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Competing with Mesa Boogie & Marshall Amps...

#21
In my experience sometimes you have to have a few volume skirmishes before the war is over. When the guitarists ask you to turn down the bass (assuming you luck into a good 4x10 or two), then you can start negotiating about each amps loudness. I've found that quite often the guitarists are just in love with cranking their bass knob to 10. Sure it sound wicked when you play a Mesa Recto wide open like that! But that muddies up the whole band. It works better if they can rein in the bass which is clobbering your low mids and likely the toms of the drummer. If they can be reasonable with the mid knob as well then the drummers snare and the vocals will have a fighting chance.
What kind of music do you guys play? I ask because it woudl be silly to ask a punk/metal/thrash band to turn down and use reasonable sized cabs. If you are a top 40's cover band than you certainly want to!
Definitely wear earplugs. You never recover hearing that is lost, and you can actually damage your hearing badly enough to affect your ability to recognize notes!
every time you hear ringing after a practice, you lost some!
 
#22
Battling guitar volume is always a losing game. Unless you want to haul around a stack of bass cabinets and a big rack. I used to run two 8x10 Ampeg cabs driven by two Peavey CS1000's. Just plain stupid. I tried a few things, like a single 4x10 on a tavern table right behind my head and then later I went to in-ears. That was better, but the dang moron guitars were still too loud. So I went to this. I don't run any cabs or monitors on stage at all. I have a big pair of closed back, over-the-ear headphones and a Shuttle 3.0. DI goes to the mix, and the headphones plug into the Shuttle. The headphones, by covering the ears completely, block out most of the guitar noise. I can hear myself perfectly and the audience can as well. The bass is a little weak through the stage monitors but the guitar players don't really want to hear the bass anyway, so everybody is happy. Of course, wearing the headphones doesn't permit me to do much in the way of choreography and running all over the stage, but I don't feel like doing much of that anymore anyway. So try it. No cabs on stage and a set of headphones.
 
#23
You're up against some very loud amps, there are threads here where even some bassists with fairly large powerful amps haven't been able to be heard enough over their guitarists, I had trouble in one of my bands when I was up against 2 marshall heads/half stacks, I was using a 2x15 powered by a Ampeg pre and a 800w poweramp and I could keep up with one guitarist but not two, however they were cranking their amps, your guitarists might not be so much hopefully, and I wouldn't get a 2x10, I would look for something with more speaker area. Hope it works out for you.
 
#24
Good advice on your dilemma given on the posts already. First of all, protect your hearing. Your guitarists will certainly get your band fired from gigs if they don't turn their amps down to a reasonable listening level. Find a different band if possible, but if not, invest in a amp capable of a minimum of 500 watts into a 4 ohm load, and two 8 ohm 4-10" cabs. The first head I would recommend is a G-K1001RB, IMO they sound great and can be scary loud. For 4-10" cabs my first choice would be two used 8 ohm Eden D410XLT's, I also liked SWR's Goliath Jr 4-10. Most major amp manufacturers put out great 4-10's, and think of your speakers as "Sound/Volume Motors".

But I'd still look for another band first!
 
#27
JB696 said:
Battling guitar volume is always a losing game. Unless you want to haul around a stack of bass cabinets and a big rack. I used to run two 8x10 Ampeg cabs driven by two Peavey CS1000's. Just plain stupid. I tried a few things, like a single 4x10 on a tavern table right behind my head and then later I went to in-ears. That was better, but the dang moron guitars were still too loud. So I went to this. I don't run any cabs or monitors on stage at all. I have a big pair of closed back, over-the-ear headphones and a Shuttle 3.0. DI goes to the mix, and the headphones plug into the Shuttle. The headphones, by covering the ears completely, block out most of the guitar noise. I can hear myself perfectly and the audience can as well. The bass is a little weak through the stage monitors but the guitar players don't really want to hear the bass anyway, so everybody is happy. Of course, wearing the headphones doesn't permit me to do much in the way of choreography and running all over the stage, but I don't feel like doing much of that anymore anyway. So try it. No cabs on stage and a set of headphones.
Click to expand...

That's kind of depressing... but I can see where you're coming from. I hope it doesn't come down to that! Two 8 x 10s and two heads wasn't enough? What kind of music do you play, doom metal?
 
#28
Calaverasgrande said:
I've found that quite often the guitarists are just in love with cranking their bass knob to 10. Sure it sound wicked when you play a Mesa Recto wide open like that! But that muddies up the whole band. It works better if they can rein in the bass which is clobbering your low mids and likely the toms of the drummer. If they can be reasonable with the mid knob as well then the drummers snare and the vocals will have a fighting chance.
What kind of music do you guys play? I ask because it woudl be silly to ask a punk/metal/thrash band to turn down and use reasonable sized cabs. If you are a top 40's cover band than you certainly want to!
Click to expand...

Absolutely. It does sound wicked indeed, but he's responsible enough to keep the bass low and the mids reasonable. Luckily I have two guitarists who recognise that the tones they enjoy in a practice setting cannot always be applied to a band or live situation. They do respect that I have a difficult time keeping up at that level, if I tell them to turn down, they will. But with such powerful, high gain amps it's pretty difficult no matter what they do.

