What is a Wet/Dry/Wet Rig, and How to Set it Up?

What is a Wet/Dry/Wet Rig?

A wet/dry/wet rig is a style of setup that involves using 3 separate amplifiers at the same time. One of the amps (usually the centre one) will be your dry amp, meaning it will have no effects added, and the two outer amps will be your wet amps. which is where the effected signal will get sent.

What is the Purpose of This Setup?

Using a wet/dry/wet setup allows you to create a wider sound, giving your effected guitar tone a wider stereo spread while also maintaining your core dry tone on one of the amps. 

Having separate amps receiving wet and dry signals also allows for better blending and mixing in a live environment. For example, the 2 wet amps could be panned hard left and right, giving a wider spread of the effect in the PA system, while the main dry amp is run in mono and spread evenly between the two sides of the PA.

This also allows better volume blending of the wet signals with the dry.

A Slight Alternative

If you don't want to carry 3 guitar amps around, you can use this exact process with just 2 amps and run a wet/dry rig. This is the same general idea but instead of having a stereo pair of amps running your wet signal, you have a single dry amp and a single wet amp. 

Dropping one of the wet amps is useful if space is a premium but you still want that extra separation between your dry and wet sounds.

What do You Need to Get Started?

To build a wet/dry/wet rig you need just a few things:

• Three guitar amplifiers (two for the wet signals, one for the dry)
• An ABY or Splitter box (This is going to split your mono guitar signal into 2)
• A pedal(s) with stereo outputs (Chorus, reverb, delay)

How to Set Up Your Wet/Dry/Wet Rig

To efficiently set up this sort of rig, planning is essential. 

First start with the amps, decide which amp is going to be your dry amp and which are going to be your wet amps. The amps can be all the same, or different amps.  

Before you plug anything in, you need to turn your attention to your pedalboard. The splitter/ABY pedal should be situated after every effect that you want to hit all 3 amps. Anything placed after the splitter pedal will only hit the dry OR wet amps, not both.

Once you've decided on that placement, run one cable out of one output on the ABY pedal into the dry amp.

From the other output of the ABY box you will be going into your stereo effects section of the pedalboard. This output of the ABY will feel the stereo section that will run into both the wet amps. 

It doesn't matter if the pedals in this section only have a single input, the important thing here is that the final pedal in this block has a stereo output. Once you've decided on everything that goes into this section, run a cable from each of the stereo outputs into your wet amps. 

If the stereo pedal has specific left and right outputs, be sure to connect them to the respective left and right amps.

You will now have 3 cables leaving your pedalboard. One to the dry amp, two to the wet amps.

Things to Be Mindful Of

When running a three amp setup you can also run into a few minor issues. Once you're aware of how to resolve these issues, you will be able to avoid them in any situation.

Phase Cancellation

The first issue is phase cancelation. When running multiple amps, it's very easy to experience phase issues. This can end up giving you a weaker, thin guitar tone, rather than the desired width you are trying to create with this rig.

Most ABY boxes will have an option to invert the phase of one of the output signals. This switch will help ensure the amps stay in phase with each other and nothing cancels anything else out.

Volume Balancing

When running 3 separate guitar amps, balancing the volume between them is a delicate process. You want your dry amp to be loud enough to give you the desired sound you need to always hear, with your wet amps being loud enough to give you the effected sound, without drowning our your dry amp.

When you start to balance the volumes, stage with the dry amp being exactly where you need it to be. Treat the wet amps like a control on an effects pedal and slowly bring the volumes up until the effected signal sits right where you need it to be.

Pedalboard Complexity

One downside to this sort of signal flow is that you might end up with a very complicated pedalboard setup to accommodate the pedals that are only running to the wet amps and those that are running to the dry amp.

This is why planning is very important in this rig setup. Spend time planning your signal flow and ensuring you can keep things as neat as possible. This also helps you further down the road if you ever need to troubleshoot anything that might go wrong.

Amp Width

Another issue you may experience is the width of the stereo image, and this is very circumstance dependent. The best practise is to set the two wet amps a little further apart to enhance the width you hear on stage, but this is not always practical if you're playing a smaller stage. If the amps are too close together, the perceived onstage sound will be much narrower than desired.

Notable Wet/Dry and Wet/Dry/Wet Guitar Rig Users

Many famous guitar players have utilized the wet/dry or wet/dry/wet setup in their guitar rigs over the years and some legendary tones have been created with this sort of rig approach. 

Here are some famous uses of these setups:

• Brian May
• Steve Vai
• Adam Jones (Tool)
• Eddie Van Halen
• David Gilmour
• Mark Tremonti
• The Edge
• Michael Landau
• Steve Morse
• Andy Timmons