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We messed around with 4 channel Surround Sound in the 80’s.. It was cool to experiment with it but found it pretty much impractical in most cases.. Especially as a gigging Band...

Even lugging 2 Amps to do Stereo doesn’t make a lot of sense for a gigging Band.. Especially if you’re running your Amp through the Main FOH System... Plus it’s a pain in the back!

But, it is fun for Recording....

andy_tchp wrote: ↑

Wed Feb 10, 2021 12:27 am

4 X 15s! Would love to hear this rig in person.

Whoops meant to respond earlier. YEAH MAN! People are very struck at the sound of that rig! We hand out free earplugs at the door...

The top cab is wet, very very wet, and the lower cab is clean and fills in the missing freqs that the reverb tank removes.

if the band is louder than a modern jazz combo, i'll often employ two amps. mostly for tonal bi-amping like you mentioned,
but i will sometimes spread the two amps Left-Right around me and feed them from the stereo output of the Eventide Space.
i often have a Line 6 DL4 before that and a Dunlop stereo panning tremolo before that. plenty of fun spatial options from those.

i won't shy away from doing that onstage, if it suits the venue vibe and if time permits.
but mostly i do it for myself and maybe one or two of my mates, cause as others have mentioned,
i don't think it registers very far beyond the stage, in fact it generally diffuses your attack and tone.

i often play as the ambient/noise/lead guy, so a lot of the time it's fine if my stereo sound gets washed out a bit in the room.
if i need a strong rhythm, i might even kill the Right channel and clean boost the Left for a focused sound.

in my studio/rehearsal room, i'll even add a third rig - a Leslie 18 rotating speaker for some real motion!

Ambient lead Guy. Hmm that's me to a t. Tell me about how the Leslie adds in your rehearsal space. Are you using it with mono center feed with left and right? Or just alone for another motion tone? Very interesting. Helix does a nice stereo simulation, but a real moving set of drivers sounds very cool. I have a Leslie type cab with out a moving horn I need to dig out of the mothballs..

geoman wrote: ↑

Mon Feb 15, 2021 6:58 am

Ambient lead Guy. Hmm that's me to a t. Tell me about how the Leslie adds in your rehearsal space. Are you using it with mono center feed with left and right? Or just alone for another motion tone? Very interesting. Helix does a nice stereo simulation, but a real moving set of drivers sounds very cool. I have a Leslie type cab with out a moving horn I need to dig out of the mothballs..

i'm kind of a nut for quality vintage oddball amps, so discovering the Leslie 18 was a ball. it looks like a Fender SF cab, in fact i believe they were made at Fender around '69 or so. *see Fender Vibratone... it's not quite as strong/cutting as those classic Leslie furniture looking cabs. the mechanicals are simplified and it involves a single 12" speaker with a spinning directional flange in front of it. it's built for gigging - a Fender cab with casters and it's not very heavy considering it's size.

since it's not crazy heavy, i actually strapped it to the top of a massive 8-foot tall shelving unit. my studio has a high-ish ceiling.
i have it on an amp selector (third channel) and when i kick it on it throws my sound across the top of the room!

there are two speeds, and the slow one, my favorite, is kind of subtle but is very beautiful with lush legato chords..
the fast speed usually gets my mates' attention, it makes a warbly moving chorus.
and of course toggling between the two makes for some random wild phases shifting arcs.

i almost always use it in tandem with a strong main amp that covers my usual sounds, then i'll drive the 18 with it's own dedicated amp. these days i'm driving it with an AC-15, and that's enough power to make it sing.

i rarely add it to a stereo two-amp set-up, but yeah - in that case it gets a mono feed that goes to the amp switcher. the switcher channel for the main amps will feed the stereo delay and reverbs independently of the Leslie.

or in a simpler 'stage' setup, without the amp switching, i might just send it the right channel of my delay or reverb, and call it a gig.

I Dig your creativity, and mounting it high in the room is so cool!! Thanks for the explanation and the ideas are coming fast now I tell you.

I have been using four 4 x 10 columns stacked vertically to create a sound stage that is almost eight feet tall. Mounted on a base to keep floor reflections to a minimum. But the idea of low amps and a spinning driver above your head is so GREAT. I gotta try that.

