The Steel Guitar Forum

Jon Zimmerman wrote:A very topical thread going along, but one obvious thing that hasn't been mentioned... the condition your ears are in, compared to everyone around you. Age and 'diminished capacity' in certain higher frequencies may cause a player to 'compensate' just to hear himself/herself adequately. You want someone to flame? Try telling them they need to get their HEARING checked! :whoa:

A related gripe: Having others onstage tell you you're too loud, when you've done everything you can to optimize the situation, i.e. raising your amp, pointing it toward you and away from them, and you can still hardly hear yourself. You tell them you can't hear yourself, and do they think of maybe reducing the loudness of other things? No, they tell you there must be something wrong with your hearing. Excuse me, I can hear everything ELSE plenty, it's just ME I can't hear. All the other stuff in the same frequency range as me--fiddle, keyboard, guitar, voice-of-god vocal monitors, whatever--I'm picking up just fine!

"I have a theory.... try this one on for size. Your amp on stage is your monitor to hear yourself. If it is positiioned correctly (i.e up on a stand, aimed at your ears) and you can hear yourself clearly that should be sufficient volume. This is provided you are thru the mains either via a mic or DI box to mixing board. Why does everyone think they have to carry the job from stage...not necessary. If you can hear yourself clearly then that should be enough volume. If all on stage lived by this credo would not have a problem. Louder is not prettier nor better......get it through your heads loud players. IMHO."





unless you need a certain amount of volume to achieive "break-up" yes? An amp is more than a monitor, its also a tone generator and runing amps at certain volume levels can have certain desireable affects on tone. Not trying to give the tele players any excuses...just sayin. This wouldnt apply to most of the amps used to make "country" music tho i guess?
I dont know much about country guitar...trying to learn. Sure is harder than it looks.

now what is this "Tree-ble" knob Tony mentioned and where can I find one?
all i see is "Volume" and "tone" and I want maximum "tone" (who doesnt?) so I keep of em both dimed.

I have a theory.... try this one on for size. Your amp on stage is your monitor to hear yourself. ... This is provided you are thru the mains either via a mic or DI box to mixing board.

Absolutely, but the notion that one has an appropriate PA with a competent sound tech is a significant proviso in many club gigs.

unless you need a certain amount of volume to achieive "break-up" yes?

If you have to get way too loud to get the breakup you want, then you need a smaller amp that fits the situation. A lot of people pooh-pooh the Pod and other modelers, but they scale very well.

A related gripe: Having others onstage tell you you're too loud, when you've done everything you can to optimize the situation, i.e. raising your amp, pointing it toward you and away from them, and you can still hardly hear yourself.

That used to happen more when I was playing in real loud bands more. I think that when the ambient noise level gets really bad, it takes even disproportionally more to properly hear steel.

But the other side of the coin here is that people sometimes hear very differently. I find that, sometimes, players are somewhat insensitive to the prominent frequencies of their instrument. In addition, acoustics may be complex and hot spots develop at odd places when the stage volume is loud. Sometimes, I think, one has to be careful not to be the pot calling the kettle black.

There are no simple absolute answers here, as usual. I still say the simplest expedient is to make sure the drummer isn't too loud.

All IMHO.

Dave I like the pod very much, but in no way does it emulate tube break up well IMHO. Just sayin, sometimes a dimed tube amp is the TONE you want, not just the volume. I guess its the idea that an amp is simply your onstage monitor that I take issue with...but again , probably irrelevant to country music and this thread since not many country players seek out tube distortion ( i think? like I said I know so very little about country guitar).

In defense of Tele players, we're not all idiots with Twins on 11. I have an Atomic Space Tone. 5 screaming little watts. That's all I need. I played a dance hall big enough to hold 1500, not that it did that night mind you, and it was fine. Check it out.

http://swartamps.com/

Dave I like the pod very much, but in no way does it emulate tube break up well IMHO

Properly set up, it emulates the breakup on my blackface Deluxe Reverb very nicely, thank you. It fools a lot of vintage amp nazis. Forget the presets, you need to play around with it, and then run it into a clean amp. I won't argue about the Marshall, Dual Rec, or other heavy distortion sounds - not so great.

If properly miced, one's amp can indeed simply be your monitor. Of course it's a tone generator. The key is to pick the right size amp, so you don't blow everybody away. If you try to play a small club cranking a silverface Twin or a 50-100 watt Marshall stack, that ain't gonna work so well. But a Princeton, Deluxe, or Vibrolux Reverb work great for that in a lot of situations.

