Question Live guitar sound

[Gio_Force_One]

Has anyone ever played a show and you just couldn't get in the groove and your guitar tone just didn't sound right and the whole night just kind of sucked. I use my morse all the time and it just didn't sound right. Was just and awful night.

 

[fbecir]

Most of the time on stage the sound you hear is not the sound the people have in the audience.
If you sound good during rehearsal, the problem is not your rig (guitar amp effects) but the sound guy who was not able to give you a correct stage sound.

 

[Gio_Force_One]

It's possible but we have our own pa , our bass player does it and sometimes I only think he works on his bass sound.

 

[yan12]

Happens to me often. Largely because we play smaller venues and usually have a terrible sound man. My band has noticed when we open for national acts that have their own sound man, we usually get a much better grade of sound and many times use the same guy as the bigger act...makes a huge difference. It is for this reason I quit bringing my expensive heads and use good gear and get a good tone, rather than great gear and stellar tone (amp wise...I have to have my balls.) No matter how hard I try to have killer tone, it only takes one twist of a knob on the board and I can't hear the right mix. We are moving up to in-ear monitors and I think that will help us a ton. And then again, some nights just suck!

 

[fbecir]

It's possible but we have our own pa , our bass player does it and sometimes I only think he works on his bass sound.

Never trust a bass player !!! A guy who plays just with 4 strings does not have enough brain to manage a PA !

 

[peterd79]

I play at a fairly large church and our FOH guy is top notch... he used to do sound for a lot of the large shows (brad paisley, kenny chesney, aerosmith, etc.) for Bill Gram presents. He's really good... and i use in ear monitors with a personal mix station off to the side... to control my own mix... but even then sometimes things just get a bit off... and i have to pull out my ears and go off the mains as reference monitors.
A few weeks back we had a guy sit in as our FOH sound and his ear was totally off... (not van gough style) but he mixed everything bass heavy and then pushed everything too hot... sounded like mud not only in ears but in the house...

one thing you can do and i've done this in the past is get a small behringer or mackie mixer... you don't have to go big... and run your monitor to that mixer... and then to your monitor... maybe in ears or similar... then you can at least tweak what your hearing from the mains...

 

[Tim O'Sullivan]

I find it varies from room to room, though the FOH engineer is the key to making it work.

In the cover band that I play in, we just fired the sound man and its been so much better ever since. He ran so much junk outboard equipment and his old desk was just a disaster.

But some nights with the best sound ever its just does not sound right. Its all the mind!

 

[Gio_Force_One]

I know one problem is that our bass player doesn't mic or go direct so he is always just loud and he's right next to me so I can't hear half the time so I turn up and then he does and so on and so forth.
Also his monitor is so damn loud it's like a main really loud back at us.

The other thing my guitar rig just sounded so metallic and sterile for the first set.
The Mesa boogie dc5 sometimes doesn't sound great and it gets to me I might just use my Marshall instead .

 

[JasonT]

Yes, sometimes things just don't sound right. Another thing to consider is that the room your playing in has an effect on your sound. So the same settings on the amp, same guitar, same effects settings, but different room will generate a different sound..

 

[Gio_Force_One]

Yes, sometimes things just don't sound right. Another thing to consider is that the room your playing in has an effect on your sound. So the same settings on the amp, same guitar, same effects settings, but different room will generate a different sound..

Yup it really sucks when one room you get such a good tone and the next night and different room it's completely different.

 

[Gio_Force_One]

I used to think it was the ceramic pickups on the morse but I really have come to enjoy those pickups especially the neck pickup. I guess I need to do some more tweaking of my amps before hand.
I still think the Mesa is too harsh of a sound for me though.

 

[mikeller]

Yep. Tons of factors. I agree though its hard to play well when things don't sound right.

 

[nathanhny]

I still find that some nights I still play worse than other nights. I also get really jealous of people who can play and sound well plugged into almost any amplifier lol.

 

[Eric O'Reilly]

Ive noticed that larger rooms need much less reverb and delay, because of the natural room echo, and also they require much more highs and mids, the smaller rooms is where you need to emulate that tone with effects and reverb, and you can scoop the mids and roll off the highs, a bit, but a good sound man will get all that. Ive had a terrible sound man ruin shows of mine and every other act that night, with trying to over produce the mix with crap gear and little knowhow, came out sounding like a dry razor blade rattling in a tin can.

 

[Eric O'Reilly]

No matter what your playin through, whether its a squire through a crate practice amp or an axis bfr through a 5150 into a rackmount,pro stage rig , ya still gotta bring it!

 

[Spudmurphy]

Depends on the situation you are in. Do you have a sound man?
I mean, a lot of gigs I have played over the last couple of years, we turn up, pitch up, sound check. - by that I mean one guy who generally follows us around gives thumbs up/down kinda thing and off we go.

