The Separator ABY Pedal

An ABY Pedal can make you sound huge. There’s no doubt about it; splitting your signal and sending it to two separate amps can turn your tone from a nice, solid, good sound into a room-filling, bone-shaking, absolute monster of a sound. There’s several things you can do to experiment, and you don’t have to drop a load of money to have good times experimenting – this guide will help you find your sonic Valhalla without breaking the bank.

Let’s get started!

ABY Pedal Tip 1: Re-Amping

Re-amping is the practice of recording not your actual tone when recording, but the naked output of your guitar straight into the mixing desk when recording. Why would you do this? It means, as the name suggests, that you can then send that channel out to another amp during mixing – and your perfect take can have its tone tweaked. Imagine being able to spend a day not worrying about getting your guitar right, but focussed exclusively on the tone. Within a few hours you could get the sweetest, most incredible sound – all without the frustration of having to re-do takes you already know you’ve done perfectly.

But you don’t want to have to play along to your recorded drums and bass with a naked tone. It’ll take forever to get right because you won’t feel the track. There’s no genre of music that a naked tone suits – we all need sweet amp sounds, from the gentle glassy Fender twang of indie and funk to the saturated Mesa-Boogie crush of rock and metal. So what’s to do?

Easy. Get an ABY Pedal and send your tone to two different places – one for a set-up amp you can hear in your headphones as you play along to hear the track as it’s meant to be played, and one to the mixing desk. That way you get the best of both worlds – and re-amping can be your playground. Send the rest of the band to lunch while you spend time absolutely nailing your tone.

And all for absolutely no extra cost! Admit it, that notion has made you excited.

Tip 2: Tuner Outs

You have a tuner onstage: of course you do. If you don’t, you’re crazy. A stage tuner is absolutely essential to every guitarists’ rig as it, essentially, prevents you from sounding bad even when your playing is good. Keeping a tuner constantly active is one way guitarists can check the state of their tuning even as they’re playing, making for shorter breaks between songs and that awkward “bear with us a minute while we tune” moment. All in all, it’s a great way to make your stagecraft a little slicker – allowing you to enjoy the crowd’s adoration uninterrupted.

Tip 3: Separate Onstage Amps

We know we said we’d not tell you to spend any more cash, but chances are there’s a couple of amps in your practice space or guitar room at home. Rather than choosing between them when you’re loading out to go to a gig, why not take both? Beg, borrow or bully your way into two cabs onstage if you’re using amp heads (lending out your own cab is a great way to borrow someone else’s – and make new friends!). Then get the sound engineer to mic up not one, but two cabs. Even if you go for the exact same tone on both amps, the subtle variations between the two will allow your tone to scream bloody murder throughout the set. If the sound engineer is clever, he or she will pan one amp hard right and the other hard left. Once you’ve heard yourself sound like this, you’ll never complain about the gear you’ve got to carry again – you’ll sound that good!

Get Yourself a Slice of ABY Awesome

We’re guessing that by now you want a small-footprint, affordable, bomb-proof and stylish ABY Pedal after all that. Well, we’re Vein-Tap.com! We’ve got what you need with the Separator AB/Y Switch. Check it out!

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