Finally tried w/d/w…..

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JackBootedThug

JackBootedThug

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I actually prefer stereo to it. Maybe I’m not true wdw but with how I’m set up and running…. I’m fine with just going stereo. I picked up another cab and an aby pedal so all I did was split my signal. One line going to my Thor’s hammer pre- into the loop of my Windsor.(center dry), the other line running into my stereo rig….which consists of my ultra plus slaved into the egnater vengeance. Boss ms3 hooked up between them via 7 cable method for my effects. I was hoping for some kinda aha moment but while cool….it’s not really any better than what I had before. I also have not spent much time with it either. Anyway….just thought I’d share that. Any suggestions? Is this actually wdw or something else?
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Yeah, W/D/W rigs are novel and fun, but if you’re not using any poweramp distortion, it’s functionally identical to a stereo rig in the mix.

W/D/W rigs were originally designed to take a line out from a cranked tube amp and feed that low level signal into effects processors so you could get clean and clear effects no matter how hard you drive your amp.

As long as you’re not doing anything wild like putting a dry cab in front of your face and wet cabs way off in the corners of the room or stage or anything, there’s going to be minimal difference between W/D/W and a stereo setup.

If you run dry signal into your wet cabs you might get a slightly bigger sound incidentally from the extra cab, but not necessarily because of the specific nature of W/D/W routing or whatever.
 
it’s a process.
always start with focusing on the dry being the priority and slowy blend in the wets, paying close attention to it not thinning out your overall sounds or adding anything unintended (boomy, overly effected..)
 
I've simulated wdw in my modelers; usually have a dry path panned center, then a stereo path, with each out panned hard left & right, 100% wet.

what I found is I prefer stereo to wdw as well; I run my Engl rack stereo, since the power amp has two sides, so I use stereo effects in front of the power amp, run a cab on each side. Having control of the mix and panning is all I need to get to where I like it.

In the digital modelers, there are many ways to mix the dry and wet signals, and pan; to keep it simple, I just use the mix to keep a good dry / wet mix balance for the effects after the cab block, and tweak the panning.
 
When I have compared, I didn't really think WDW was worth the extra hassle over regular stereo. Then again, I am not a huge effects person, and generally use analog parallel mixing to keep my signal clear for the effects.
 
I love my wdw setup. I am using a mixer to blend a bit of dry into my wet cabs to make it sound bigger. But I was using a jcm800 and recently switched to a sv20 and i notice there's a bit of difference with my delays. I think it's because the sv20 is cranked using an attenuator and compressing the delays losing definition especially dotted eighth. Will probably go back to a master volume amp....
 
Not that I have this concern now; in a live setting, the vocals are usually centered in the FOH mix; having a stereo guitar signal with a good dry/wet mix, with each side hard or almost hard panned, keeps the guitars out of the way of the vocals.

The panning of stereo guitar in a live setting gets more interesting if you have two guitars or guitar and keys, and I found that the panning amounts of each instrument at FOH can help with clarity and separation; e.g., more of one in left or right, more of the other in the opposite; or hard pan one instrument and near-pan the other closer in to the center, etc., ...live board mixing is art and engineering...

For example, I'd like to see how the FOH engineer live mixes Dream Theater, so Petrucci and Rudess aren't stepping on each other constantly, and that changes in each section of each song...probably lots of automation is my guess.
 
Wells thanks for letting me know I’m not crazy and hearing shit. Honestly the center dry doesn’t fit that well with my stereo sound. Sounds off for some reason. That cab has 75’s and my other ones have v30’s…that wouldn’t have anything to do with it would it?
 
JackBootedThug said:
Wells thanks for letting me know I’m not crazy and hearing shit. Honestly the center dry doesn’t fit that well with my stereo sound. Sounds off for some reason. That cab has 75’s and my other ones have v30’s…that wouldn’t have anything to do with it would it?
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not really. it’s just that it’s not as simple as plug and play. i’d estimate that after a week of just sticking your foot in that wdw door and wrapping your brain around how to dial in effects in that new environment, decent results start to emerge.
 
It takes a bit to dial it in correctly, but once you do it sounds glorious! I prefer 100% wet in the wet cabs so as not to have any phasing issues. That said, I wouldn’t use w/d/w in a live setting. Stereo is fine and even that’s too much to ask of some sound systems/sound guys.
 
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