JParry335
Active Member
And some amps! Yep. I feel your pain!Lucky you...every guitar ive diposed of i now regret.....especially a Vigier and a Guild....such is life
And some amps! Yep. I feel your pain!Lucky you...every guitar ive diposed of i now regret.....especially a Vigier and a Guild....such is life
Some great advice. Venues are small in my area and they don't pay much either. I keep down sizing my amps. I haven't needed to mic a guitar amp in a long long time. Even Weddings barely need a fill mic just cracked on. We're down to just a sm48 in the bass drum, one between hihat and snare and an over Hang above the drummer in the front, nothing in the monitors except vocals. The bass guitar amp is just a 12 and two 10's with a line in that we barely crack on. No mic on the guitar amps. We're down to taking 4-6 bagend 12's and one super light 15" sub. I've sold off over 20,000 watts of pa amps. We're down to 1 peavy 8.5 and two super light behringer 6000 watt amps. I'm down to a dual 15 band for the fronts and one 15 band eq for the monitors. Drummer is now using a 20" x 16" bass four piece. A 72" tall rack for pa is down to a 36" tall one. All the big mains and horns are gone.That helps a lot now I understand that you dealing with .
1st I would ask is are you happy with your tone?
If so I have also learned the preferred thing to do is ask your drummer very politely to play softer or with lighter sticks and the bass player to turn down. Wow what concept!
The volume on stage is almost always set buy the drummer.
If the bass player or you cant hear yourselves you have no choice but to turn up till you can. Too loud of stage volume causes feedback & a multitude of other problems like getting fired or never being asked back. Oh yea and hearing damage.
Seasoned players understand controlling volume & dynamics to match each other & the room is job # 1! Nothing pisses off staff and patrons more than bands that are too damn loud!
It is always better to be asked to turn up than down.
I have played with more players and seen more bands than I can count that simply cant grasp this basic concept.
1st hint if everyone in the audience is standing at the back of the room & no one is siting or standing/dancing close to the stage…Your too f*cking loud!
2nd will changing your amps tone setting help you sit in the mix better?
What sounds great at home by yourself doesn’t always work in a band setting.
Often rolling off some bass on your guitar to leave those frequencies for the bass player to cover & the bass player cutting some of his highs to make room for you cleans up the mix because the 2 instruments are not competing with each other & creating phase issues resulting in mud. Try EQ’ing to make space for each other in the mix.
If your’e playing with the type of players who think “If its too loud you’re too old” & that isn’t an option.
The cheapest and easiest thing to do IMHO is dial in your amp right where you like it and simply mic it with a Sennheiser e 609 ($100) or e906 ($189) draped over your amp .
If you need “More Me” on stage run it thru your monitors for each member & to the FOH as needed
No chasing tone, going through pedal after pedal & endlessly rolling tubes or swapping out speakers.
The VHT Special 6 like most low wattage amps are really designed to be played at smaller venues & studio work & to break up at low volume levels. That is the point of low watt amps. Tube saturation at manageable volume.
Adding breakup is easy but adding more clean is very hard.
Headroom is the reason I run a Princeton (Stays clean to 10 like a Twin) verses a Princeton Reverb that breaks up around 3.5 -5 depending on tubes/speaker installed.
I have a 78 Fender Twin Reverb loaded with JBL E-120’s that has the ultra-liner transformer 135 watts of pure tube point to point Fender clean! Takes pedals wonderfully too.
But I can only use it one or twice a year because it will melt your face off and make you deaf before it ever breaks up.
Other options are..
A) Try a more efficient speaker that gives you more output & has less speaker cry. I replaced the stock speaker in my Fender Excelsior with an Eminence legend and gained almost 10db !
B) Use an extension cab. Generally +3db for each speaker added (I bet if you plug that VHT into a 4x12 cab you will have enough headroom)
C)Try different tubes
D) Use an amp with more headroom if all else fails.
Good luck I have been in your shoes many times..Often the answer isn’t more or different gear but actually each member making adjustments to accommodate each other that make the band as whole not each individual sound its best.
PQ
Danelectro has a octave fuzz you could get just to fool around with. I believe it's a fox tone circuit copy?I'm toying with the idea of getting an (upper) octave fuzz. It will definitely hinge on whether or not this new project happens. Ideally it would be small.
Looking for a little smoother (not too glitchy or sputtery), and probably with independent fuzz and level controls and octave on/off. Ideally it would track well enough to not completely freak out with double stops (though a little octave weirdness would be cool and expected).
I think a Foxx Tone Machine-esqe thing might be the ticket, but I have no idea. The idea is to get some smooth sustain and controllable feedback at lower volumes.
Any suggestions?
You definitely have a number of options for this type of pedal. One you might want to check into and which was one of my favorites for many years:
https://www.bearfootfx.com/store/fuzz/candy-apple-fuzz/
and another I like which is Tone Machine inspired:
http://proguitarshop.com/greer-amps-super-hornet.html
Dunlop makes an MXR sized unit. The octave effect is not separately switchable though.Re: octave fuzz, I think this might be the ticket. Tons of clarity, and the octave can be used on its own. Spendy though.
Just found the right guy to fix the Quad GT,so im very chuffed.Took ages to find this guy,he can even take those mad little Sony DAT machines apart and rebuild em and he charges reasonably.Thank you John. When I think of all the guitars, basses, pedals and amps that passed through my grubby lil hands I have to shake my head. Of course working in a music store helped to fuel that. But it got to the point when I opened my storage space to fit yet another G&L (a small-MFD Humbucker Interceptor) and couldn't find anywhere to put it, that the purge began.