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[Tim McCulloch]

She is a very polite young woman and always asks before attempting to get the mic changed (partly my fault as I have always told her to check before unplugging anything in case it's live).
It's been a bit of both, some "preset-and-left" don't change anything situations, but a number of the sound person not being bothered to have to change anything ( and unfortunately for some  , a condesending attitude of "you're just a young girl and i know best").

Send her to one of "my" gigs.  We'll treat her with respect.  We save the condescension for genuine jerks.

Of the most basic accommodations to a singer, auditioning his/her mic should be the first.  If it's duff we can quickly look at other choices and if it's workable we've made a friend.

[Tim McCulloch]

{big ol' snip}

The perspective is the biggest reason. Bands all pretty much start at the bottom with little to nothing. So they start their experience with sound with others that are also at the bottom of the soundguy scale. A few bad experiences later and a trend starts to set in. A need for gear comes along and they, with their golden ear mentality, buy PA gear that will end all their problems. Low and behold it does, because they make it work for them. They don't need us, we are an expense that can't possibly make their lives any better. Until the one day they end up at a gig with a real sound guy and a real PA. That is when you hear the ubiquitous " This is the best sound we ever had "....... It starts to sell them on our craft, but only fuels the fire for them to get better gear, because they still have the golden ear and they can do it themselves........

It isn't until they too have done enough shows for others that they start to realize its not us, it actually is them that cause most of their issues. It is just the attitude we have that determines how a bad situation can be made better, or worse. If we are happy, they become happier even if they are getting a shitty deal. Our attitudes are what sells our craft. Bands love someone who is happy to help no matter what. In the end we are nothing more than problem solvers. Part of our problem solving is how to make bands want to afford us instead of buying more crap that they won't make money off of.  We sell good experiences in short. We are also a lot like a tattoo; good ones aren't cheap and cheap ones aren't good.

We're a service business and sometimes that means "serving" clients in ways not in their interests, but at their request nonetheless.  FWIW 

As the SystemGuy I usually mix the first opener.  Sometimes they're local/regional that have suffered the "brother in law" or bartender mixes and have resorted to mixing themselves from stage.  Feeling the house PA with good wedges in front of them is something they seldom (or never) get.  It's kind of nice knowing you gave them some RawkStar Treatment that made their night.  You're right that the savvy acts figure out that it's more than gear, and that gear costs money that becomes an infinite expense if it doesn't do what was needed.  That's where we sell our craft as that "good experience."

We have the experience to anticipate potential issues, we have work flow and package our gear accordingly, we keep our cables neat & tidy and don't use sketchy AC cords on stage.  Oh, and the rig sounds good and they get a better mix, too, and now we've become the problem solvers - with us there, there aren't really problems, at least not with audio.

This attitude scales up.  Soon (hopefully) we're in the business of finding ways to say "yes" to client requests, hopefully in ways that add a line item to the invoice and delivers value to the client.

This is the point where most of us end up no longer working directly with bands as they represent limits to business growth.  Even if they love you long time, Mixerperson/SoundCo Owner, there is a point at which they can pay no more regardless of the quality of your service or capital equipment investments.  Your time and efforts need to return more $$ back to your company, which is probably about to branch out into other kinds of live audio, perhaps hire the first employee.  The price has to go up. 

[Steve M Smith]

The guitarist probably had a Squier before learning that better stuff could be better.

He's wrong.

I usually play a fairly expensive Gretsch.  Occasionally, I take my cheap Squier Telecaster instead.

I enjoy playing it and the audience can't tell how cheap it is.


Steve.

[Callan Browne]

As a guitarist, when I first needed pa speakers I got eon's. thankfully I got rid of them eons ago. Yes, I leant the hard way, but it was all I could afford at the time.

These days I still mix from the stage and the FOH sound is pretty static during the sets, but I try and get out in front at least once a set and have a listen. X32R mixer has helped having a good starting point before we even start sound check.

The gigs we do, there just isn't enough cash to go around to pay a sound guy.
Hopefully we don't stay in this position forever, but it is what it is for now - playing covers in pubs isn't exactly a growth industry.

Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk

[Scott Olewiler]

He's wrong.

I usually play a fairly expensive Gretsch.  Occasionally, I take my cheap Squier Telecaster instead.

I enjoy playing it and the audience can't tell how cheap it is.


Steve.

The first thing that came to my mind out of the original post was that I can't believe any guitarist is dumb enough to think anyone in the audience can hear the difference between a $4000 guitar or a $600 one.   I have been playing for money since 1981 and still have never used a guitar that cost more than $1000.

