Hi MRob
The 80's was all about big guitar sounds. One of the way you can do this is with a stereo rig. Stereo does sound wider which give you a larger sense of size whereas mono sounds more "in-your-face."
As Richard stated above, when you use the built in Chorus effects in the MP-2, (which is a very lush effect), the MP-2 will already put your rig in stereo with a slight time and pitch modulation between channels. The Chorus is adjustable in the sub menus, so you can make it go from subtle to extreme to suit your taste.
The MP-2 also has a built in wah effect which can be set to a triggered mode,( it activates when you hit the strings), or remote, (can be controlled with the CCP/MXC pedal), so it's just like a stand alone wah.
*NOTE* you will need T/R/S leads to connect the Quad switch and CCP to the MXC pedal.
I would recommend good quality cables to connect your guitar system together, something that doesn't contribute to signal loss. You could have the best sounding guitar and amplifier in the world, but if the cables that connect it all together are weak, you will lose a lot of the good things you are looking to get out of it. It's your call.
I believe you are doing the right thing by leaving the Hush out of it for now. The noise gate in the MP-2 may be all you need. You can change it from "Gate" to "Fader" in the sub menu when you are editing your programs. Gate means a hard cutoff when the signal drops below the Threshold you have set for it. Fader means the cutoff will be a bit softer and not as abrupt as the gate.
The effects loops are nothing to be afraid of, in fact they are quite useful these days to get a much better quality guitar tone with your effects combined. To give you a better idea how this is a good thing for guitar amplifiers, let me go back into the history of how the modern guitar systems developed.
Back in the 50's and 60's, guitar amplifiers were very simple. they had all tube circuits, and each one had it's own distinctive sound. All the amps back then were being built with the same thought in mind, to be the loudest amp out there, but to stay CLEAN the whole time. The two biggest companies who were building the best guitars and amps were Fender and Gibson. Fender was building guitars with single coils, and the amplifiers were built for these guitar with an input section that could take these guitars and keep the sound sweet. Gibson was building guitars with double coil pickups, and they were building amps that could take these guitars and keep them sounding sweet too. I think Rock and Roll was born when someone plugged a Les Paul into a Fender amp.
Marshall amplifiers were built based on the Fender Bassman amp circuit. Jim Marshall just built a slightly different power amp circuit back then and put the whole thing in a box, then set that on top of a speaker cab with four 12" speakers. As the amps got louder, the preamp circuit stayed the same it would get hit hard with the guitar at the input, then the preamp would hit the front of the poweramp hard too. This is the kind of guitar tones you would have been hearing in the 70's and early 80's.
But all the way up from the 50's 60's and 70's, effects were put into the front of the amplifier. ( Fuzz, distortion, wah...then later modulation effects and delay effects. There were no effects loops back then. So all the effects you were using would affect the guitar tone before it even got into the amp. If you had several of these stomp boxes, and the quality of these would vary quite a bit, if you had them all plugged in and all turned off, there would be a big difference in the sound of your guitar going into the amp, as opposed to it being plugged straight in. That was the difference between sounding like a garage band as opposed to a band produced in a high-dollar studio. In the studio, the guitar and amp tone would be recorded straight to tape (This is what is called "Dry" guitar). The tape would be played back through the mixing console and the effects would be added in the Aux sends, then blended with the original guitar tone, to preserve the quality of the guitar tone. (The percentage of how much effect is added is what is called the "wet" mix).
Obviously, if you listened to these studio recordings they sounded great. The dilemma was, how can you get that kind of sound live when you have to go tour your new album release?
A couple of really smart guitar player figured they would by some of these expensive studio rack processors, and connect them to their amplifiers. Well, that almost worked but we were right back to square one, plugging all this into the front of the amp and just affecting the guitar tone, instead of the guitar and amp tone. That's when techs like Jose Arrondo, Mike Soldano, Paul Rivera, and a slew of others began modifying amps, by putting in an effects loop between the preamp and poweramp sections. Now these effects could be inserted there and the guitar tone would remain solid going into the amplifier. Delays, Reverb, and Modulation effects would be inserted in the effects loop, and it would have a more subtle effect on the overall sound of the guitar and amp than it would if all of it was going into the front of the amp. So that when rack systems were born and so were multi-amp guitar rigs. When a guitar player wanted a stereo rig, he would be playing through at least three channels. His main guitar tone would be coming from his favorite amp in the center, and his effects which would be in 2-channel stereo would come from two more amplifiers on either side of his main tone. This is where we get the "Wet/Dry/Wet set up from.
So, if you wanted to play like the big guys back in the 80's you had to have your own bank, and buy a bunch of amplifiers and expensive studio gear, hire a bunch of super techs to hook it all up for you, and lease a trucking company to haul it all around for you.
In January of 1987, You didn't need a truck load of amplifiers anymore. ADA changed the ground rules by introducing the MP-1 Preamp. Now you could have the sound of up to 128 amplifiers in one little 19" box, that you could stick in your rack, and hook it up yourself. So here we are.
Today, people are getting back into using stomp boxes, but many of them are also using the effects loops in their amps too. Having an Overdrive, and a Wah going into the front of the amp is useful and doesn't deteriorate your guitar tone, then plugging your Modulation, Delays, and Reverb in the effects loops gives you the rest of your effects in a signal chain that runs parallel to your original guitar signal and sums it all up at the output, without changing your basic guitar sound.
With what you've got there MRob, the MP-2 can deliver any sound from spanking clean to the most raunchy metal tones that can even keep up with the new amplifiers coming out today. (Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier? Pfffft!!!)
Putting your ART in the effects loop would be a good thing to do since I'm sure that has all the effects you would want to use in the loop right there. You will have to play around with the effects loops in the MP-2 to get what sounds right to your ears. Everyone is different, so we hear things differently. So don't be afraid to experiment. Try the loops at 100%, and adjust the effects level in the ART up to where you want it, then try it 50-50, then go the other way Loops at 20% and ART effect up full. See what sounds best for you. When it comes to a rig like this you have so many options available to you, it staggers the mind. The only limits are the ones you set for yourself.
And of course, we share our presets and programming ideas with each other here, so there are plenty of jumping off points to get you going. Like Circle K, we're open 24/7
Harley