Double Amp setup - please advice

HarryTheAxe

New Member
Hi guys,
I'm trying to figure out the best way to setup a preset with two amps at once. I'm the only guitar player in my band and I always used two amps before I started using AxeFx. And I feel like it's very essential part of my sound.

So what I came up with so far:
1. Two amp blocks. X/Y switching on both to switch between clean and dirty amps. This doesn't work for me because the lag is too big.
2. Two clean amp blocks w/ drive before them. In this situation cleans are fine, but I never managed to get the drive sound as good as dirty amp.
3. Two dirty amp blocks. In this scenario distortion sounds are amazing. But need to find a way to clean up them. Assign some knobs to scene controllers or something...

What do you think of these options? What do you use? Any advice much appreciated.
 
What are the differences between the two amps?
I tend to have one amp sounding slightly brighter/crunchier, sharper if you will, and the other one is darker with more headroom. And of course I run them in parallel and pan left/right.
I think it makes sound much more fuller in comparison with one amp setup.
 
If the same amps can handle clean as well as dirty tones, try Scene Controllers.
 
If you can get cleans that you’re ok with without using the amp block (eq, drive pedal, whatever) then just set all that up on a third row and mute both amps and unmute that chain to switch to clean.
 
That gap is a problem I’ve juggle with for years. There are many ways of tackling it. Some examples:
1. Use one amp for clean, and one for dirty, and switch between them. You don’t get the two amp sound, but is works.
2. Like 1, except that the clean amp X/Ys to dirty, and the dirty amp switches on, covering the gap.
3. Minimise the number of parameter changes between X and Y, minimising the transition time.
4. The @clarky method. Use a pedal to morph the amps settings smoothly, just as you would for Wah or volume. No gap, but the amp type doesn’t change, just the values.
5. Scene Controllers, as @yek suggests. They work, but in my situation they used too many cpu cycles.

Currently I’m using a combination of 2 and 3, controlled by a scene change.
 
you can smoothly morph between two amps using a mixer block controlled by an expression pedal. This doesn't solve the gap problem if you still also need two tones out of each amp, but it's nice if you have dirty on one and clean on the other. You can also tweak the controller curves so you get whatever mix of dirty and clean along the path of the expression pedal. You can also switch on/off a FIL or PEQ that slams the front of one or both amps with more gain instead of x/y switching for each amp, and no audio gap there.

Edit: you can also use the expression pedal to control the output level on the FIL or PEQ block to get a more dynamic effect, perhaps with less overhead than tweaking amp block parameters? I'm not sure about this last part but it's worth a try.
 
I made myself a main preset where i got 2 amps on 2 different path, one is a clean amp and the other a dirty one, each goes into their own stereo cabs and that is where you should try and match different sounding cabs. That is the only way i could have got a preset with no gaps when switching from clean to crunch but it has it's limit ( i'm forced to use the same amps settings for my solo sound and rely on other tweaks to boost and change the sound to be more suited for soloing.) Capture.JPG
 
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