We play what I assume would just be called rock or sometimes hard rock music, but the lead guitarist (mesa man) is a big fan of bass-heavy, metal style distortion. The multitudes of effect pedals don't help either. Distortion, delay, octave pedals, fuzz, more distortion, oscillators etc. etc. just creates more unnecessary noise.
 
#29
minimum requirements for battling guitarists with stacks: two 8x10 speaker cabs. and thats the minimum, and you wont blow them away. my secret is to be strong in the 35-80 hz region, the guitars dont make any sound down there so you are actually not competing with them. one of my 2x18 + jbl 2" horn will compete with a stack. also the horn reproduces highs like breaking glass or snapping metal, the guitars dont go much above 3khz and the bass treble goes up to 6k so once again you are not competing with them. when the band is playing and you can hear your pick scrape every wind on the string just like your in a quiet room with brand new strings, its thrilling. unfortunately very expensive. johnny a. staind
 
#31
Calaverasgrande said:
I've found that quite often the guitarists are just in love with cranking their bass knob to 10. Sure it sound wicked when you play a Mesa Recto wide open like that! But that muddies up the whole band. It works better if they can rein in the bass which is clobbering your low mids and likely the toms of the drummer. If they can be reasonable with the mid knob as well then the drummers snare and the vocals will have a fighting chance.
Click to expand...

I have this issue in my band, not so much with the guitarists' bass EQ, but with their constant soloing of their neck humbuckers on HH guitars. It freakin' never ends, and just as you said, it muddies up the whole band. One evening they were jamming when I arrived, and from outside the room I thought one of them was playing bass! They just don't get it.

Anyway, cab wise I would recommend a 4 ohm SWR Goliath III 4x10 or Goliath Sr. 6x10. They sound great, and are extremely efficient so you'll get loads of volume and punch. At least in the States they're plentiful and cheap on the used market. They're heavy, but you're in high school, so no worries mate!
 
#32
What kind of music do you play said:
Drug music from the 60's and 70's. Fortunately, that band is history. Probably because most venues and soundmen didn't want to deal with the stupid-loud volume. Now I'm playing with one guitar player who AB's between a couple of small combos, a Fender Blues Junior and a Marshall Class Five. What a relief. I'm running a single 1x12 on stage as a personal monitor. Everything runs through the PA. The sound is very crisp and clean. I'll never go back to schlepping all that bass gear around to keep up with moronic guitar players. What was I thinking?:rollno:
Click to expand...
 
#34
Funny, the guitarists in my band use a Marshall TSL 100 watt half stack and a Mesa-Boogie 100 watt Lonestar respectively. Yet somehow we manage to work as a band and blend the levels so we sound good as a group and people can still hear what we are practicing. There is something to be said for maturity.
 
#37
dubstyle said:
the lead guitarist (mesa man) is a big fan of bass-heavy, metal style distortion. The multitudes of effect pedals don't help either. Distortion, delay, octave pedals, fuzz, more distortion, oscillators etc. etc. just creates more unnecessary noise.
Click to expand...

That is silly. If its one thing a mesa recto does not need it is fuzz or distortion pedals. I am positive he would sound 100% better tonewise if he ditched everything except for maybe the delay/modulation effects.
A hard thing to get for guitarists (I play guitar as well) is that less overdrive sounds better sometimes. A good guitar tone can sound almost clean on single notes played softly, and sound grindy and heavy on full chords played hard.
Ditto for bass tone actually.:bassist:

I dont know who you guys listen to but unless its Meshuggah, High on Fire or Bongzilla I doubt they use much distortion on top of their amps built in distortion. Actually I wouldnt be so sure about HOF, Matt's live tone is about cranking that amp until it bleeds! Not what you tell your guitarist of course.
 
#39
You are competing with two sets of cabinets each containing four 12" drivers. To get even close you'll need one or two 8x10s and five to ten times the power of your guitar players amplifiers. It's a battle a bass player can never win unless he/she has deep pockets and larger transport. As has already been posted your ears, a musicians most valuable pieces of gear, are in danger.

You are still in high school. Your life without your hearing will not be pleasant. My generation played without regard for hearing, we didn't know any better. Most of my life i've been working with players using 15, 30 and 50 watts for their guitars. My hearing is badly compromised and living with it is awful. Trying to get hearing aids that allow conversation without allowing the noise of dishes clacking together sending a knife through each ear is a never ending struggle.

My advice - find yourself another band that plays at sane volumes. Your existing band will go nowhere except to the hearing clinics in your area. Possibly their hearing is already showing signs distress which is why they just get louder and louder!
 
#40
Tell them to get smaller amps of you're going to GTFO. If you're in highschool in Australia, that probably means you're not gigging or if you are, you're doing it very VERY rarely and aren't getting paid for it. Bottom line, those two guitarists of yours need to downsize, the set up they have now is over kill.
 

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