I've looked through many posts, but haven't found exactly what I'm looking for yet.

First, I want to get a "smallish" amp, mostly to be used for practice at home, but also for travel. It needs to have at least two independent channels. It also must cooperate well with pedals, including heavy fuzzes and distortions.

I took my Railboard to Guitar Center, but their selection on-hand was very limited. I was dissatisfied with the Fender acoustic amps. I tried a Fishman Loudbox Artist, and thought it sounded much better. The lowest notes still sounded a little muddy (no doubt partially due to inexperienced fingers), but I was really concerned after reading Fishman customer support recommends to not use distortions, or the tweeter could suffer.

For my "big" setup, I'm currently using my Fender Twin for melody strings and my Roland KC 550 for the bass strings. Probably make modifications, but not now. For a quiet practice setup, I run the Railboard through my Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 into a Fender 15 amp... which is not very good.

Any suggestions on the type of amp I'm looking for?


Secondly, concerning pedal loopers and power supplies. I've seen how many Stick players use one of the digital multi-effects units, which are really cool and have several advantages over multiple pedal rigs, but I kinda like tinkering, experimenting, and swapping out physical pedals. I've played guitar for 30 years, and most of my pedals I've made myself (from kits). I want to continue to use these and try new ones, but have never set up a proper pedal board.

I've been looking at the GigRig G3 and their power supply/adapters to power and switch loops on a board for the melody strings (and guitar).
Anyone have experience with this or any competitors' units? Parallel signals, stereo effects loops, and quiet-as-possible power supplies are important to me.

I'm thinking I will keep the bass side more simple, and won't use any switcher.

For the amp I would go for Roland cube street EX
Multi fx -hx stomp which you can connect other pedals via send/rtrn and can also act as looper
If you want small yet powerful looper- I guess singular sound aeros will do

I have a battery-powered Roland Bass cube that’s a good travel amp. I don’t play well enough to “busk” but I think it would work well in that environment.

https://youtu.be/iuWBv0ZAMyE

I also have that-but it doesn't have 2 channels
the cube street EX have 2 separate channel with even more inputs and can be powered with batteries

Yes, that’s true, it has only one channel. I use 2 to 1 input jack so I can plug both bass and melody in, or I just play in mono. This is not an ideal situation, since you may want to process each side of the stick differently.

Your multi-input cube sounds like a better option if it can handle the low end bass, which is why I snagged mine

i also use the bass cube because it is lighter and since i play railboard i just move a switch to have the stick in mono

I really shouldn't be chiming in here (since I'm still awaiting delivery of my first Stick), but let me suggest pairing an HX-Stomp or a Headrush Gigboard with the Headrush FRFR112 powered speaker.

The HX-Stomp has stereo in/out. The Headrush only has stereo out, but you can get stereo-in by running one channel into the regular guitar input jack, and the second stereo channel into the FX-Return, and keep the two signal chains completely separate so you can apply different effects to each. The Gigboard has a very good built-in looper, and the latest feature firmware update (which I just installed today) supports "frippertronic" layering. I believe the HX-Stomp also has a looper built in.

I've been using the Headrush FRFR112 for guitar and bass for several years. It has two individual amps/channels so you can keep your two stereo channels separated all the way through if you want. They rate it at "2000 watts" which of course is ridiculous, but I can attest it's loud as f**k! I've never been able to come close to cranking it up to full volume, but keep in mind I've never used it in a room any larger than my 12x12 music room.

All in all, this is a pretty good bang-for-the-buck solution (under $1k). Highly portable too. I've signed up for the Interlochen workshop, and this is the rig I'll probably drag along.

Since those FRFR cabs seem to mostly be marketed toward guitar players, do you find they have enough bass response for the Stick as well?

I'm pretty sure he's talking about loop switchers vs. loop recording pedals.

To answer some of OPs questions:

I realize you're interested in using high gain and fuzz with Stick but the crosstalk that's inherent in the instrument tends to make that a non-starter, at least in my experience. I typically don't use anything past a relatively mild overdrive on the melody side. If I distort the bass side, I almost always use a parallel clean signal blend for better clarity.

The Gig Rig power supply systems and loop switchers are fantastic but EXTREMELY expensive. Unless you have a high end pedalboard that's gigging around the world I don't think the investment is worth it. These days you can have incredible value and flexibility with a Cioks DC7 and Strymon power supplies. Neither of these options are particularly cheap, but they're a fraction of the cost of a Gig Rig system. They are also switching type isolated supplies which won't introduce any EMF interference if you put pedals close to them.

As far as amps go, there aren't many truly full range combo amps with stereo inputs that are well-suited for the Stick available these days. This is why most of us are using amp modelers into FRFR/PA type speakers. Your research about the Fishman amps and distortion is probably right because those amps are meant for acoustic guitar. Additionally, without using some kind of impulse response to tame the high frequencies in the effect loop it will likely sound terrible anyways, in addition to frying the tweeter. If you want a combo amp solution, you'll probably be best suited with separate amps for each side. You could get something like a Fender Rumble for the bass side and a Boss Katana for the melody side. Or just a smaller Fishman Loudbox amp for the melody side in addition to the Fender Rumble bass amp. A setup like that doesn't sound too much different or "scaled down" from the current setup you already have, unfortunately.

Regarding loop switchers, I have yet to see one with stereo inputs that would accommodate two separate signal paths. Something like a Helix Floor has multiple loops available with a freely assignable signal chain, and discrete signal paths. So again, you see their popularity with Stick players.