Amps when playing live : more mids ?

Sly

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Feb 8, 2006
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Grenoble, FRANCE
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What do you think of this ?

When we (my band) play live we always have a great/good/decent sound but I have the feeling that the guitars sound a bit scooped. Tuning is Drop C, we use a 5150 and an Engl Powerball (soon replaced by something else). We have the mids quite low with the settings which worked great on our last recording. For example, the mids knob on the 5150 is set @ 2 (9 o'clock), on the rythm channel, we use EMG pickups and tubescreamers and they have pretty standard settings. It sounds good but it seems the guitars lack a bit of definition on some melodic riffs.

Do you generally use more mids when playing live ? I imagine this should work great especially when we play small gigs (when a balanced stage sound is very important)
 
Definatley. Midrange is what you need to help you cut through the drums in a live setting. Even just putting the dial up to 3 or 4 should make a big difference. You can try cutting the bass knob a bit too to get a bit more clarity.
 
I have been a midrange freak for some time, now I believe the keyword in live tone is "balanced". Having _too_ much mids makes the guitar sound honky and loses clarity to my ears.
 
I have been a midrange freak for some time, now I believe the keyword in live tone is "balanced". Having _too_ much mids makes the guitar sound honky and loses clarity to my ears.

Definately.

I used to be all OMG MIDS AT 10 MIDS AT 10 but through a 5150 that flat out sounds like shit.
The best metal tones I've heard are the ones where it's fairly scooped but not so much that it becomes mushy and clarity is lost, where there is a thick but tight low end, and a good amount of treble.

I'd say mids at 4 on a 5150 live would be more than enough.
 
Definately.

I used to be all OMG MIDS AT 10 MIDS AT 10 but through a 5150 that flat out sounds like shit.
The best metal tones I've heard are the ones where it's fairly scooped but not so much that it becomes mushy and clarity is lost, where there is a thick but tight low end, and a good amount of treble.

I'd say mids at 4 on a 5150 live would be more than enough.

This, and you have to give the soundguy some room to work with.

Oh, and I have a cobra, and although I dig the tone with mids on 9, it saturates very nicely, I think that it makes the tone muddy live.
 
Yeah, too much mids obscures attack and makes the tone very "stuffy" and unresponsive (in feel, which is a very frustrating experience!)
 
Too much mid can be one of the worst things, in particular if the cab is aimed at the crowd. I've had so many instances where the guitars have overpowered the vocals, and entire mix. TBH I don't treat guitar sounds differently between live and studio. A good tone is a good tone, regardless. Simply because adding more mid makes our jobs easier outright live doesn't mean it's the best solution. My best live mixes, without fail, have been done with guitar tones that were more scooped in nature. It allowed the vocals to breathe, a lot of space for verb to develop and also more room for the delay.

It doesn't help that most amp mid stacks tend to be centered at '500hz' or thereabouts, which is just about exactly the region you don't want. As always it becomes a matter of well-appropriated mids. You need to cut the low-mid shit out of there and keep some nice, textured core mids in there, suck away the presence/bite region at 3k (this will help with vocal clarity immensely) then make up the difference with a high shelf (ie. add the air back in). That's my cookie-cutter approach to general live high-gain sounds.
 
I are a mid cranker. I never have my mids under 12 o'clock, and on my practice amp (Marshall 8420) I've had them completely cranked or almost cranked for a long time. Works for me and cuts through well.

Well enough that our ex-guitarist would constantly turn his volume louder and louder and wonder why he still couldn't hear himself :lol: I never looked at his settings, but he really seemed to like the gain and scooping... his tone was always pretty much a fucking loud "CCCCHHHHCCHCHCHCHCHCHCHCH", even the other members of the band who don't know much about gear still joke about it :lol:

And just to clarify, it really depends on the amp and setting. I don't have my mids on 11 all the time. I want to hear my guitar, not a tuba.