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[Dave Dermont]

We need to separate the fact from the fiction here.

First of all, if you are Stevie Ray, or Angus, or Eric, you can play as loud as you want, whenever you want, wherever you want. Those not on the "10 Best Of all Time" list need to get a clue.

There is a difference between "I need my tone" and "I love to swim in audio".

...and another thing

The same drum hit with the same force with the same stick will produce the same energy, no matter what room you are in. A difference in room size and how live/dead that room is will change how that energy is perceived by your ear.

Once upon a time, I did a gig in a brick and glass room where the largest dimension was the 60 foot ceiling. After sound check, I told the drummer, "The drums sound good, but everything sounds like -When The Levee Breaks-".

Listen, if you have been playing a musical instrument since the 60s and still have no understanding of dynamics, that's your damn problem, not mine.

Getting back to the original post...

You say it was a packed house, so that's good. You want to make it better. That's good too.

Just moving the mix position and not adding delay stacks will not keep the front of the room from being crushed with guitar. It will also likely put you past the critical distance where you are hearing more reflected than direct PA sound.

Are delay stacks for a bar gig worth the effort?
Will they really help, or will they just make it so everyone is equally crushed with guitar?
Is the house packed because these people love being crushed with guitar?

Only you can answer these questions.

Players who bring people through the door deserve special dispensation. Even local guitar gods.

We are not hired to be critics. We are hired to do gigs to the best of our ability.

Have fun. Thanks for caring.

[David Buckley]

Tim - it wasn't until I got the free Blue Cat Frequency Analyzer plug in that I started finding horrible amounts of LF and HF in modeled guitar amps, some of my older synths, etc. Not so much from an e906 in front of a guitar cab.

There certainly is, but the same is true if one has a DI off a guitar amp speaker, the sound is all sizzle.  And its sizzle that cant be fixed with normal EQ, it needs LPF or a crossover band applying to tame the mess.  A guitar amp speaker is not a full range device.

And I'm a big fan of power droppers, like the Palmer, or just home made out of a bunch of resistors; its not perfect, but its good enough.

[Guy Luckert]

I am a fan of a miked tweed Deluxe-lack of headroom is a beautiful thing.

sound good-not loud

mike it

[Steve M Smith]

I am a fan of a miked tweed Deluxe-lack of headroom is a beautiful thing.

sound good-not loud

mike it

That would work for me.  I play rockabilly rather than rock, but I like just enough volume for a hollow body guitar to be just on the edge of feedback for a bit of amp to guitar interaction.  I can do this with a 17w amp using two EL84s.  No more is required.


Steve.

[john lutz]

A sub category of too loud guitars seems to be the clean vs. overdrive sounds.  Why do so many players who suffer from too loud for the stage, also have their clean or rhythm sound so much louder than the lead or drive sound?

[Tim McCulloch]

A sub category of too loud guitars seems to be the clean vs. overdrive sounds.  Why do so many players who suffer from too loud for the stage, also have their clean or rhythm sound so much louder than the lead or drive sound?

More to the point - how can they not tell the levels are radically different?  Why are they not offended?  Because they stop when they find the majik voodoo tone.  Growth of technique and musicianship then congeals like yesterday's gravy.

[Bob Leonard]

Today I found a video that illustrates this discussion very well. More than just guitar, but also a good view of shielding, monitor placement and technique.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObJCtCmmi7w&nohtml5=False

[Stephen Kirby]

A sub category of too loud guitars seems to be the clean vs. overdrive sounds.  Why do so many players who suffer from too loud for the stage, also have their clean or rhythm sound so much louder than the lead or drive sound?

That's because the overdrive compresses and the clean doesn't.  So what might initially sound like similar levels played gently turns into the clean being much louder once they start playing.  Especially folks who play with tons of gain which makes anything they do sound pretty much the same.

I remember having a conversation with the CTO of a company that made a specialized computer for running music plug-ins and models.  His opinion was that most modelers had nowhere near enough resolution to deal with the artifacts of digital distortion models and that much of the buzz was aliasing that even rolling everything above 5k off with a speaker emulator plug-in wouldn't cut out.

[ProSoundWeb Community]