Stereo Chorus in live situations

[SoundsLikeFog]

I'm currently building a pedalboard for my bands upcoming live shows. Since I'm the only guitarist in the band, I'll be playing through a stereo setup.

Tuner --> Vol --> Splitter --> 2x preamps --> stereo delay --> Stereo Verb --> DI straight to FOH.

So basically I've been pondering about using a stereo chorus between preamps and the delay. In theory, this should help enlarging the stereo image of the guitar. The problem is, I fucking hate chorus.

The jist would be to use it very wet with extremely mild settings so that the effect would not be that obvious, but you'd still get that few cents of wobble between the two channels.

Has anybody tried something like this and / or does have suggestions considering transparent chorus pedals?

I could of course always just buy bunch of different chorus pedals and test it, but since I'm a cheap ass broke wench, I thought I'd ask.

 

[amarshism]

Try using delay instead.

 

[SoundsLikeFog]

Try using delay instead.

How and why exactly?

Even though they'd be separate L and R channels, I still do hate with great passion all haas-stereo trickery. Haven't tested it live, but I doubt that at 105db it would still suck just as much as in studio, only louder.

Plus how could that be accomplished in analog..? Take a 100% wet mono delay pedal after the second preamp with feedback zeroed and delay time barely open..?

 

[-Noodles-]

If you're playing small clubs I doubt there will be enough channels and PA to fully get the feeling of stereo guitars, and that's been the vast majority of my experience. In my opinion - stereo guitars suck horribly. only 10% of the audience can hear the effect, and most of the time us engineers use mono with a single guitar player unless it's REALLY pronounced.

I'd stick to having stereo delay, and a mic on each cab, and tell the engineer that you use it for solos. That way he'll know to push both faders equally or group them in a VCA / POP.
Having two cabs, with two different heads, and a thick sound will work better than a tiny piece of chorus or Hass-style delay.

Just my two cents.

 

[SoundsLikeFog]

If you're playing small clubs I doubt there will be enough channels and PA to fully get the feeling of stereo guitars, and that's been the vast majority of my experience. In my opinion - stereo guitars suck horribly. only 10% of the audience can hear the effect, and most of the time us engineers use mono with a single guitar player unless it's REALLY pronounced.

I'd stick to having stereo delay, and a mic on each cab, and tell the engineer that you use it for solos. That way he'll know to push both faders equally or group them in a VCA / POP.
Having two cabs, with two different heads, and a thick sound will work better than a tiny piece of chorus or Hass-style delay.

Just my two cents.

Well, we won't be playing small clubs. And for the sake of convenient, we won't have cabinets on stage. As I said, we're going DI. We'll also have our own FOH-engineer, so no need to teach or negotiate with the locals about our setup.

Dual head setup would of course be ideal soundwise but at this point it's just not going to happen. When opening for big acts, on extremely tight schedules, the last thing I want is to dance around with a dual head + dual cabinet + rx-rack / board setup. I'd rather just show the stagehand: "See there, plug two xlr's there and we're done."

'Us engineers' have different preffered methods. I always dual mic guitars. I find there is no reason not to. I enjoy the sound much more than a single mono mic without any real downsides. I don't really buy into "only 10% can hear it". I'd say it's exactly the other way around. The only ones who can't hear the effect at all, are the people in far L and far R, in front of the stage. Yet, even to them, the stereo / dual mic setup, does no harm.

E: But considering my question, I know that dual preamps + stereo fx will be enough. I was just toying with the idea, could chorus make it 'more than enough'.

 

[xFkx]

no idea about chorus, but amarshism's idea about delaying one side by a few ms's seems like something worth to try

 

[StefTD]

May I ask what kind of Preamps you're using?

Maybe the Axe-Fx with a dual-amp setup would be nice for you, using different amp sims and sending each of them to
the PA, with a midi-floorboard you don't need to tap-dance, setting up is easy and you can try everything you want

 

[SoundsLikeFog]

May I ask what kind of Preamps you're using?

Maybe the Axe-Fx with a dual-amp setup would be nice for you, using different amp sims and sending each of them to
the PA, with a midi-floorboard you don't need to tap-dance, setting up is easy and you can try everything you want

Yes, Axe FX + midi pedal would also be ideal but unfortunately it's at the moment out of my price range. I'll be using AMT Electronics's legend2-preamps. R2 and something else.. Possibly P2.

 

[egan.]

I wouldn't bother. It's either going to be unnoticeable or sound like chorus.

 

[SoundsLikeFog]

I wouldn't bother. It's either going to be unnoticeable or sound like chorus.

Yea, that's what me and our sound guy were pondering on. Well, won't hurt to try, now will it..

 

[Skinny Viking]

wasting time never actually hurts ... its just disappointing

 

[SoundsLikeFog]

wasting time never actually hurts ... its just disappointing

"Time's never wasted when you're wasted all the time".