The Steel Guitar Forum

I just joined a new group and I am playing Steel, Piano, Guitar and Mandolin. I am not interested in bringing three amps along. Anybody had any experiance playing the steel through a PA set up? Did you use a pre-amp and what kind, did you do anything special on the channel setting for the steel channel?

Any knowledge would be great.

Thanks

Mack

Welcome Mack! I use a NV112 and mic it with a SM57 thru the PA. It sounds better than a direct line. Many use in ear monitors and go direct but buffer with pre amps, etc before going to the PA.

Thanks Bo,
I guess I didn't really explain well.

Normaly I would use my session 500 and line out to the band PA. (have mic'ed it as well). I've been going direct to the PA with the guitar for three years now and using a stomp box for the effects. Being that I am going to be playing Piano, Steel, Guitar, Mandolin and each have different dynamic range, I am thinking I would use a PA mixer/amp head and a Yamaha hot box that I have which has a 15, horn , piazzo and port base. Thinking this gives me coverage on the rang for the various instruments. The thought is that now I have one amp to plug into. If this band takes it to the Band PA then I can take a line out of the head as one signal to the band PA for all of the instruments. My consern is that the Steel is a strang animal and I am not sure the dynamic range for this amp is going to give me a good tone. So I was interested in anyones thoughts on this type of setup. Maybe a pre-amp for the steel???

Thanks

Mack

Mack,
I have used an Evans preamp and a Revelation preamp with good results. You might also try a Transtubfex or Profex unit. They will help you dial in your tone. With the Evans or Revelation you will need an outside effects unit for reverb, delay,etc. Hope this helps.
Dale

I play steel, guitar, and mandolin in my church Praise band, and play direct into the PA. I use a Digitech 2112 preamp/effects unit with several programs tailored to whatever I'm playing. I go out of the preamp/effects unit to a Countryman direct box then to the main PA board. I monitor with in-ear monitors, I haven't used an amp in this situation for about 4 years now. We also have Aviom personal mixers for each player which helps greatly. Each musician sets up their own monitor mix.

Here is a link where you can download a couple of our songs recorded live during a church service. There was no editing done, what you hear is the way it was.

http://savefile.com/projects/888796

On "Blessed", I used a pretty straightforward steel sound with a little chorus added. On "Jesus Is" I used a straight steel sound for most of the song but kicked in the distortion for a break at the end of the bridge.

Excellent! Just the info I am after. Thanks Darvin, Bo Dale. I will check out the pre-amp suggestions.

Darvin, What church do you play at. You are just down the road from me and I would love to hear you play.

Mack

Mack,

I play at Christian Life Church in south Austin, at 4700 Westgate St. We have two identical Sunday morning services, at 8:45 and 11:00. (That way if we flub the first time, we get another chance for another crowd. LOL.) It's a fair distance from where you live, but we would be glad to have you come, and it would probably be worth the trip. Our regular sound guy, and a couple of band members are out of town this weekend, so we probably won't sound quite as good, but hopefully we'll be back to normal next week.

http://www.christianlifeaustin.com/

Darvin,
Thanks, I will try to make it out some sunday!

Mack

Mack, for a couple of years I had a rack with a Mackie 1202 compact mixer. I ran my steel, guitar and fiddle into seperate channels. A couple of different delay units were patched in as appropriate. The main outs of the mixer went to the power amp. It wasn't ideal but it wasn't too bad,either. It sure was handy to just grab an instrument and play without having to touch any knobs.
It just depends on what you want to haul around.

Thanks Doug
I am thinking about doing the same thing. The PA should have enough range for all of the instruments, I think I will look at a pre-amp for the steel and see if I can get a better sound. Don't care much for the reverb of the PA head.

Mack

Hi, I got tired of carriing my amp aroud everywhere, also it was sometimes a problem on small stages. I use some floor effects, rotary, overdrive etc.. and some of these sonds terrible if you go straigt into a PA. So, I bought a inexpencive little gadget that I am VERY happy with. A behringer Ultra-G direct box with 4x12 simulator!
Of course my Twin amp sounds better, but for convinience nothing beats this compared to the price.
It is mounted on my pedalboard, if I use an amp, its still on there, but I take the cabel to the amp out before it. Very happy, can recomend it to everyone!

Tor Arve Baroy,
Thanks for the info. I will look into it. I played Wednesday night through my PA setup and didn't like the Steel sound at all. Very thin. So I will have to do something.

Mack

Mack a friend of mine is playing through a Mackie P.A. head with two 12'' speakers and he sounds great . It appears that there are more ways to skin a cat than one huh ?

I just read this thread. I also am playing keyboards, nonpedal steel, harmonica and mandolin in a 5-piece band. I use Shure in-ear monitors. I don't want to carry 3 amps around, so I'm thinking of using a preamp/DI box for the steel guitar. Mack, what gear are you using now?

Hey Mack, I just saw this post so I thought I'd add a little to it. Back in the early nineties I was using a Session 500 for steel guitar and was having quite a few problems with it. I took it to the local Peavey repair shop and they took the power section out of it and I took the cabinet with speaker back home with me. I tried it on a gig with a Bandit 65 which was miked but it just didn't quite do the trick. At the time I had a Peavey 6 channel powered PA head so I thought I'd try that out with the Session 500 cabinet and took it to a gig. To my surprise I think it actually sounded better than the 500 did. I used it for almost a month like that and wasn't really happy with the 500 when it came back so I eventually sold it..........JH in Va.

I also play keyboard, mandolin, Pedal Steel for our church praise band and our set up for my steel is exactly like Darvin Willhoite's. Nice to know someone else out there is on the same page.


Blessings to all of you.

Perhaps you guys can help me solve a problem. I'm also going into a PA at church. I'd like to share one channel between multiple instruments. I thus use my mixer to combine instruments and go from there to the PA via an active DI box.

Problem is that the harmonica (via mic into my mixer) sounds perfect in the monitor fed back to me by the PA. Not so with the lapsteel / dobro / PSG. They return heavy distortion in the monitor (and I presume the church speakers). It's as if the line-in into my mixer creates a different scenario which can not be handled (or should be handled differently) by the PA. What to do?

A couple of times I had to run direct I used a Transtube fex and it worked great. There are so many EQ and FX options plus a speaker simulator on the back of the unit. With a little programming you can get a good sound.You can find them pretty cheap these days also.

The band wasn't practicing last night so I took the soundman with me and we had the system all to ourselves. Plugged it in - everything was perfect right away.

I can't say I was relieved, because I've just got a funny suspicion that when I'm plugged in with the band, the problem is going to be back - although I hope not!

We fooled around a bit and the only time I could make it distort, was when I had the guitar's channel volume on my mixer on about 75% and up.

One very hard painstaking problem I had with the last band I was with using my POD XT to mixer is make sure of the "Trim Pot" on the mixer is down !!!'
If not you will start "Red Lining" over driving the mixer channel and distort.
If you use a pre-amp or POD or what ever , Turn the Trim Down - it is a type of pre amp also.
I'm no longer with this band due to this constant battling issue with their sound guy.
It was not fun anymore so it was time to go find fun with another band.