The surround room I tried out had the rear drivers about 9 foot up on the rear wall and I think that added the most to the overall experience. Movement in the room while just swelling a chord was immense!!

yeah - most Leslie type cabs are too heavy to try up high, but these Vibratone types aren't too bad, just a bit bulky.
some of the more modern makers are even smaller, but i haven't tried any.

sounds like that surround room you were in might have been designed for movie mixing.
i record a lot for movies, and the drummer in my first real band is a mixer for those big film-style mixing theaters.
every now and then at 7pm when the crew goes home, we'll plug in!

i'm surprised more live theaters aren't equipped for surround mixing of live music.
i guess there's rarely enough time for most touring bands to work it out, when they're only in town for a night.

Larsongs wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 12, 2021 11:37 am

We messed around with 4 channel Surround Sound in the 80’s.. It was cool to experiment with it but found it pretty much impractical in most cases.. Especially as a gigging Band...

Even lugging 2 Amps to do Stereo doesn’t make a lot of sense for a gigging Band.. Especially if you’re running your Amp through the Main FOH System... Plus it’s a pain in the back!

But, it is fun for Recording....

I have a 3 inch tube amp sim and i'm prepared to use it through a PA (well when the 18 month postponed gig happens) and still run my main amp for the feel.
Second to that i'm considering a stereo amp, not the roland JC-120 but a peavey or ampeg 'clone' i suppose. Not exactly the same effect, but micced and panned, who knows? or parrallel routed, maybe? or will make things...heavier.

towards the end of my first band's life i was using two amps, a twin reverb and an airline 62-9013A. i didn't have any stereo effects to experiment with, but throwing the airline on using an AB/Y pedal worked great as boost of sorts– it had this awful celestion speaker in it (up until the day before i got rid of it, when i put a jensen in and finally figured out why people liked these amps ) that sounded muddy and super compressed on it's own, but sat in just the right part of the lower mids to make everything sound thicker when paired with the twin (and, as an added bonus, it worked as the perfect volume reference for keeping the twin in a reasonable volume range).

What kind of ABY boxes are you using? Radial BigShot, Lehle or something else?

VPO wrote: ↑

Sun Jun 20, 2021 9:53 pm

What kind of ABY boxes are you using? Radial BigShot, Lehle or something else?

i use one of the fender ones but i'm tempted to just build my own. i'd rather just have one switch to one amp and one switch to another rather than a A or B and a both switch. i tend to forget what amp i left the signal on so when i need the grit of just the bassman, it's nice and clean and i'm like "oh, yeah. the twin was the last one on"

VPO wrote: ↑

Sun Jun 20, 2021 9:53 pm

What kind of ABY boxes are you using? Radial BigShot, Lehle or something else?

If you want a stereo Lehle, you can take mine for a steal. Never bonded with it, the whole TRS thing was too much to deal with.

DeathJag wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 21, 2021 9:02 am

VPO wrote: ↑

Sun Jun 20, 2021 9:53 pm

What kind of ABY boxes are you using? Radial BigShot, Lehle or something else?

If you want a stereo Lehle, you can take mine for a steal. Never bonded with it, the whole TRS thing was too much to deal with.

Thanks. Would love to buy it for cheap but I believe we have that ocean between us.

I just picked up an old Roland JC90 (2x10, successor to JC77, which I love) partly because it has a stereo fx loop return, which could potentially mean that I could run some stereo stuff (modulation, delays, etc) with just one amp. (Or two little Roland 2x10 amps in stereo could be interesting)

In my (limited) testing so far, everything is audible and sounds fine but almost sounds like the stereo stuff run into it has been summed, (it’s not a big amp and the speakers are close together), while the onboard chorus still has a much wider spread. It may simply be that they dialed in their chorus well (dry/wet I believe) while the wet/wet stuff I’m running into is just too close together physically (or sounds best with your nose pressed into the grille cloth)

On the other hand, we had our first practice since before times on Wednesday, and JC77 + super reverb at real (not residential / living room) volume is a glorious thing.

Vox AC30 and Roland JC120... which is kind of three channel actually.
Just for my own vanity but it sounds damn good.