my tone went backwards!!!!!!

[gush]

OK, so I spend my whole life refining my tone trying this trying that playing with gain and tone settings. I decide that playing prs guitars will improve my tone, I even record my amp over and over to make sure it sounds good. Sennhieser 609s become my mic of choice for live performances because they seem to reproduce my tone faithfully.

My band gigged last night and we shared the stage with another band. The club hired a pro sound company to do sound for both bands so I'm thinking this will be cool as I can leave my PA at home. The tech hands me a 609 like I asked, cool!

So why the hell does my guitar sound like crap through FOH AND monitors??????? Does the sound tech have to be a guitar player that's passionate about tone to get it right? It killed it for me, couldn't wait for the gig to be over.

Oh and to top it off, stage was set up under a concrete highway bridge that goes over the club so there was this low mid frequency that would explode when bass guitar would hit a certain note. OMG!!!!!!

 

[vchizzle]

Always disappointing when that happens. I hate guitars thru monitors. Mostly, I just don't like having a horn shooting all the treble frequencies at my face. Almost never enjoyable. Really, the EQ on the board should be able to be set fairly flat and the sound guy maybe just tweak a bit for the mix if need be. I've always had pretty good luck that way - no matter where(within reason) I place a mic to record guitars, be it right on the cab or putting a condenser cam/recorder(like a zoom Q3hd) a little ways back, you should be able to get a pretty decent sound without a whole lot of effort. One that represents what your amp sounds like. Sometimes guitarists have their amps adjusted to extremes so they hear what they want where they stand. Sometimes that can cause less than positive results - probably not the case in your situation though, given the time you spent working to get it right.

 

[andy474x]

Bummer. I've played through a 609 a few times, and they sound fantastic. Must have been the sound guy, sometimes they think they're the expert on guitar tone, I hate that.

 

[sergiodeblanc]

This is the exact reason I don't obsess over "my" tone anymore and just rent amps. I now only work with "broad strokes" when it comes to tone.

 

[gush]

I don't like guitar in monitors either but conditions demanded it. Very shallow stage forced me to stand closer to my amp than normal. Don't like that either. You guys are spot on with several points, 1-when standing next to amp, your mic doesn't hear the same thing your ear does. 2-EQ on board should be flat and mostly used to seperate instruments that share the same sonic space or to fix a problem frequency.

I feed my analyzer line input with an unused aux. That allows me a visual of all channels together or one at a time. I can even send a signal from sub-groups and mains if I want.

Usually dont have feedback issues with my system unless I'm unable to analyze room prior to show.