Question

I only have 1 mic so I record my acoustic guitar in mono, duplicate the track, pan the tracks to L and R, and then create a stereo bus channel and route them both into it, but for some reason the output is still mono. I know because when I import the song into a mastering project the little window shows the signal is a vertical line that has no width at all. The bus and the main are both set to stereo so I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

Answer 1

Of course it's still mono. All's you have effectively done is copy the same mono signal to both L and R channels - i.e. still mono.

You would have to add effects and/or change each of the mono signals somehow (perhaps eq) in order to get any sort of stereo effect.

Hope this helps.