We recently finished a Custom Setup and Custom Junction for Joel.  

Joel does a lot of studio work and often requires re-amp capabilities.  

For those of you that don't know what re-amping is, you're not alone.  It is mainly a technique used in studio where a guitar player will do one guitar take and instead of recording the entire effects chain (overdrives, fuzz, modulation, delay, reverb) and mic'ing up an amp, the recording engineer will actually record the dry guitar straight into the desk.  Once this original take is done it can be played through any number of effects, amps, patches, plugins etc. until the perfect sound is found! 

In short.  The guitar player can do one take and the recording engineer / producer can dial in the sound in any number of combinations without having to pick up the guitar. 

Now that you know a bit more about what Joel needs from his rig, I can explain how we worked with him to get an incredible re-amp pedalboard up and running. 

Step 1: Recording Dry Guitar

As mentioned, step 1 in re-amping is recording a dry guitar signal.  To do this on Joel's junction box we gave him a normal buffered guitar input (which sends to the rest of his pedalboard effects).  This input sends to a tuner out, a send to his first dry effect and most importantly straight back out to the sound desk for re-amping. 

Are you thinking what I'm thinking? 

Yup. 

This means Joel can get a dry guitar signal (for re-amping) and at the same time play through his effects.  He doesn't have to choose between one or the other.  

This is especially helpful if Joel is playing a live set and wants to send fully affected guitar to front of house for the live show but also wants a dry feed for re-amping once the show is finished. 

Step 2: Sending Dry Guitar Back Through Guitar Effects

Now that we have dry guitar we need a way to send it back into the effects and start dialling in sounds.  

The first thing to consider here is if you want to re-amp (send dry guitar) in mono or stereo.  Depending on the studio setup and the instrument and use you may want to send a mono (guitar being a prime example) signal or a stereo signal.  

When would you want to send a stereo signal on a dry guitar? 
a. If the dry guitar has already been treated with plugins you may want to send in stereo 
b. If you're wanting to re-amp a stereo instrument like keyboard 
c. I'm sure you may come up with other ideas, but the main thing to note is having both options up your sleeve can be helpful. 

To help with this Joel used a Radial EXTC stereo re-amp box.  This box typically will work with either stereo OR mono, but not both.  You would have to re-patch your pedalboard to switch between the two. 

Since we like to have a little fun with signal routing and seeing what we can get away with without re-patching we thought we'd give this a try. 

Combining the Radial EXTC Re-Amp Box and a Goodwood Custom Junction we were able to give Joel both options for re-amping without re-patching his pedalboard. 

Joel can now run 3 modes of re-amping 

1. Dry effects only (mono input, stereo output) 
2. Entire pedalboard (mono input, stereo output) 
3. Wet effects only (stereo input, stereo output) 

Step 3: Find Your Sound

I'm going to leave this part up to you. Get creative, try some effects you've never thought could work together.  Run them in mono, stereo, wet dry wet or something else entirely.  Get creative! 

It should be noted that this Goodwood Custom Junction also allows Wet Dry Wet, Auditioning pedals in mono or stereo, buffered inputs and outputs and two types of stereo summing. 

If you have borderline crazy ideas on how you want your pedalboard to work, feel free to give us an email at info@goodwoodaudio.com or book a free Custom Junction Consult so we can figure out how to make your idea a reality!