Anybody here plays stereo live?

[Blille]

Tldr: Any of you fine folks could help me do a stereo setup with my Stomp? This is for CCM.

What I’m thinking is generally two base sounds:
1) Lead - I want to just have a thick sound panned in the middle but with some width to sound bigger. So I’m thinking adding mild ADT and stereo reverb
2) “Rhythm” - anytime there is singing I’m thinking of staying away from the center by doing the classic fake stereo doubling. So I would add 30ms delay to one of the sides, then a stereo reverb.

Am I overthinking this?

More background: in the past when I tried stereo I didn’t think it was worth the hassle but now that I’m going to direct PA with in a Church with a solid sound engineer I am going to give it a try. Of course I’ll talk to him but I thought I’d ask here.

 

[NegativeEase]

I play stereo live -I keep it wide stereo for lead and rhythm

I do it to make the whole sound bigger and thicker -but the speaker cabs are adjacent -Im not setting them apart unless there are no drums and not another guitar.

 

[Blille]

I play stereo live -I keep it wide stereo for lead and rhythm

I do it to make the whole sound bigger and thicker -but the speaker cabs are adjacent -Im not setting them apart unless there are no drums and not another guitar.

Great! So you don’t ever go for the fake guitar doubling thing, just classic epic guitar sound. It sounds like you play with another guitar player?

 

[NegativeEase]

Great! So you don’t ever go for the fake guitar doubling thing, just classic epic guitar sound. It sounds like you play with another guitar player?

yeah! -I am always changing it up though -havent landed on just a few sounds yet

 

[Blille]

yeah! -I am always changing it up though -havent landed on just a few sounds yet

Cool. Thanks for sharing this. I’ll try a few things and see how it goes.

 

[maug2122]

I play in stereo at rehearsals and gigs .
There is a lot of advantages in using stereo over mono .
You could stagger the Delay and Reverb differently on the left or right of the stereo field. .... especially if you use an auto planner to make the sound go from left to right .

 

[Mincer]

On my Fractal, you can set up different IRs for left and right, and do some creative panning with effects. I don't think I would consider stereo at all without a modeler. It is just too much gear to bring to a gig.

 

[beaubrummels]

I don't play stereo live because the audience will never hear it. It turns to mush out front, or gets out of balance, like your source signal cancels and mostly your delayed/reverbed signal makes it to the audience's ears. I just give them a clear signal and expect the FOH to mix it well. I play stereo only at home, for personal enjoyment of how freakin' big it sounds.

 

[Blille]

I should have reported back!

I had a solid stereo setup through my stomp.
5e3 with two different cabs panned hard left and right. I then had a delay on one with 20ms to do double tracking like effect on some rhythm parts and stereo chorus for other lead ones. From there to stereo reverb and then stereo comp.

Got there and rehearsal went great. Run through comes up and there’s a random issue and I needed to go mono lol.

Next time I’ll give it another time.

 

[hamerfan]

Our guitar player used 2 Mesa Boogie 1x12 combos (studio caliber .22) for the live stereo setup. With a mild setting on Boss CE-2 Chorus he went in to the second Mesa. His girlfriend at that time has bought the same combo as he had and he used hers only for live gigs. I think he prefered the fuller bass with that setup. Maybe he could have used a 2x12 extension cab for the same reason.

 

[IMENATOR]

Try the "That Pedal Show" Dry-Wet thing, good note definition even when lots of FX, just put both amps or cabs on top of each other. But also try stereo with different FX on each side, for example chorus left, echo right has better note definition than having all on series, either mono or stereo. I know some people do Reverb left, Echo right, really want to try it myself.

 

[El Dunco]

I’ve only done it when I’ve been the sole guitarist where the hard panned sound left and right is virtually identical left and right (such as chorus and doubling) so nobody is missing out on anything depending on where they are in the audience.

Having two guitarists in my band, I don’t use any stereo. We set our tones up so they stack up well on top of each other as most FOH is mixed virtually in mono, lest people on either side of the stage miss half the sound. Even when I’ve used two amps live, they were blended in dual mono.

My absolute favourite live sound was blending a dual rec with an ADA MP-1 through the matching microtube power amp (the tube based presence circuit is incredibly powerful on that thing). I did some clever routing to have the dual rec kick in during my heavy rhythm sound and be switched out for my clean and lead sounds.

The amount of gear was a bit excessive (the head, the 2 space rack between it and the 4x12 plus the line router and a few pedals) but it was at a really nice sounding concert hall and the results were worth it.

I’d love to be able to recreate that huge, yet articulate sound in a more compact rig but there’s just no pedal pre in the world that sounds identical to my entire DR, just the front end and the power amp is pretty important in that amp. I’ve been considering an Origin Revival Drive, but there’s so many other pedal preamps that would probably do a good enough job for a fraction of the price (even the compaxr is quite pricey over here.)