a dumb question but...

[mick thompson]

what is the difference between an AB footswitch and an AB-Y footswitch?

i was just looking to get one and some places advertise AB's and others advertise AB-Y's.

 

[Torsis]

AB toggles back & forth to either A or B.
ABY toggles to either A or B, or send to both A+B ...just like the picture: Y

 

[wyllie]

So does that mean you could run one guitar into 2 amps?

 

[Metaltastic]

Yep

 

[mick thompson]

and using an AB-Y pedal is there any signal or tone loss when splitting the signal?

 

[Morgan138]

and using an AB-Y pedal is there any signal or tone loss when splitting the signal?

That's pretty much what separates a good one from a bad one. I tried a Morley ABY that seemed to be sapping my volume, so I ended up ordering one from Loooper that sounds better. Loooper will also let you tweak the design yourself - I wanted a second LED to show me which channel would be active when I switched from A+B to A/B mode.

You can also run two guitars into the "outputs" and plug the "input" into one amp, which lets you switch cleanly between instruments.