No More Double-Tracking? Mono to Stereo MADE EASY!

INSTANT STEREO at the twist of a knob? Sounds kind of like magic! In this video, we check out the StereoMaker pedal by Surfy Industries. It's an advanced ABY switcher with some additional tricks up its sleeve. Could this do away with double-tracking forever? Let's find out!

Products Featured

StereoMaker: https://www.surfyindustries.com/stereomaker
Mutation Phasor II: https://warmaudio.com/mutation-phasor-ll
​Teisco Delay Pedal: https://teisco.com/products/teisco-delay-pedal

Video Transcript

Howdy, friend! You’re here in the studio with Luke from GuitarIQ.com. In today's video, we're going to be checking out this vibrant, yellow box of fun over here. This is the StereoMaker pedal by Surfy Industries. The team over at Surfy Industries recently sent this out to me to check out. Now, when you first look at this pedal you would be excused for not exactly knowing what this thing does. Is this some kind of guitar effect? Is this an A/B box? Is this some kind of DI box or studio reamping tool? And the truth is, it's kind of all of those things rolled into one. So in today's video, we're going to hopefully answer the question: What exactly is this thing? And we're going to take a listen to what it sounds like.

Probably the best way to think of this pedal, is to look at it as an ABY box with some additional advanced functionality. So at the heart we have a single input coming in and that's being sent to two different outputs. With this footswitch down here, we can toggle between those outputs. And with this footswitch over here, we can engage both outputs at once. Now, there’s a lot of different ways you could use something like this. But a pretty popular scenario would be, if you're running two amplifiers, you could put the stereo maker at the end of your pedalboard. And you could toggle between those amplifiers independently or you could engage both amps at once.

Okay, so where does the whole StereoMaker bit come into it? Well, it’s a good question. And the answer is, when you engage the stereo footswitch that gives you access to two additional controls. The first, is a volume control which allows you to boost or attenuate the signal. And the second, is where the fun happens! This is the width control. Now, this is a similar control to what we've seen on their flagship SurfyBear Studio spring reverb unit. I’ve already done a video on that, if you're keen to check that out—links in the description. And what this does is it takes the mono signal and it adds a pseudo stereo-widening effect. But the way that it does this is really interesting. This is completely analog. It’s a 100% mono compatible. It doesn't mess with the phase in any way. All this is doing is using some filtering to introduce a different EQ curve to the left and right channels for a bit of extra separation. Now, this is pretty subtle. But if you're listening on headphones or a good set of speakers, you'll definitely hear this does a good job of taking the sound source out of the phantom center of the mix and subtly pushing it out to the sides.

So let's hear this thing in action. First up, I’ve set up some loops within Logic. We’re just going to hear the StereoMaker pedal by itself. And then for a bit of additional fun, I thought we would engage some other effects. First up, we have the analog delay by Teisco. And then we have the new Mutation Phasor II by Warm Audio. These are completely analog effects and traditionally these types of effects are always mono, which is the case here. So I'm really interested to hear how these effects interact with something like the StereoMaker. If you're keen to know how I've set this up—in terms of getting audio out of my DAW, and sending it through the pedals, and then back into my computer—I’ve done a really in-depth tutorial on the whole process which guides you through it step-by-step, that you might find interesting. I’ll link to that in the description. I've also just shot a review on the new Mutation Phasor II by Warm Audio as well. So make sure to check that out. And also, as always, as we go through the sound samples if you're enjoying the video please click that like button to let me know. And to help show that YouTube algorithm a little bit of love. And with that let's check it out:

[Music]

So hopefully, that was able to give you a feel for what this thing sounds like and what it does. Apart from that, there’s not a whole lot to say. The unit is pretty lightweight, it uses these really nice soft-touch switches. Which is a nice touch—literally. There’s a pad switch on the back of the unit. There’s also a ground lift. And the pedal can run between 9–18 volts. Now, just on that… When I first set this up I did notice that there seemed to be some slight clipping or saturation coming from the pedal. To fix that problem, I backed off the output from my reamp box slightly (compared to where I normally have it). And I also ran this at a slightly higher voltage as well—just to give the pedal a bit more headroom. And that seemed to fix the problem. So if you do have a power supply that can run at 12 or 18 volts, I'd recommend trying that out if you have any problems. Other than that, a super-handy little tool to have in the studio. Not just for guitar players but for keyboard players as well. That was my look at the StereoMaker by Surfy Industries.​

Well, that’s almost it for this video. Thank you once again for sticking around to the end. As I mentioned at the start, this pedal was sent to me to check out. But this was not a paid promotion or a sponsored advertisement. All thoughts and opinions are my own. If you are interested to check out a little bit more on the StereoMaker, then I will leave some links in the description. If you did like this video and you want to see more video content like this, then please consider subscribing to the channel to be notified of future uploads. And finally, I'd like to invite you to head over to the website GuitarIQ.com. To check out some of the books and other learning resources we have waiting for you over there. Covering everything from fretboard memorization, to chord theory, to warm-ups and workouts, and technique fundamentals, and a whole lot more—that is GuitarIQ.com. Well, that's it from me. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video!