silly cable split question.

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cabbages

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i bought a 1/4" splitter (turns one 1/4" into two 1/4"). what i wanted to do was run a guitar through 2 heads at once, or possibly run one direct in and one into a head. this seems fairly obvious to me (...a little too obvious..) could this mess up the guitar someway from pulling too much power because of two amps?? anybody see any problems??
dan
 
I don't think so.. I've been doing this exact thing for a long time.
 
No power involved. No harm to the guitar. It does affect the impedance going intot he amps, but you won't notice it.
 
It'll work, but the signal will be a little weaker after the split, so you'll have to crank it up a little more to get the same volume level. This will give you a noisier output, whether that's noticeable or not depends on your gear.
 
You make one basic mistake in your thinking of how an electric guitar works. Electric guitars- all of them, even acoustic add-on pickups- actually are electricity GENERATORS- the pickups and the strings form a generator that SENDS a signal TO the amp- NO electricty is sent from the amp to the guitar.

If you find you have a too-low signal going to the amps (you will know because, as mentioned above, you have to crank the amp a bit and noise goes up with volume) try a pre-amp between your guitar and the splitter. A stomp-box EQ functions as a pre-amp, for instance- a tube pre like ART'S or Presonis', or a multi-effect pedal like a Digitech RP-7, would do the trick. If you go with TWO pre's (of whatever ilk) you can dial them for different tone for the two amps.

I have even accidently plugged my guitar into the speaker-out plug, on a 3-5 watt amp- the low power may have something to do with the fact that no ill effects occured. This little crap amp has a previous-owner installed speaker out jack on the FACE, and it is where you expect instrument in's to be (in's are way on the other end of the face, to the right...) Don't think I'd try it with a 135-watt Fender Twin, though...

Oh, and it's NOT a silly question. Best to err on the side of caution, unless wild experimentation is more important to you than preserving your equipment.
 
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