Using the Polarity Switches

The polarity switches can be a very useful and powerful tool, not only to phase correct your stereo loops, but also provide a stereo widening effect.

When running amp modelers or drive pedals in parallel, often times they will be out of polarity with each other. When this happens various frequencies will end up canceling each other out. When this happens you will experience two things that will affect your tone 1) it is quite common to loose bass frequencies leaving your tone thin and less full sounding 2) anytime frequencies are removed, this results in a volume drop and your signal will not be as loud.

With the Red Sea we fix these issues with our two polarity switches, each switch will invert the polarity for Return Jack 1 & 3 respectively. This will ensure both stereo loops will remain in phase with each other.

***If you are experiencing any of the two issues listed above, flip both polarity switches either up or down while listening to your tone change as you flip the switches.

 

The polarity switches can also be used to create a stereo widening effect, this trick works in both Wet Dry Wet and Stereo Parallel FX Loops wiring arraignments. Instead of flipping/keeping both polarity switches in the same direction, try flipping just one of the switches and see what happens. You'll notice your dry signal goes from a "center panned" kind of sound to a "left / right panned" sound which will create a huge stereo widening sound effecting removing your dry signal from the middle and placing it in the left and right outputs. There will be some draw backs to using this method, which were mentioned above (loss of bass and volume), however the Red Sea can limit the effectiveness of these draw backs. Since we have two stereo loops, or a Wet and Dry loop, your signal will remain in tact in one loop and inverted in the other loop. As long as the Blend knob isn't turned fully counter clockwise the drawbacks will be less noticeable. Also, as you turn the knob clockwise, the stereo widening effect becomes less noticeable as you are removing the inverted signal from your overall mix.