Blending Effects/Tones

Hello, I’m trying to blend two different guitar tones that I’m working with into one using group tracks. The closest I’ve come to it is two group tracks with inserts that set up each tone, and routing them to one audio track. The best I could do is having one tone in each stereo channel, but if they’re centered, it puts distortion on top of distortion. I know why that is, but I don’t know how to prevent that.

Does anyone know how to have both tones centered (essentially mono) without double distortion? Does it have something to do with the output bus?