Two amps for a live looping setup.

[BitchPudding]

Hey all!

So recently I've been getting booked a lot for solo gigs. Since I'm a one man band this necessitates a "mylets" style performance where im just looping a bunch of shit.

Now doing this out of one amp makes everything sound too messy, so Im gonna have a separate amp for playing my loops out of and another amp for just my normal guitar sound, switching between the two with a EHX switchblade.

The delema im having now is the sound is still pretty messy. Im guessing this has something to do with how im EQing things on the amps, so thats where I need help. How should I have each amp set so both I and the audience can hear everything clearly?

For context, Im running an Acoustic B100 Bass amp for my normal guitar sound and a line 6 Spider Valve 112 for the loops.

Pedal chain is: Guitar - whammy - tuner - neo mistress - Boss PH-3 Phase Shifter - Hollowon Tape Soup - JH-1 Wah - WAZA Super Overdrive - Fuck Overdrive - Digiverb - Into the switchblade. One channel is into the DL4 and to the Line 6, the other is into a boss Bass Limiter/Enhancer and into the B100.

Something I've considered is switching the loops so my normal guitar stuff is into the line 6 and the B100 handles the loops.

So yea, any help/input would be appreciated! Thanks y'all.

[Invisible Man]

Paging CodetoContra.

[manymanyhaha]

what are the loops and what do you mean by messy?

[BitchPudding]

Loops like looping stuff into a looper pedal. Messy as in everything just sounds like noise and not disiguishable from eachother

[codetocontra]

I saw the Batsignal and had to come.

Lots to do with a DL4 and two amps! Are you using the Switchblade to mute your signal to the DL4 or for switching your live signal between the two amps? If the latter, then there is nothing coming out of your "live only" amp, right? What are you doing musically?

Try using your neck pickup for the looping only and the bridge pickup for live guitar, or vice versa. Sometimes it helps to treat the loop like another player, so if you loop something low then play something higher on the fretboard, that way you sort of get out of the way from yourself. Or switch your signal flow and add effects post-DL4, or even pre-DL4 but after the Switchblade. I liked to split my signal out of the DL4 and run separate delays into different amps, then if I looped anything both amps could have some echo, delays, oscillations, or some combination of those independently. BTW, if you didn't know, the DL4 sums to mono when in loop mode.

[manymanyhaha]

In addition to the above good advice, it could also be: The way things are eq'd on the amps (as you mentioned), the number of effects you are layering and which ones, and the number of layers you are looping.

Are you layering lots of distortion? Distortion on top of distortion will start to sound indistinguishable. Reverb on top of reverb will start sound indistinguishable, especially bigger reverbs.

Interesting that you put your modulation effects before your gain pedals. Not saying that is wrong.

For eq, mud is in the low mids, if mud is a problem.

But it sounds like you might be layering lots of distortion and/or the same effects and not diversifying. If you get a distorted riff going, try playing cleaner into that, maybe with modulation or wah/whammy. Of if you get a neo mistress/digiverb riff going, turn off those effects and play wah into overdrive for the second layer or some other combination that is different.

I do lots of looping, layer upon layer, and what I've learned is a couple layers can be somewhat similar, might even sound good like that, but beyond two, every other layer needs to add something different and unique, effect wise and note wise. Or it does indeed sound like a (sometimes beautiful) mess

[BitchPudding]

Thanks for the advice yall!

I am using a lot of distortion, so dialing back the gain is gonna happen for sure.

Code: the swithblade is choosing where my live signal is going. So when im looping, theres guitar going to the looping amp and not my live amp.

Lots of stuff for me to think about and try now. Thanks again.

[zoooombiex]

Separate amps can possibly help, but I would start other places. Others mentioned some good points about using eq'ing and effect choice to distinguish the loops from the non-loops.

EDIT: re-read OP ... bah

It looks like you are running the loops in parallel chains through the switchblade. You might try just adding a small mixer to balance the levels and possibly add some eq etc to each channel. E.g., in my rig I run the dry signal through a few basic effects, then I split that into three parallel chains. Two chains are loops with their own effects after them, and the third chain just has reverb and delay. Then I mix those three back together. But the key being that you can control the mix of each of the three parallel chains to make sure that when you want the straight guitar sound to come through on top you can. I generally just use a Red Panda Bit Mixer to mix the three chains back together. But I've also used an outboard mixer which would have eq and other options per channel (Allen & Heath Zed's are reliable and pretty reasonable).

Also, the flexibility of having two parallel loops (rather than one looper adding consecutive layers) gives you a lot more freedom to have things evolve over time, and it also allows you to add different types of effects to each loop to distinguish them.

[D Rock]

I have to disagree with you somewhat zombie. I find that at a certain point if a amp is already pushing a lot of air, stacking a lead line on top of that is going to be muddy. Unless of course you boost the shit out of your lead line but then the drummer can't hear your rhythm part and the whole thing falls apart. Ask me how I know. Having two amps in different parts of the room and both playing different parts is just awesome. Great separation of parts, you can actually hear whats going on. But I do agree, EQ does play a huge part, but at some point it's about movement of air and how a cab responds to being fed two or more signals.

That said, setup for two amps is a bitch plus the extra pedals you need, so I usually try to avoid looping in my band and just do that at home. EQ does go a long way as well as using the different pickups on the guitar.

Also, bitch, I would suggest using the bass amp for the loop parts, that way when you want to riff on top of your rhythm parts, the line 6 should cut a little more. Just a thought...

[zoooombiex]

That's a fair point - if your amp or speakers are distorting, then adding a second amp (or just more wattage) would definitely help give you more headroom to come over the top of the loops.

And I'm not saying that using two amps can't help - I started gigging in my current band using a stereo setup. It sounded awesome. But I found that once I changed my setup so I could better balance each part of the chain I didn't need the extra amp. And integrating a mixer was way easier than hauling a second amp!

[cherler]

As far as specific effects that help with this, the most luck I've had is with flange. I kick on the BQ! flanger when I feel like I'm loosing my live playing and it usually manages to show back up. I also try to vary the amount of space in each layer pretty consistently, where one layer has a bunch of reverb, one has a little bit of pre-dirt delay, and one has no time effects at all. That helps a ton. You should post clips!

[PeteeBee]

Cliiiipppppps

[Olin]

'nother one man looping band here. Aren't we special?
A lot of the above advice/recommendations have been great, especially when it comes to gain management/level balancing. Those are the two areas I really try to pay the most attention to because too much gain can swallow absolutely everything in the mix. I found the Pigtronix Infinity really great for this because it lets you know when you're clipping, and will actually drop the volume down below clipping level after a loop completes (initially infuriating, but once you get your levels done correctly, you retain a lot of clarity in the whole thing). In my ideal, comfort zone setup I'm running two or three amps, one for synths/drums etc that the guitar never touches, then two for the guitar, almost entirely so I can use different speakers. One 2x15 cab and then a normal 4x12 or whatever you have can really help with stopping it all just turn into a white noise wall.
What kind of settings have you set (English is weird) your amps to?

[frigid midget]

I have to agee on the multiple amp approach.

You don't want to give one amp/cab more than one job. For one, your speaker will have a hard time dealing with two seperate signals at the same time, especially when there's a lot of distortion involved. Different eq and/or pu's don't make enough difference, seperate speakers -preferably amps too- is a must imo.

Something like the Pigtronix Infinity would be perfect for what you're describing imo, though if I were on the verge of playing live with my own one-man band, I'd probably look for the next best thing that costs a bit less