Show us your stereo, w/d and w/d/w rigs!

[Mincer]

Re: Show us your stereo, w/d and w/d/w rigs!

If I am patching into a club's mono PA, I run mono. Most festivals I play at with provided PA are in stereo, though.

[Sirion]

Re: Show us your stereo, w/d and w/d/w rigs!

I'd be curious what the different goals of a multi channel or stereo rigs people post are.

Mincer's is obvious -he's creating stereo for a stereo PA for a live audience.

But I imagine for most clubs or venues with a house PA, stereo may only benefit the band onstage or maybe no one. -so are they for recording, for blending, or for other things?

I would primarily use mine for mixing effected and un-effected versions of the same amp signal. This, incidentally, is one of the places where having a digital multi-fx rig can benefit one greatly: set up patches for both occasions, and once you do switching to mono where necessary does not even require changing a single cable.

[NegativeEase]

Re: Show us your stereo, w/d and w/d/w rigs!

If I am patching into a club's mono PA, I run mono. Most festivals I play at with provided PA are in stereo, though.

Yeah I would say stereo is pretty easy to come by in a rental PA situation like festivals or events -where stereo DJ audio will also be needed.

So I can see utilizing stereo effects in these scenarios would be a lot of fun.

[NecroPolo]

Re: Show us your stereo, w/d and w/d/w rigs!

If I am patching into a club's mono PA, I run mono. Most festivals I play at with provided PA are in stereo, though.

Absolutely valid point about the mono system, still it's a little strange to me to hear about something like that now'days. I think I met a mono PA last time somewhere around the early '90s or so.

(...) But I imagine for most clubs or venues with a house PA, stereo may only benefit the band onstage or maybe no one (...)

Of course it makes a difference. For years and years of testing during soundchecks, playing in both single and dual guitar bands, going mono and stereo, experimenting with single (mono) and multi mics (stereo) and different type of pannings, trying to put the "album wide" guitars to stage environment and such things, I concluded that to my best knowledge the best solution I could come up with is having two very tight rhythm guitarists playing two slightly different rigs, panned L/R (tailored to the room/stage acoustics). When I play as single I try to emulate an another me on the other side of the PA. Don't think about ping-pong delays, ambient reverbs and such, I mean simple baseline rock rhythm guitar riffs.

For recording I think the best solution I can come up with is to record separate takes to the left and the right instead of a mono guitar tricked into stereo. A stereoised single guitar works and is okay-ish but it will also add some artificial flavour while 2 separate and tight R/L takes remain natural. There are many exceptions (Van Halen) who make an awesome superwide stereo guitar field from a mono source but that never worked for me for recording.

[NegativeEase]

Re: Show us your stereo, w/d and w/d/w rigs!

Absolutely valid point about the mono system, still it's a little strange to me to hear about something like that now'days. I think I met a mono PA last time somewhere around the early '90s or so.



Of course it makes a difference. For years and years of testing during soundchecks, playing in both single and dual guitar bands, going mono and stereo, experimenting with single (mono) and multi mics (stereo) and different type of pannings, trying to put the "album wide" guitars to stage environment and such things, I concluded that to my best knowledge the best solution I could come up with is having two very tight rhythm guitarists playing two slightly different rigs, panned L/R (tailored to the room/stage acoustics). When I play as single I try to emulate an another me on the other side of the PA. Don't think about ping-pong delays, ambient reverbs and such, I mean simple baseline rock rhythm guitar riffs.

are you saying you were playing clubs/venues with Stereo PA? What kind of clubs? because all of it works with a Stereo PA -my question isn't for that of course because you can weight the effect in a pan and take advantage of stereo,

but in my experience, most or many Rock clubs do not run true stereo and most professional FOH mixers -may mix in stereo or to dual mono but the most regular clubs aren't doing true stereo -for a multitude of reasons. - but event spaces, small bars with small PAs, and festival event PAs and things like this stereo is pretty standard. So my point was -if you playing Mono clubs, is there still benefit to running stereo on stage for the group or do you abandon it?

[Phantasmagoria]

Re: Show us your stereo, w/d and w/d/w rigs!

When I go stereo for ours gigs (pretty often these days) ..it's with these two 30W Laboga heads & my TC Electronics Mimic Pedal. Sometimes through two cabs if they're available or else with cab emulation (AMT Chameleon Cab + Mooer Radar). Not that much to lug around & it sounds great..really a huge spread.

[NegativeEase]

Re: Show us your stereo, w/d and w/d/w rigs!

When I go stereo for ours gigs (pretty often these days) ..it's with these two 30W Laboga heads & my TC Electronics Mimic Pedal. Sometimes through two cabs if they're available or else with cab emulation (AMT Chameleon Cab + Mooer Radar). Not that much to lug around & it sounds great..really a huge spread.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]98996[/ATTACH]

Cool looking rig. Sorry, I'm just trying to follow the scenarios -I don't use stereo usually. in a mono mix club, does your approach change or do you keep it consistent and either use for an FOH blend etc?

i think my confusion is people on here keep mixing up the term "stereo' when they mean "dual mono"

[NecroPolo]

Re: Show us your stereo, w/d and w/d/w rigs!

are you saying you were playing clubs/venues with Stereo PA?

Yes. Even smaller clubs pan my guitar L/R without question if I provide them two outputs. If they didn't, during sound check the recognisable L/R guitar would not appear in the PA after my ramp marshall signs (and stage plan) and it always did in the last 20+ years whenever I brought a stereo rig onstage. Only the percentage of panning is different from place to place.