If you are trying to compare set ups in bedroom/ rehearsal room to a live situation then it's not gonna happen.

I used a POD XT for quite a while, and a lot of people diss it - and invariably this is because it's not dialled in.
Now the Pod has great software and when plugged into a laptop you can really tweak it.
With this in mind, I used a room the same kinda size as a lot of the pub venues we play at and set my gear up.
Then I dialled in and saved my settings - the outcome was a set up I was more confident and happy with.

Oh to have a sound man !!!!

 

[Eric O'Reilly]

I love my pod 2.0, and yes alotof people diss line6, and yes there are better things out there( axe fx) but not everyone has the money, and Ive gotten some great sound out of my pod, i think alot of people are gear snobs and have that "I have better gear, therefor i AM better than you, nah nah" which is a croc of s#%*! I say if it sounds good go with it, Im gonna look at the new pod hd 500, ive heard great stuff, I play alot at home and would love it.

 

[Metalcat]

I love my pod 2.0, and yes alotof people diss line6, and yes there are better things out there( axe fx) but not everyone has the money, and Ive gotten some great sound out of my pod, i think alot of people are gear snobs and have that "I have better gear, therefor i AM better than you, nah nah" which is a croc of s#%*! I say if it sounds good go with it, Im gonna look at the new pod hd 500, ive heard great stuff, I play alot at home and would love it.

I have the HD500 and the Dt50...but obviously the tones are from the POD's brain. I cannot begin to express how satisfied I am with my current tones. Sure I could have even more tones and effects with an axe fx or something...but for the money, I really feel Line 6 hit it out of the park with this setup.

I just set it up for four tones: A clean, a light overdrive, a crunch, and a heavy distortion...with effects and boosts programmed in, and I can spread myself across many different styles and genres easily. You won't regret buying it, unless you hate dialing in tones

 

[DrKev]

I used to think it was the ceramic pickups on the morse but I really have come to enjoy those pickups.

Ceramic pickups can sound gorgeous, alnico pickups can sound like cold poop. The magnets are just one part of the total design. Don't judge a book by its cover, or a pickup by its magnets.

Ive noticed that larger rooms need much less reverb and delay

Absolutely!

The other thing we forget is the interplay between mic placement and where we are standing relative to the amp. We EQ the amp for what we hear at our playing position. Mic placement can change everything. Quite literally, one inch difference can make it sound like a different amp. The mic may send something to the FOH and the stage monitors that is very different to what we want to hear. These are often two conflicting requirements! So, this is how I approach the problem...

If the amp is flat on the floor, the highs from the speaker will mostly beam into our butt cheeks. Our ears don't hear that so we add treble to compensate (you don't know it but we all do). Now imagine an mic placed at the centre of the speaker cone. All of the harsh highs the speaker can produce, which we have boosted, go to the desk and will make ears bleed. To avoid this kind of problem there is a simple rule of thumb - Mic position should follow our listening position. If we listen off-axis, the mic should be too. Conversely, if the amp is tilted back and pointing right at our heads, the mic should be more centred on the speaker cone so as not to be too dark or boomy.

You should spend time with your live rig, setting the amp position relative to you as you would for a gig. EQ to give you a sound that you like. Then audition mic positions to capture the sound appropriately. Imagine the only EQ you can use is changing the mic position. When you're happy mark that point on your speaker grille. If your mic is very close to the speaker or grille, proximity effect will kick in and the bottom end will be will screw up the FOH and monitor mix, so be aware of that. Also be very careful that if you re-EQ your amp or change the volume during the gig, what you send to the desk is now different too. You could be messing up a great mix out front or for the other musicians!

And yes, every room is different but at least you know what signal you are sending to the engineer. Once the signal leaves the amp mic, it's their job to worry about, not yours.

Personally, I can play through a tin can and not worry as long as it sounds good out front and I'm not too quiet in the mix onstage. If you get it right, the sound engineer will thank you for making life easy for him and giving him a great sound to work with. I'm proud to say that it does happen!

 

[PeteDuBaldo]

There have been plenty of gigs where I haven't felt "in the groove" but I just force myself to do my best. As far as the amp not sounding good, I just fought through that a few months ago, there was a bad cable in the FX loop and almost all my treble was lost, the amp sounded like it was stuck in mud. After the gig I made up 2 new cables and squirted a few shots of ECG in all the jacks and I was good to go.

As far as sound guys go we usually only mic up the kick drum & vocals so if the sound sucks we have nobody to blame except ourselves - well, it's either that or we try and pawn it off on the "poor natural acoustics of the building"