Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Stereo Guitars

Why would you need a stereo guitar?


If you have ever listened to music on a car stereo or headphones you can probably appreciate the importance of stereo.  Have you ever panned all of the music to either the left or right side?  It sounds like something is missing right?  Well once you hear a guitar in stereo, mono will never sound the same again.  It is a fuller, richer sound and opens up a whole new world of possibility.

Guitars are typically wired in mono, but a few companies are making stereo guitars these days.  These are usually two-pickup guitars with a jack for each pickup.  This means you have to have two cables hanging from your guitar while you play!  As far as I am concerned the only thing worse than one cable is two.

A normal mono cable on the left and a stereo cable on the right

The Skyliner guitar has one jack that you can use either a mono cable or a stereo cable in.  Plug in a mono cable and it operates just like a normal guitar.  Plug in a stereo cable, the included A/B footswitch, and put the guitar in stereo mode and you are ready to conquer the universe!

The footswitch has one input for the stereo cable and two mono outputs, one for the bridge pickup and one for the neck pickup.  You can run the two channels independently to select one, both, or none, and the LED indicator lights tell you if the channel is active.  This way you can run separate effects and amps for the two pickups.  This gives you the fullness of two guitars when only one is playing.  Here is a demo of the Skyliner Stereo guitar: