Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I happened to stop by my local DJ supply store this evening and found that they had exactly what I was looking for: a Y adapter with a 1/4" stereo plug to two 1/4" mono jacks. It's a Hosa model YPP-117 and it only cost $7. It's pretty solid and all three ends are satisfyingly grippy.

I plugged that baby into my 370/12's ROS jack and ran the bridge pickup through my ToneWorks AXIG into my tube amp and the other pickups into my solid state amp. It is a lot of freaking fun. I can use a distorted wah sound with a completely clean backing, I can have one sound and then bring in another effect by pedalling up its volume, or I can just use two different distortions (carefully, of course). And I like completely switching sounds with just the guitar's toggle.

Anyway, I highly recommend the Hosa YPP-177 to anyone with a Rick-O-Sound jack, more than one amp, and seven dollars.

I'm in the UK and got a stereo to mono insert lead from Allen Gordon's website for the princeley sum of £11.50 ($20) cheap at twice the price for what it does considering the ric-o-sound box retailed at about £75 ($131).

The Hosa YPP-177 is available from Music123:

http://www.music123.com/Hosa-YPP117-i27885.music

You might be able to find the right splitter cord at Radio Shack for even less (in the States, at least). I've used the cheap option with no problems (although I've never used Ric-O-Sound onstage).

Instead of running that adapter cable into two mono cables which will have to run all the way to your amps, you might try, say, a 15 foot stereo cable to the amps and then plug it into a female stereo to two mono male plugs to your amps. The splitter in this case would have to be longer though to reach between two amps but would look cleaner. If I didn't already have a Ric-o-Sound box, I would have done it this way.

Yeah, it's up to personal preference, but most people already have the long-*** mono cables, and to switch guitars, you can just pull the one to the amp you want and plug it in. I won't deny that there are multiple ways for such a setup to go wrong, but it would look pretty cool onstage with the splitter hanging off your Ric. If anybody asks, just tell them you play so hard that you have to run a Freon line through your guitar.

I've tried using a Y adaptor and the problem is input impedance. The levels are not the same if using two different amps or di boxes. There is also a lot more noise.
The correct way is to build a box with stereo jack in, then a couple of 10k resistors to two mono outs.
This way the impedance load is spread correctly to the two mono sources.