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been thinking about (and have put up for sale) all my stuff that makes for my stereo setup, mostly to fund the purchase of the dream amp.

has anyone else gone from stereo to mono and been like, "aww shit, this sounds lame and stale and will make my life terrible..." ?
stereo was great for sweepy modulation and weird evolving delay stuff, and it was fun to run one amp at much higher gain and the other at higher clean volume.
now i am trying to simplify and just don't really feel the need for all that dumbness, and after watching all the knobs demos, those damn chase bliss pedals are mono anyways...

I went from stereo to mono,
for a long time I played live stereo, it wasn't for cool sweeping effects it was basically to have the swat of two very different amps
most of my signal was mono until the delay

when I downsized from two halfstacks to combo amps and started using more pedals (thanks a lot ILF)
I did the full on stereo thing for a while
even built a mega board for it
loved my slicer like that and pushing two amps is awesome

found the following
1. not all stereo pedals are really stereo- like my time bender loops in summed mono
2. there is twice as much that can go wrong
3. there is twice as much knob fiddling "oh my tone reaper sounds great on this amp but not on that one" (not that a tone reaper ever sounds bad
4. Live music makes it kindof silly

Elaborating on 4:
If you play live and your amps are right next too each other a person 20 feet away isn't getting a ton of stereo
if like me you are at the constant mercy of a soundman you are probably only really outputting mono anyway
In the context of a full band all that cool swishy stuff can get lost in the mix regardless of the integrity of your sound
carrying two amps sucks

I do setup at home sometimes in stereo or even more amps (thanks to the headrush!!!!)
but live now I take a small amp, a mono board (usually 5 versatile pedals max) and a guitar. I run an amp with a good line out, and keep a DI of some type in my guitar case.
I am in, setup, and able to play in about 10 minutes, troubleshooting is almost non-existent

I love stereo, it's awesome, but it is twice the work and not twice the reward.

Enjoy your simplified life!!!

I don't do it for the stereo itself per se but rather the difference in sound from two sources, and routing options. I'd run 16 or 20 amps if I had the room and the budget!

Depth and control are the key reasons I continue to bother.

98% of my stuff is mono.

I ran stereo for a few months, then tried playing a gig with two amps... long story short, I don't miss it and get equally satisfying sounds. I always like to remind myself that one of the most celebrated and texturally rich albums was recorded entirely mono.

PumpkinPieces wrote:I ran stereo for a few months, then tried playing a gig with two amps... long story short, I don't miss it and get equally satisfying sounds. I always like to remind myself that one of the most celebrated and texturally rich albums was recorded entirely mono.

Yeah, this.

Stereo is a helluva lot of fun, even if you're not after stereo effects, but just want to blend different tones or gain levels.
Especially if you're not used to it, you enter a whole new world.

But after a while, it becomes a hasslte to bring two heavy ass amps to rehearsel. Sounding killer at rehearsels is sweet (cause yeah, it does sound A LOT better to me), but rehearsels aren't like recording sessions or live gigs. It's okay to sound good at rehearsels, you don't have to kill you back and stuff your car with amps for a 2 hour session of song writing or whatever.

And for live rigs the two amps are even more of a pain in the ass. I can't even remember all the stages I've been on that were to small to even fit ONE amp, let alone two. Not to mension most of those gigs had no PA, or a limited/gettho/shitty one, so the stereo rig wouldn't have made any difference to the audience nor myself.

Shitty house PA back in the stone age is one reason I went stereo.

I could project the way I wanted to, even if it didn't come across as stereo.

Wasn't easy or small but...I was already lugging a Space Echo and a rack of gear and a half stack.

What's another combo?

PumpkinPieces wrote:I ran stereo for a few months, then tried playing a gig with two amps... long story short, I don't miss it and get equally satisfying sounds. I always like to remind myself that one of the most celebrated and texturally rich albums was recorded entirely mono.

Yeah, this. Sorta

But with that way of thinking you'll end up with one amp, three boss/ehx/dunlop pedals, and a telecaster. That'd works for me, but it's sometimes just too much fun to rock a stereo rig and a pedalboard the size of a pingpong table, even as an untalented unsuccesful bedroom musician

But a stereo rig can easily sound messy in a band with 2 gtrs imo. In a 3 piece band it can sorta kinda make up for the lack of a 2nd guitar, in the way that it adds more body, moves more air, adds a different texture,...imo

thanks for this. i lose some of the stereo goodness on loops, but i do like the multiple gain staging. but two amps is just a big pain in the balls to deal with, and they're real big and stuff.
i think i can live in mono, and i guess there is always DI'ing clean signal out before the amp or putting a mic behind the speaker and all that shit.

see you later, amps.