Going into battle vs. distorted guitars

[chadds]

My recipe for optimal tone in most dual-distorted-guitar scenarios is active j-style bass, both pickups full on, clean and full-range bass tone, plenty of speaker cone area, and absurd amounts of clean solid solid-state wattage.

Clean copious amounts of wattage eclipses distortion. You need more than 1x15. Your J is fine follow this example.

 

[ryco]

When playing between two loud Marshall player playing power pop punk early 90s found a Rixky 4001 played through a Sunn Concert head w Sunn 2x15 JBL cab worked very well. Lots of crispness cutting up top, w lots of low end. Rotary EQ set at about 8 bass, 9 mid, 7 high; somewhere in there depending on thew room.
But my P worked fine, too. Modded P to be a JPJ with SD QuarterPounders, just had bridge and split pup set for mostly high end, and back pup more mid-low.

 

[RodRy]

Over the years I've mostly played with groups doing lighter rock, pop, acoustic, piano, etc. For the first time I'm now playing with a group with two distorted guitars and, whoo boy, my usual bag of tricks isn't cutting it yet. I still have some tinkering to do with my amp and EQ, so I haven't given up... but I am indulging some mental GAS exercises in case I need a Plan B

What pickup configuration would be your weapon of choice, going into battle against two distorted guitars in modern/alt rock?

Well, it's not really in my nature to 'go into battle' against my own bandmates. But if everyone said, "hey, let's play some monster rock!" then I'd bring my Warwick Rockbass Corvette $$ to the party. Those double buckers are surprisingly loud and clear for a passive bass. Cuts better than my P and J basses.

Hope you and your mates are able to rock it out without coming to blows!

 

[RodRy]

Fender bassman 500 and a single 15 is nice, but you need a second cabinet to keep up.

Agreed on boosting mids. Any good solid body bass should be fine, but I'd hit them with a Rickenbacker myself.

Agreed, more cabinets and a bit of EQ tweaking will probably do you pretty well. When I was in a metal band, I had a 4x10 and a 1x18 cab bi-amped from a 700 watt head. I could be heard despite the Marshall and Crate stacks.

Now, I'm having a harder time just hearing.

 

[David Jayne]

If you need to "go into battle" there's a problem. Music isn't about "competing with" or "cutting through" other instruments. It's not meant to be a fight. If you feel the need to "out-amp" somebody you are not playing music.

 

[Skybone]

Mids.

 

[bobdabilder]

It's still music. It's just a little louder.

If you need to "go into battle" there's a problem. Music isn't about "competing with" or "cutting through" other instruments. It's not meant to be a fight. If you feel the need to "out-amp" somebody you are not playing music.

 

[Elmstreet]

Well I'm in a 90s cover band band where 1 guitarist plays a triple recto scooped and the other plays a Friedman with mids boosted. Seems like all this info is for either fitting with scooped guitars, or with mid heavy guitars. What do I do when I'm dealing with both!