Robben Ford suggestion for connecting amps

That is "daisy chaining" Very old school. Go look at some historical photographs of Jimi, Jimmy, Robin, etc....
When you plug in to the jack of input 2, you lose some sensitivity imo. One can make it sound great, but it is a compromise.

Emee

 

Yea, it's a compromise. So are "Y" chords and A/B/Both boxes. The only way you regain that sensitivity is with a buffered amp switcher.

 

You don't get the same signal to amp 2 but you just turn up the volume on amp 2 a hair and eq to taste. It works very well. If you feel you need it better than that and I personally don't think it is necessary, you can always pull out the old credit card.

 

You also drop the signal on the first amp to the level of the #2 jack, when plugged into both #1 and #2.

 

FWIW, you would be doing yourself a favor by upgrading your splitter by getting a more proper unit that sends a full strength signal to your amps. Splitting your guitar signal in half to two amps makes for a more anemic tone.

 

This daisy chaining is different by amp type and how many gain stages each side has.

The Fender gurus will tell you that the reverb channel has an extra gain stage and that will cause some wave cancellation and some out of phase sounds. Others will tell you it is God's gift to tone. And others will tell you to buy a device like Barbers launch pad that will correct the phase inversion issue and then it's God's gift.... But I've never heard it hurts or is bad.

Personally, I didn't like it with my vintage amps. But I was using a POD XT Live into the dry channel of a TRRI and would alternate between the POD & the reverb channel via an AB/Y box. The results were outstanding and mixed I was blown away.

Of course, YMMV

 

I agree...no love for the morley...

 

who makes a good A\B Y box?

 

I used to do that with my amps back in the sixties.

Dunno if it sounded better or not...I was looking for more volume back then.

 

One of the good inexpensive A,B,y box is the Radial Engineering Box its only 60.00 and has phase,hum,and even tuner jack,great box

 

or a high end re-amper.
i love the radial JD7 for multi amp setups. control of phase and output impedance so the amp still responds as if it's fed directly from a guitar, no matter how many amps are being run (well, up to seven amps).

multi amp setups can be exceedingly addictive. it's like one of those things that once one starts using it, using a single amp can become somewhat pedestrian. forget the A/B/Y switching stuff and go for having all the amps on at once, a la SRV or john m*yer. huge, complex timbres.

 

Rene Martinez makes a box that lets you split your signal to a bunch of amps.. made it originally for SRV:

http://www.texasguitarwhiz.com/

Products > Signal Splitter

 

Yep. When Fred Bonte built my amp switcher - they weren't off the shelf items back then - I was running a '65 Twin Reverb, a '72 post-plexi, 50 watt Marshall half stack and a '66 Super Reverb. We were doing mostly forgetable, private party dance rock, but we played in a lot of large hotel ballrooms - so it was FUN.

Now I use the same custom switcher for a couple of 15 watt Blues Jr's .

 

Rene's box is nice in that it provides a common ground and helps eliminate 60 cycle hum, something an a/b/both box doesn't do. OTOH, it does not compensate for signal loss the way an amp switch does.

Of course when you're running 6 amps at once like Stevie used to, who cares about signal loss?

 

Only 6, you must be talking live - quadruple that for some studio work.

I believe SRV cared very much about signal loss - he was a tone freak.

 

I am sure he cared, but for whatever reason, he never used a buffered amp switch. First time I saw him in a small club in '78, he was daisy chaining two black face Super Reverbs and two black face 15" Vibroverbs. Last time I saw him, a couple months befored he died, he was using one of Rene's splitters.

 

perhaps because the technology just hadn't been applied to guitar rigs yet. at least in that fashion.
were SRV alive today, i'm sure he'd be all over the radial JD7.

 

I don't think so. There were guys building custom buffered amp switchers by at least the late 80'. One of them, Fred Bonte, knew Stevie and Rene.

My guess is Stevie compensated for any signal loss by boosting the amp's eq's, running two Tubescreamers in series, and by the sheer volume of multiple amps. Think about it: You don't really notice any loss unless you isolate a single amp. Otherwise you're still getting the full signal - spread out over multiple amps.