Hi, I was in the studio doing some recording in mono. I switched over to a stereo setup for some dubs into two fender bandmasters. worked amazingly for the first many takes, but then suddenly just completely stopped sending to the second amp. changed no settings at all. when I unplugged the patch cable halfway it would switch to the other amp, and back to the original when I plugged it in. Tried all the different startup settings for input and nothing got it back to stereo. rig was a 1981->big muff → sparks → ribbons. taking out the pedals before the ribbons and going straight in from the di splitter didn’t help anything either, so i don’t think it was not a cable problem. or caused by anything else in the chain. I don’t have a stereo setup at home to try a solution, I was just hoping to get some feedback and try and get some solutions to try before the next session. 99.9 percent sure it’s not user error because it was working flawlessly up until that point. Only thing I can think of was my ribbons slipped off board when tinkering (had to pull it off the board to replug some stuff, and it took a very minor drop, probably less than 5 inches. Not sure what’s causing it, any help would be appreciated!
edit: it did switch to wet/dry instead of a true stereo field shortly before this issue, but that was once again with no setting changes on my part.
Hi there—sorry you ran into trouble during your recording session; that’s never fun.
I think I know what happened.
If your signal chain is: 1981 → Big Muff → Sparks → Ribbons, it sounds like Sparks is running mono while Ribbons is set to mono in / stereo out. I’m guessing you might have bypassed Ribbons and the right channel disappeared because the pedal wasn’t in a buffered-bypass mode. In buffered bypass, Ribbons continues to split the incoming mono signal into left and right even when bypassed.
How to fix it
Put Ribbons into one of the two buffered-bypass modes and mono-in-stereo out (see the manual link below).
Even better, let Sparks handle the mono-to-stereo split and run Ribbons in stereo-in / stereo-out. This also lets you take advantage of Sparks’ stereo nuances with the Spin control.
Hey I appreciate the response! I’ll check on those in the next session. I definitely need to set the sparks to stereo in/stereo out! I’m not sure if that will solve the problem entirely, because I had the same issue running the guitar directly into the ribbons as well, (skipping rest of chain) and I never really bypass the pedal, it’s pretty much always on. I do keep it in buffered bypass with trails though and love it but never feel the need to turn it off haha.
I’ve checked out the manual and don’t really think it’s a settings issue unless i’m missing something.
I guess I won’t rule it out but I’d be surprised if something is wrong with your Ribbons. I think it’s more likely there was a setup issue (could be as simple as a bad cable). If you can replicate it and email a video to support@kinotoneaudio.com I can try to help you troubleshoot more!