Splitting a guitar signal?

If all you want to do is run into two amps simultaneously, the easiest way is to get a stereo chorus pedal and run an output to each amp. With it turned off it just buffers and splits the signal, and with it on, well, it's stereo chorus.

Some purists will point out that since this is not "true bypass", your tone will be impacted, but in my experience, this effect is subtle to nonexistent.
 
ggunn said:
Some purists will point out that since this is not "true bypass", your tone will be impacted, but in my experience, this effect is subtle to nonexistent.
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If the signal is buffered even when the effect is off, there is no need for true bypass. The problem with effects is if the input is connected when off but the output is not buffered, and you have a chain of such effects, then the parallel input impedance drops too low and loads the instrument excessively.

In that manner, hooking up two amps with a Y cable is analogous to using one unbypassed effects pedal.
 
Boss LS-2 Line Switcher will allow you to run A, B or A+B. There are few different switching modes. There are separate level controlls for each output. Its quiet, has a 9v output for other pedals and isn't too expensive.
 
I didn't need to switch between the two but just to run two amps, so I ended up with an MXR KFK-1 ten-band EQ pedal. It's an 18v pedal (go figure) with a gain, ten band EQ, volume boost, and stereo out.
 
Thanks for all the replies. I need to split a signal to run my guitar to a guitar amp, and a bass amp. The bass amp has a "sub harmonic" feature which gives the guitar a really fat sound. (Sounds like a guitar and bass with only one guitar)
 
noise problems

i have been working with two amps as well and am thinking about trying the splitter box and the "y" cable methods. right now i am just going into the boss tuner and using both the "output" and "bypass" outs. one side goes to a big muff and into an american made fender blues deville tube amp. the other side goes through a boss octave pedal and an ibanez delay into a 212 solid state amp. i have been doing a lot of experiments and all my noise is coming from splitting the signal with the tuner pedal. actually this delay pedal seems to be adding some noise too but i am more concerned with cleaning up the blues deville side anyway. i could order a $100 splitter but i want to be sure it will not add noise like the tuner does before i do. it sure seems like a "y" cable would be kind of crappy. anyone try all these methods out?
 
mshilarious said:
No it, won't. It is true that the load will increase on the guitar when driving two inputs, but the exact nature of the change depends on the output impedance of the guitar and the input impedance of the amps. In most situations, the difference will be very small, certainly less than 3dB. Now if you hook up 10 amps . . .

In fact I just set up an experiment with my bass driving two channels of an instrument input on a pre (1M ohm) using a Y cable. The difference between a single channel with the Y cable and a single channel with the straight cable was 0.03dB, which probably had more to do with the consistency of my playing ;)

Also, using an active buffer is no big deal when you are running through a pedal board, but if you are the sort that likes to run straight into a tube amp, the buffer will isolate the guitar from the tube.

Either way, this should be a $20 parts project . . . if you don't need all the extras like switchable boost, etc.
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how about a diagram?
TWANG
 
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