playing live question - Guitars101

sideshowsg · 09-16-2006, 01:53 PM

My first gig in a club ( I'm 44, better late than never ) We play rock and loud, Judas priest, ac/dc, van halen, But will be in a 150 person capacity club (50 x 80). I play through a marshall 1987 reissue, I have a powerbrake, but it absolutely changes my tone and is a last resort. So, for stage volume and to be PA friendly, I need to get my volume down. I considered covering 3 and micing 1 of the 4 speakers but wonder if I could end up overheating drivers in the covered speakers. Or, any of you club veterans got any ideas? Thanks

El_jalepeno · 09-16-2006, 02:26 PM

Congrats! You are in for one hell of an experience!

I am asked not to mic my amp in the smaller venues since the sound is pretty powerful in the first place in tight settings. I had a AVT50 watt Marshall head that would never go over 5 playing the local clubs, so you could just forget about going to 11 if you wanted to! LOL, I am recently using a B52 AT100 head with a Marshall cab, and playing it around 4 on the volume, however there is a Master volume so I can crank the tubes without losing much tone with the Master.

Some of the other folks should be chiming in shortly as well

guitaral · 09-16-2006, 04:53 PM

maybe a little variac like mr. Van Halen can be called for... but i think that only works well on no-master volume amps.

JM5150 · 09-16-2006, 06:28 PM

Is your amp equipped to use a direct box? We use direct boxes and I only have a 65 watt combo amp, up about 1/2 volume. It's mostly a monitor for me so I could actually play it at a lower volume if necissary. The other "band guys" that I know in the area all swear by them and I don't think they're all that expensive.

Whatever you decide on, good luck with the gig!

sideshowsg · 09-17-2006, 03:04 AM

OK, I didnt give quite enuf info, my 1987 is a 50 watt tube head, but very nearly loud as a 100 watt (check out the reviews on harmony central), no master volume, which I did on purpose for tone, but realize now a master volume might have been a good trade off. And because of the 80' width of the room and the narrow dispersion of the 4x12 cab, I need to be mic'd into the pa for coverage. My cab is a 1960A w/ four 30Watt celestions, so I also considered disconnecting 2 of the speakers, ever tried that? Thanks for the suggestions , but atleast for now, no new purchases in the immediate future so I gotta work with what I have. ( and a variac is already on my christmas list

)

sideshowsg · 09-17-2006, 03:25 AM

By the way, our first "gig" was an outdoor party this summer and volume wasnt as much of an issue. BUT.....the sound guy was outstanding, and we were discussing my amps volume, I told him I was open for suggestions. He asked me if I wanted to turn the cabinet around facing the woods behind the stage. I thought why not, So I did , to some objections from the other guys in the band (I suppose it looked a little odd) and when I got the recording of the show My guitar is SCREAMING in the mix because it was all PA (12,000Watts) instead of my 50 watts pointing at the sound guy tellin him there was already enough guitar in there. Our other guitar and bass player had volume pointed at FOH and you can absolutely tell the difference in the recording. SO, this one show sold me on trying to work things out with the sound guy. Just a little "my first show ever" story.

**T.A.Z** · 09-17-2006, 03:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sideshowsg

By the way, our first "gig" was an outdoor party this summer and volume wasnt as much of an issue. BUT.....the sound guy was outstanding, and we were discussing my amps volume, I told him I was open for suggestions. He asked me if I wanted to turn the cabinet around facing the woods behind the stage. I thought why not, So I did , to some objections from the other guys in the band (I suppose it looked a little odd) and when I got the recording of the show My guitar is SCREAMING in the mix because it was all PA (12,000Watts) instead of my 50 watts pointing at the sound guy tellin him there was already enough guitar in there. Our other guitar and bass player had volume pointed at FOH and you can absolutely tell the difference in the recording. SO, this one show sold me on trying to work things out with the sound guy. Just a little "my first show ever" story.

Quite a helpfull little piece of info that mate, as for your volume. I once tried disconnecting two speakers, it sounded alright but you do lose quite a lot of tone.

I'm not sure how wise it would be but in theory you could set-up your amp the same as you had at the out-door gig, then mic it like that.

**mcnach** · 09-17-2006, 06:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sideshowsg

OK, I didnt give quite enuf info, my 1987 is a 50 watt tube head, but very nearly loud as a 100 watt

50 or 100W are almost identical in the sound levels they can produce, all other things being equal (speakers, cab...). You need roughly 10x the power to produce 2x the sound volume. That's why a 5W amp doesn't sound 10 times quieter than a 50W amp. That's also why recently we're seeing valve amps offering you lower power options, down to 0.5W, and believe me, they're not quiet when you turn up the volume!

I was very shocked when I bought my 6W Fender VibroChamp, as I thought that would be a great amp to play at home... the volume rarely went above 3-4 on that one (living in an apartment).

Speaker efficiency has a huge effect as to how loud an amp sounds. Look at the db rating (usually measured with a sine wave, at 1W and 1m from teh speaker, not exactly a guitar signal, but...), the higher it is, the higher the proportion of the power applied goes to make a sound, rather than being dissipated as heat. Most cheap 12" speakers fitted in cheap amps would not have a rating of more than 94-96db. Sometimes lower. If you get something like a Celestion Century G12, with 102db... 6db doesn't sound like a lot... but it's a big difference in terms of volume. A difference of around 3db will be clearly noticeable.

Another thing is how big the cab is, and how many speakers there are. The shape and size of the cab has a clear impact on the final sound. We hear some frequencies better than others, and our perception also changes with volume (which is why if you make your amp settings at home volume, and then you just turn up at rehearsal, the sound is not the same... besides different room acoustics etc). The size and shape of the cab will affect that. The number of speakers and the orientation (2 speakers side by side, or one above another... etc) also affects the "spread", and what you hear depending on where you are, relative to the speaker's position.

Acoustics are fun.

I really don't know what made me write this stuff... I only meant to make a one line comment

I guess what I meant to say is that you shouldn't worry too much about the power of your amp (as long it's not too big!

) because even lower wattage amps can be made to sound loud enough... certainly loud enough to be used as monitors (tilt the cab up, towards your head... we don't have ears on our knees

). As long as it sounds nice... if the amp alone is not powerful enough, it will be miked and put through PA, so often a slightly less powerful amp can be better, if it gives you the sound you want at not too loud levels.

The Beatles used to gig with 30W amps, and before that with 15W ones!

**mcnach** · 09-17-2006, 06:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by T.A.Z

Quite a helpfull little piece of info that mate, as for your volume. I once tried disconnecting two speakers, it sounded alright but you do lose quite a lot of tone.

I'm not sure how wise it would be but in theory you could set-up your amp the same as you had at the out-door gig, then mic it like that.

Gotta be careful which ones you disconnect and how.

If you have 4x speakers rated at 8ohm each, and the cab is rated at 8ohm, it means they could be wired 2 speakers in series (16ohm), then the other pair teh same (another 16ohm), and these in parallel with eachother (bringing it down back to 8ohm).
If you disconnect one pair, you'll be left with 16ohm... and you should change the amp's impedance switch accordingly. While having a larger impedance than appropriate is probably better than having a lower impedance... you can still damage your amp if the impedance is mismatched. Certainly with valve amps.