I have a Fender Deville, a Brian Moore i2.13p, and a Rolan VG-88. The Deville has 2 standard input jacks, 1 power amp in and 1 preamp out jack. Currenly I'm running my VG-88 through the preamp rather than through the standard input jack, and getting great sounds. I'd like to be able to switch between my VG-88 played through the Deville and the sounds of the Deville itself.

I've got an A/B box and associated cables including a stereo y-cable but I have not been able to figure the series of connections to work this out. The connections I make either have only the VG88 sounds being played or the Guitar/amp configuration being played with the VG88 sounds (when switched through the A/B box being heard only faintly even though the settings are set at max for volume.

Any thoughts?

That's a very nice combination. I use a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe which is the 40 watt version of the DeVille. They are exeptional guitar amps and I have have had Fender Twins and Marshalls some years ago and I do know tube amps. It sounds like all you want to do is send a signal either to the main input or to the VG88 through the effect return. I guess you have tried using the A/B box to switch your guitar between those 2 inputs. Do you even need to use the Y cable with the A/B box ?

Nigel: I love the clean sound I get from that Fender amp. And yes, you hit the nail on the head. I just want to switch between the clean sound of the amp and the VG-88. However, when I hit the a/b box switch to switch to the "amp only" sound, I get a tremendous increase in volume from the amp that I can't seem to work around....

Using the return as an input means of course you are bypassing the preamp, but you still do need a preamp stage of some sort for a line level signal. You need to run it into a mini mixer and bring up the gain to get a stronger signal to send to the amp return. You can buy great little mixers for $60 now that would do the job fine. Then you will have no trouble balancing the volume of both A/B inputs.

The DeVille return is useful way to use the power amp directly but the way you are using it as an input really requires a preamp stage.


[This message has been edited by Nigel (edited 04-25-2003).]