I'll preface this that we played a very small club/stage last night. Load in/out was a b!tch, change over between bands was a logistical nightmare. My set up is not really conducive to small stages either. I run wet/dry so my reverbs/delays etc are only on 1 cab. So...2 - 4x12 cabs, a 16 space rack(need to go down to a 10-12 space), head a large pedalboard. I think I need a pair of 2x12's for small places. So I stacked my cabs, which I'm not a fan of in tight spaces, to save space. I had the dry Archon cab aimed straight at my head. I started out at my rehearsal volume, which is around 10:00(not quiet when it aimed straight at your face :laugh: ). So we do a line check and ask the sound guy if he wants me to turn down....he says, "no, you could actually be a little louder." I say, "REALLY?!?!?" So I turn up a smidge to make the sound guy happy that I listened to him. We get into the 1st song which has a little clean channel and mostly high gain, and I can mostly hear all me and know I'm WAY too loud for us on this stage, that lacks a decent monitor system. It was actually uncomfortably loud. May have been fine if the cabs weren't stacked and firing at mine and our singer's heads. So I turn down some, and turn my treble and presence up a hair as I wanted a touch more brightness. Still a little too loud. So 3rd song in, I finally have the volume about right so I'm not killing everyone in the path of my cabs. The amp sounded great. Stayed nice and tight on the low end, but not sterile, like some other amps that have that tightness. It still has a very nice, organic and good "feel" to it. Dynamics were great on the high gain channel. I roll my volume knob down a fair amount for a slightly cleaner crunchy tone and it does great in that respect. Clean channel just sounded great. I didn't use it quite as much since we only played 45 minutes. My solos felt awesome, tone was great and singing, with a ton of sustain. I kick an EP Booster on a lot because I like what it does the tone on a lot of amps. One nice thing I noticed about the amp, I run the clean and high gain channel volumes pretty close to noon on both. So when I was messing around lowering volume in the beginning of the set, I was able to keep the master volumes close to the same. That can be a real PITA on some amps when trying to make adjustments on the fly...keeping levels of everything even. No issue with that here. I was able to tweak and keep the volumes matched between the channels easily.
Great experience with the Archon at gig #1 with it, looking forward to piles more! :rock:
Can't wait to record with it as well!
Great experience with the Archon at gig #1 with it, looking forward to piles more! :rock:
Can't wait to record with it as well!
