in the back ground and then echo and lead in stereo out to the sides. I swear pretty soon the music starts to swirl around you, you can't tell where the sound is coming from. The cyber Twin will bounce the sound from one speaker to the other and you still have that clean background sound coming at you, hitting you right in the chest. I guarantee it will increase your practice time.