Hello Metal Heads,

It is always a long grueling process recording guitar because for each part I record it twice, each one in a different amp. The result is good but it takes too much time and it is so dam hard being so perfect. What would make my life much easier is if I could record with two different amps simultaneously.
Tell me if this is a good idea or not. I'll connect my guitar to the input of my NS-2 and the output of that to my Randall amp. Than I'll use the send of my NS-2 to my Gt-8 pedal and the output of the Gt-8 to my second amp. Tell me, are the send and output jacks in the NS-2 the same? If so i think this would be and efficient systems to use my two amps simultaneously? What is the difference between output and send?

/* Out of topic I worked so very hard on my previous recording I'm scared to put it here because I don't want to take any chances because of the time and effort it consumed from me. Sorry had to let that out\*

Thank You all

no they arent necessarily the same. The output impedance will be different so they will have slightly different tones. Personally, if i were you, i'd just buy or build a Y box. Theyre really cheap, i think fulltone makes one.

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Sounds like a good idea using a Y box. I tried the send and the result I heard wasn't bad at all. I never used the send before; if people don't use it for an output what do they use it for? What about using a mixer?

Thank You

Use an A/B/Y pedal, i did that kinda thing, running my Laney and Marshall heads together, and recorded them together too, sounded monstrous when you pan them left/right and double track

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Oh so the send actually does send a copy of the signal going into the NS2? Thanks for that info, I had never tried it with mine until now.

The send return jacks on the NS2 are essentially like the NS2's own FX loop. Why it has it? I have no idea, I don't see any advantage to using it compared to putting whatever effects I want before the NS2. I hear no difference in tone, and pluggin em in the simple way just looks so much neater.

Yep, an A/B box or pedal is the way to go. I don't know of any particularly good ones or many at all as I've never needed one, I've just seen a Palmer A/B box in a catalog once and it's said to be the best, it's a tad expensive though. I'm sure you can get a decent splitter for under 50$.

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This thread has given me some great ideas on how to double-track guitars. I always thought that the double-track thickening happened because both parts are the same tone doubled and played slightly different, but I never considered just splitting the signal to two different amps and capturing that. Long ago I tried to get a "artificially double tracked" thing going on by copying one channel and pasting it onto another, which just made the guitars louder but not thicker (because it was the exact same audio information on both channels.) At first when I read this thread I was like "no way, it's the same part, you're not really doubling by just splitting the signal to two amps"... but then I realized hey, you can do another track like that too with the same split signal, I'd bet in a good recording environment that would make some monster rhythm tracks. Two amps woukd have enough differences to color/thicken your tone anyways.

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I've found the fx loop on the ns-2 is mostly useful with boost/od/distortion pedals. say you're boosting an amp with a tubescreamer type pedal, if you have the ts after the ns-2 in your signal chain, you're going to get alot of hiss and operation noise, if you put it before the ns-2 it's going to push alot more into the ns-2 and that's going to change the effectiveness of your gate, maybe even to the point that the gate wont close. by putting it in the fx loop of the ns-2 you're eliminating the operation noise, but not feeding a noisier signal into the pedal.

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Star touch makes pretty good A/B/Y box or pedals.

Brilliant, thanx for that info. Now I'll use my EQ pedal for line boosts in front of the amp in the NS2's loop.

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My friend and I did a cool experiment using two amps. We took a Marshall JCM 800, A Marshall Valvestate (50 watt combo amp) and a Marshall cab and ran the Valvestate and JCM 800 through the cabinet at the same time. Quite a fucking insane sound came out. And recording it was not as difficult as I thought it would have been. We just used a noise supperessor. No eq and the sound was nuts

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If you just record with 2 seperate amps at one time it will not be as thick as if you had recorded 2 tracks with 1 amp each, In my experience atleast... When we recorded the new Myrmidon songs I quadra tracked all the guitars (Thats 2 seperate recordings of the guitar parts in each ear... and each track had 2 mic's on the guitar cab) And if i had just recorded 1 time with 4 amps, it would not have sounded as thick (I tried something like what your attempting before on our first demo)

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