aristotle
New Member
- Joined
- Apr 26, 2012
- Messages
- 771
We played a gig that was larger than usual this weekend. Much larger room, and a larger stage.
I brought more PA equipment (a couple of extra mains), the plan being that I'd mic the amps and mic the entire drum kit. That’s normally what we do for bigger venues. It doesn’t necessarily make things louder, but the tried and true thinking on the subject is that you control stage volume by keeping things the same as usual, but use the PA to do the extra work.
In practice, I’ve never been happy with that arrangement though. Maybe it’s because of the quality of the PA equipment that we use. We use QSC powered drivers and subs that sound fantastic for vocals, even with a bit of bass, kick drum and snare added to the mix. But mic’d guitar amps just sound tinny and cheap through the mains. And I’ve tried several varieties of mics, and I’m pretty sure that’s not the issue.
So, before mic’ing up the amps, I went FOH and we did a quick sound check just to see where we were at, and it sounded fantastic. The extra two mains for the vocals just really brought them out front and center. And the guitars sounded great out front with the amps set to exactly the level that we want to hear back in the pocket (which for the other guitar player and me, means that each of us wants our own individual level to be significantly louder where we are standing individually.)
It was probably the best live mix we had ever achieved. And I don’t think it was the larger room.
Stage layout is shown in the pic below. The guitar amps are pretty much in the same position as they are for small club gigs, but admittedly spread out a bit more than usual. I don’t know… we definitely were standing farther forward than normal, so maybe that contributed to a different feel than normal.
I’ve done the homework on what a live sound setup “should” be, but I just can’t make that work for us.
Anybody else have any thoughts? As a side note, I brought a nice LP R9 for a Poison tune that requires a half-step-down tuning and as a backup to my DGT. The DGT broke a string half-way through the first song of the first set. The R9 sounded good, but boy, it's no DGT.
I brought more PA equipment (a couple of extra mains), the plan being that I'd mic the amps and mic the entire drum kit. That’s normally what we do for bigger venues. It doesn’t necessarily make things louder, but the tried and true thinking on the subject is that you control stage volume by keeping things the same as usual, but use the PA to do the extra work.
In practice, I’ve never been happy with that arrangement though. Maybe it’s because of the quality of the PA equipment that we use. We use QSC powered drivers and subs that sound fantastic for vocals, even with a bit of bass, kick drum and snare added to the mix. But mic’d guitar amps just sound tinny and cheap through the mains. And I’ve tried several varieties of mics, and I’m pretty sure that’s not the issue.
So, before mic’ing up the amps, I went FOH and we did a quick sound check just to see where we were at, and it sounded fantastic. The extra two mains for the vocals just really brought them out front and center. And the guitars sounded great out front with the amps set to exactly the level that we want to hear back in the pocket (which for the other guitar player and me, means that each of us wants our own individual level to be significantly louder where we are standing individually.)
It was probably the best live mix we had ever achieved. And I don’t think it was the larger room.
Stage layout is shown in the pic below. The guitar amps are pretty much in the same position as they are for small club gigs, but admittedly spread out a bit more than usual. I don’t know… we definitely were standing farther forward than normal, so maybe that contributed to a different feel than normal.
I’ve done the homework on what a live sound setup “should” be, but I just can’t make that work for us.
Anybody else have any thoughts? As a side note, I brought a nice LP R9 for a Poison tune that requires a half-step-down tuning and as a backup to my DGT. The DGT broke a string half-way through the first song of the first set. The R9 sounded good, but boy, it's no DGT.