So my point was -if you playing Mono clubs, is there still benefit to running stereo on stage for the group or do you abandon it?

I'd go mono of course, such a split setup like mine wound cause only phase issues in a mono PA if both signals were in the mix.

[Mincer]

Re: Show us your stereo, w/d and w/d/w rigs!

There are still clubs here that run mono...get this- L is mains, R is monitors. I don't know how you mix like that.

[NegativeEase]

Re: Show us your stereo, w/d and w/d/w rigs!

There are still clubs here that run mono...get this- L is mains, R is monitors. I don't know how you mix like that.

Ha. I have totally seen that. -also in bigger spaces, often Fills are Aux bus mono around a slightly stereo FOH -which can create some different kinds of comb filtering and listening problems that may be better or worse than a stereo fill (which is almost unheard of)

I'm very curious about what guys like Phastama and Necro are doing -as remember the Stereo effect is about the SAME single being weighted to created a spacial dimension in the brain between 2 sources, but hard panning 2 amps with different tone left and right from different amps is not technically stereo -it's dual mono -especially to the brain who will probably will interpret the same guitar as 2 guitars in time with each other out wide and not in the spacial stereo dimension -but not always -and using 2 heads with different sounds is not stereo -BUT if they are close enough in tone or time -your brain may spacially reconstituted them in the stereo spectrum based on how they are weighted in a stereo or dual mono PA. Incredibly complex and personal.

It's actually extremely complicated and subjective to every listening position in the room and also how fills, subs and your on stage amps (if run in stereo) also affect spacial and temporal placement.

Ive never run stereo native or dual channel guitar amps in my bands in medium or large clubs -so I'm very interested in what modern players are doing . Dual mono channel or stereo guitar for me has been mostly art galleries and events where a traditional stage set up for very directional propagation are not part of the equation and the area is sort of a blank slate for the musicians to create amongst the crowd.

[jeremy]

Re: Show us your stereo, w/d and w/d/w rigs!

ive seen the l-mains, r-monitors thing before. its wonky but it works. obviously fairly limited. even with my own pa i can run four monitor mixes, stereo mains, and dedicated sub send. although i can only recall once where i actually ran the mains in stereo. almost all smaller clubs around here are mono, once you get above about 400-500 capacity then pretty much everything is stereo or at least has the capability even if the sound guys dont use it.

thinking about it, there were times when i used to play as a trio much more that i did use two amps but it wasnt w/d or stereo. id run my rotosphere into two amps to get a more realistic leslie sound

[NegativeEase]

Re: Show us your stereo, w/d and w/d/w rigs!

almost all smaller clubs around here are mono, once you get above about 400-500 capacity then pretty much everything is stereo or at least has the capability even if the sound guys dont use it.

This is mostly my experience, small clubs mono, med mono or stereo larger venues have stereo systems, and the FOH mixes in stereo -BUT the mix is heavily center weighted if not mono with fills as mono and of course subs in mono too

[NecroPolo]

Re: Show us your stereo, w/d and w/d/w rigs!

There are still clubs here that run mono...get this- L is mains, R is monitors. I don't know how you mix like that.

I mean by small club a place that can absorb what 50 to 100 folks and an atomic rock band can throw at it. As for the mixer, supposedly 16 channels + enough aux for the monitors, main out stereo. Places like this one:

The mix here is raw, coming from the mixing dest to the PA, with a little level ironing perhaps for the video. Panned left is what is coming from the Marshall behind, panned right is a MIMIQ'd dry guitar into an AMT preamp into a gate then DI to the PA. It is not panned hard wide as you can hear, just a litte more than mono.

Years ago we carried our 16-channel Yamaha mixer just to save the day when needed. Now'days we use an Allen&Heath QU-SB: plug-in, quickly adjust levels, EQ and pan (not wide/hard at all) to the actual place, save preset. Simple task for the in-house sound guy during single shows and a really quick run for our own sound guy when we are on tour. When the in-house mixer is better than our A&H, we use that (just like in the example).

Bigger clubs have more capable equipment that can do R/L guitars easily. And they do.

[NegativeEase]

Re: Show us your stereo, w/d and w/d/w rigs!

I mean by small club a place that can absorb what 50 to 100 folks and an atomic rock band can throw at it. As for the mixer, supposedly 16 channels + enough aux for the monitors, main out stereo. Places like this one:

The mix here is raw, coming from the mixing dest to the PA, with a little level ironing perhaps for the video. Panned left is what is coming from the Marshall behind, panned right is a MIMIQ'd dry guitar into an AMT preamp into a gate inti directly to the PA. It is not panned hard wide as you can hear, just a litte more than mono.

Years ago we carried our 16-channel Yamaha mixer just to save the day when needed. Now'days we use an Allen&Heath QU-SB: plug-in, quickly adjust levels, EQ and pan (not wide/hard at all) to the actual place, save preset. Simple task for the in-house sound guy during single shows and a really quick run for our own sound guy when we are on tour. When the in-house mixer is better than our A&H, we use that (just like in the example).

Everything else above the example do this slight R/L thing having a more capable equipment.

Got it. Thanks for the detail Where are you at Necro?

[NecroPolo]

Re: Show us your stereo, w/d and w/d/w rigs!

Do you mean, in the moment or on the planet?