I do not just play country, but plenty of country players have and continue to use tube amps. Some even turn them up.

IMO, YMMV, and all that.

"If properly miced, one's amp can indeed simply be your monitor."

-a monitor that profoundly affects your tone?
Yes, I am afraid my mileage does indeed varry on that one.

After the last post I just have to do it....

What is the difference between a Telecaster Player and a chainsaw?? ...... DYNAMICS

Old joke .. still funny

-a monitor that profoundly affects your tone?
Yes, I am afraid my mileage does indeed varry on that one.

Get whatever tone you want for yourself in a small amp that only puts a hot spot on you, and then mic it. Simple.

The caveat's already been made that this is only useful when there's a good PA and competent sound tech. This has been routine for many guitarists since the 80s, and longer than that for harp players. I remember seeing Mark Wenner of the DC-based Nighthawks in the 70s playing harp through his tweed Champ and running it through the house system. He sounded great. If you have good PA support, you don't need to be loud onstage, provided the drummer doesn't overpower everything.

What you do lose is thunderous stage volume. I know some musicians who just don't like that - they don't want to just hear what they're doing, but feel a huge wall of sound also - no problem, although I've pretty much lost patience with that. But there's no problem getting a good front-of-house sound without that.

For a long time, lots and lots of rock and roll, blues, and other overdriven-sound recordings were made with very small amps - tweed Champs, Steve Cropper with his tweed Harvard, lots of Princeton/Deluxe Reverbs, and so on. Use the small amp for tone generation, and let a competent mixer get the overall sound. For the recording, it's just captured, and you can make it as loud as you want on your hi-fi amp. In a live situation, use a competent mixer to get the overall sound, and then use a hi-fi PA system to present that, at the desired level, to the audience.

I have added some lighthearted posts to this thread which I hope were taken as such. However, as the thread has developed I have become very impressed at the amount of expertise that has been imparted on the subject of simply getting a band to sound good. Honestly, this forum could serve as a text book.

So, I will add my 2 cents on a more serious note.

Playing good music is a team effort, whether it be a four piece country band or a symphony orchestra. The true purpose is served when all are working together and the whole becomes more than the sum of the parts. There will be systems, standards and expectations which ideally will be held in common and used to the benefit of everyone involved. In the present day and time the sound man may be part of that team with similar expectations of competence.

I often see the parallels between music and sports. There are team sports and individual sports and players need to understand which is which. The loud obnoxious Tele player is like the ball hog on a high school football team. He may amaze the cheerleaders, but without an attitude adjustment, he will not make the college team and certainly not the pros.

I suspect most of us old timers have had mentors over the years who helped us move to the next level. I certainly have. Perhaps part of our contribution to the music we love is to help guide young folks along so that the best of what we have learned will be preserved.

There will be "ball hogs" and hot dogs. We are doing them no favors by overlooking behaviors that impede their progress toward higher levels of professionalism.

Some will grow and mature and some will not. They will self select. Mentor those that "get it". When the others are ready a teacher will appear.

Respectfully..... in honor of my teachers, mentors and friends who helped make my career in music possible.

Just give your 6-stringers sheet music with no chord "pictures".

case in point:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIeAsOpavzE

Interesting thread. The mention of rehearsal being the answer to the problem has come up a couple of times in relation to knowing when to play and when to be quiet.
I have to respectfully disagree. I don't see the correlation between rehearsing and making a conscious effort to learn and know how to function in a band. You either know or you don't. All the rehearsal in the world won't help if you just keep doing the same things wrong all the time. Some guys just don't get it.
About a month ago I worked a CD release party gig. Not only did the band not rehearse, but I'd never even met a couple of them before. Everyone was a complete pro, and VERY heads-up about when and what to play.
They knew that there are three functions you can fill: play accompaniment for the vocals (and be the ONLY one doing it at any given time), play unobtrusive support (which might include not playing at all) and soloing. Everyone stepped up and back as required, and the results were beautiful. It had nothing to do with rehearsal.

On the other hand, I sat in with a band last weekend which rehearses weekly. They have a fiddle player who, at the beginning of the tune, starts playing the melody and doesn't quit until the song's over. He plays the melody behind the singer as he's trying to sing, behind your backups, behind your solos... all the time. I'd kill him. Trying to change his habits would only result in an argument... he has no clue.
So, you think if we had him rehearse a bit more, and play his mistakes over a couple of extra hundred times, it'll help ?

-John