Sound during practice

hogan666

Member
Mar 7, 2006
178
0
16
Mannheim, Germany
www.liquid-artz.com
Hey,

how do you guys dial in your guitarsound during practice?
Yesterday, our live engineer listened to our practice session, because we're not very happy with our sound. Everytime someone says "too loud...too muddy...can't hear my vocals...". Everyone's got other preferences for his sound. Our engineer says, that it's the best if you put the mic before the amp and you just have to dial in the gain and do at most minor eq'ing (live situation).

The whole time, we stood before our cabs, which stood on the floor...pushing air next to our asses. :heh: In this hearing position we've dialed in our sound, which forces our engineer to do massive tweaks, getting a good live sound.

Right now we've put our cabs in hearing position. Oh my god, what a cheesy sound. Too much treble etc. Not very good for the whole bandsound. With these settings we reduced our overall volume, which makes everthing clearer and more precise. But to me, it's very irritating. My 5150 sounds very harsh and the playing feel is also very strange.

Hope that it makes our live sound a lot more "in your face". :worship:

How d'you guys handle this topic?
D'you play for your fun or for the better bandsound?
How do the pro's handle this?

...and sorry for the strange english. It's hard to translate words/phrases from german to english ;-)

Cheers, Markus.
 
I dial in my sound by sitting on my knees while tweaking(So i have the speakers in height with me ears), then I back up abit and play a few chords and leadlines, then I tweak it after that again.
This usually gives me a pretty good live tone.
Something to think about is to not have to much high mids, because then the guitars will chew down the singers voice, yet you must have lower mids to be heard yourself.
And both guitarists should have the same basic tone, but I prefer if the rythmplayer has a little bit less gain then the leadplayer so that tone gets a bit more chugga.

Edit:
What I mean is ofcourse that both guitarists tweak ONE amp, untill they are both satisfied with the tone.
Then you adjust both amps to this tone, and then you can pull down some gain on the rythm amp, and maybe pull down some treble on it if it takes over to much during leadparts.

This is my basic rythmtone dial for all "hi-gain" amps:
Gain/Drive = 5-7(Depends on how much gain it puts out, you want it to chugga, leads should sound crap with this sound.)
Bass = 8
Mid = 4
Treble = 8
Presence = 4-8(Depends on the amp, you dont want it to "fizz" to much.).

This is my basic leadtone fial for all "hi-gain" amps:
Gain/Drive = 7-9 (You want it to sound almost clean if you hardly touch the strings on the neck p-up.)
Bass = 7-8 (Depends on how much "rattatata" you want to the sound.)
Mid = 4-7 (Depends on how smooth you want it + how much you want it to cut through.)
Treble = 8-10 (Same as above.)
Presence = 4-8(Depends on the amp, you dont want it to "fizz" to much.).
 
Gain/Drive = 5-7(Depends on how much gain it puts out, you want it to chugga, leads should sound crap with this sound.)

Or if you have a Powerball, the gain should be at 1 - 3 / 10 on the Low Gain channel :lol:

Here's the key to a clear rehearsal sound:

- Guitars: less gain, less lows (leave it for the bassist), less treble, more mids
- If two guitarists: one guy gets the lower mids, the second gets the higher mids (go by the natural tone of the amp, ie. low mids for Mesa, high mids for 5150, etc)
- Vocals: buy a better PA system. So that you won't be constantly at the max level of the setup (= distortion == mush)
- Drummer: don't fucking slam those cymbals like they screwed your girlfriend!
- Bass: you're the balls of the band, but don't drown out everyone else
- Synths: keep it simple, your 13 finger/5 octave chords are not cool in a live/rehearsal setting. Don't play in the same octave as the guitars, play one octave higher.

All: lift those amps/speakers to ear level, humans haven't evolved so far to have ears in their knees yet.
 
This guy has it nailed.

Oh, and the English is actually better than most Americans I have to deal with, so no worries there. You bloody Europeans, learning everyone else's languages better than they do...

Jeff
 
Haha, thanks a lot. Reading the US Guitar World a few times and watching Kerrang-TV everyday keeps me a bit up to date speaking or reading english.

For me, the goal of my guitar sound is to get our engineer the best signal. Hey, everytime after a gig the people told us, that they have been blown away by our sound...and this is really based on the skills of our engineer.
So I don't know what he does if he get's a better signal, where he don't have to tweak that much. :kickass:

I'm not sure, if you know the band "E-town Concrete" from New Jersey. We've played with them. Their guitarplayer came on stage with a lend JCM 900 and a Boss pedal. Hit one chord, the engineer said "ok" and at the show they totaly blew us away with their kickass in your face sound. Awesome.

Cheers, Markus.
 
I'm not sure, if you know the band "E-town Concrete" from New Jersey. We've played with them. Their guitarplayer came on stage with a lend JCM 900 and a Boss pedal. Hit one chord, the engineer said "ok" and at the show they totaly blew us away with their kickass in your face sound. Awesome.

I 'm a huge E TOWN CONCRETE fan dude !Too bad they parted ways !

I totally love the guitar sound on "the renaissance" and "made for war" (i prefer the sound on "the renaissance" though). One of the best guitar sounds i've ever heard, and the type of guitar sound i'm after for my own band (huge ETC influence :) ).