Now I do understand it makes big difference to the actual player as anyone who has ever played a $600 Epiphone and then picked up a $3000 Les Paul will attest but to the audience, not chance.   Sounds the same to them. 

Almost every local bar band in my area has top shelf personal gear and the previously mentioned shitty PA and they still can't figure out why a band with a guitarist playingan Epiphone through a Roland Cube sounds so much better than they do. Its like the quality of the PA doesn't even enter their mind.

 I was just talking to a band leader the other week telling him how inexpensive digital mixers are these days and he dismissed it out of hand with "I'm done spending any more money on the PA". This is a lead singer who consistantly raves about how good my band thru my PA sounds but he doesn't want to drop $600 to gte his system under control. (wedges with zero processing or EQ)

[Stephen Kirby]

With the advent of decent sounding powered speakers (even the low end are far better than the Kustoms and JRXs of yore) it seems every bar band has one of those little 4-6 channel Behringer table top mixers.  I've seen folks with Yamaha DXRs running everything through one of those sound constrictors.
The Soundcraft Ui are a step in the right direction at lower cost but it seems only techies want to run everything from an iPad (or experienced sound people who can devote their entire attention to the control surface and various layers of menus).  There really is a market for a digital something with 6-8 inputs and enough front panel controls that someone familiar with a top box powered mixer or one of these cheap table top things can operate.

[Jay Barracato]

Send her to one of "my" gigs.  We'll treat her with respect.  We save the condescension for genuine jerks.

Of the most basic accommodations to a singer, auditioning his/her mic should be the first.  If it's duff we can quickly look at other choices and if it's workable we've made a friend.

I wonder how many of the lounge level bands have ever seen a professional crew at a festival, where you walk up to the monitor board with your mic, hand it to the tech, who rings it out using a spare channel and the spare wedge at his feet that matches the stage setup, and then saves the eq to be copied to your channel during the changeover.

The only personal mic i can think of that I rejected was a blue condenser for a singing drummer with the bad habit of swinging it behind him directly into a corner on my stage. And I let him do that for a couple of shows before suggesting we could do better.

But don't get me started about those damn harmonizer boxes that I don't get told about prior to splicing them in after we have line checked.

Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk

[Bob Leonard]

The first thing that came to my mind out of the original post was that I can't believe any guitarist is dumb enough to think anyone in the audience can hear the difference between a $4000 guitar or a $600 one.   I have been playing for money since 1981 and still have never used a guitar that cost more than $1000.

Now I do understand it makes big difference to the actual player as anyone who has ever played a $600 Epiphone and then picked up a $3000 Les Paul will attest but to the audience, not chance.   Sounds the same to them. 

Almost every local bar band in my area has top shelf personal gear and the previously mentioned shitty PA and they still can't figure out why a band with a guitarist playingan Epiphone through a Roland Cube sounds so much better than they do. Its like the quality of the PA doesn't even enter their mind.

 I was just talking to a band leader the other week telling him how inexpensive digital mixers are these days and he dismissed it out of hand with "I'm done spending any more money on the PA". This is a lead singer who consistantly raves about how good my band thru my PA sounds but he doesn't want to drop $600 to gte his system under control. (wedges with zero processing or EQ)

Kids. I bought my first PA when I was 14, and Dad didn't help. It consisted of 1ea. 50 watt Bogan and a pair of University horns, the really big ones (about $125 total). My first real guitar was a 1964 Melody Maker with one pickup ($59 used). Monitors were whatever you could borrow which meant a Fender amp, IF you were lucky, because usually the word monitor was never mentioned. All of this bought by scraping bread dough and shit off of the floor in the local bakery every morning at 5am. We used whatever mics we could, and the big mic of the day was a Shure Unidyne (I think). Today I use whatever I want, buy whatever I want, and my last Gibson, a 1964 ES-345 cost me $5500. The customer or vocalist should be given the mic of their choice if possible, and that's what makes the world go round.

[Steve Mason]

<-------Lead singer who owns the PA.  Sennheisers to Soundcraft to Crowns to JBLs, Peaveys or EV's. Because no one is gonna remember how hard my lead guitar player shredded if I sound like shit.

[Stu McDoniel]

I think it can also be because a lot of musicians only think about themselves. Same reason why I can't get the guitarist to turn down even though he is ruining my mix. He only cares about what he sounds like, not the entire band.

I can relate.  Its always fun to have to shape the mix "around" the stage volume of guitars.
Half the time putting a mic in front of a guitar amp in a club is useless.

[ProSoundWeb Community]