He must play with "high gain"?
Okay, turn your gain up as high as your little heart desires, but then keep your volume at 2.
Okay, turn your gain up as high as your little heart desires, but then keep your volume at 2.
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Guitarist plays too loud
- Thread starter Twobass
- Start date
- Jul 30, 2006
- 2,315
- 453
- Disclosures
- Endorsing artist:Regenerate Guitar Works Carvin, Micheal Kelly Guitars
Yeah, you have to be playing with real cats for it to work. My GF and I own a nightclub and it's a live music venue with bands every night. We have local and international touring acts. We have a house rig....a 1972 Ampeg SVT with the 8x10 cab. We also have a huge PA and monitor system. Many guys come though and play way too loud on stage with that great rig. Others do it just right with the rig turned down and a little bass in the monitors. I use a 1000w Hartke head through a Carvin 2x10 neo cabinet. When the bass is coming out of a refrigerator sized stack it gets into every mike on stage......not what I want. By turning down the stage volume we give the FOH engineer room to mix. We aren't maxing the room out with stage volume which he cannot manipulate. Guitards whine about having to have huge volume to get their tone.....BS. They have pedals and the PA can turn any small amp into a monster if need be. I cannot remain mired in the mindset that requires numbing volume along with zero dynamics. I get to hear the vast difference between pros and meatheads all the time.
Your guitarist needs to buy one of these right away;
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I played in a band with two Marshall 100 watt full stacks for years. Both guitarists had something similar to this device though custom made and it was great. They could be playing at conversation level and their tone was the same as when we were playing in a 5000 seat auditorium. It allows you to crank the gain on the amp but have very low volumes coming out the speakers, or open the attenuator up and make your ears bleed.
This could save your band, your sanity, and your ability to hear when you are a few years older.
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I played in a band with two Marshall 100 watt full stacks for years. Both guitarists had something similar to this device though custom made and it was great. They could be playing at conversation level and their tone was the same as when we were playing in a 5000 seat auditorium. It allows you to crank the gain on the amp but have very low volumes coming out the speakers, or open the attenuator up and make your ears bleed.
This could save your band, your sanity, and your ability to hear when you are a few years older.
our band certainly has its issues, but the guitarist being too loud isn't one of them (thank God)
our guitarist is very concious of not wanting to overpowering the band.
he is a gear junkie and a tone chaser but is considerate of the band as a whole.
we focus on hearing the vocals clearly over everything else; our vocals are the money shot in our band and we all consider that #1.
maybe my band isn't so bad after all...
i wouldn't play with a guy who insists on hurting you sonically.
they don't learn
if you have to explain, they wouldn't understand
our guitarist is very concious of not wanting to overpowering the band.
he is a gear junkie and a tone chaser but is considerate of the band as a whole.
we focus on hearing the vocals clearly over everything else; our vocals are the money shot in our band and we all consider that #1.
maybe my band isn't so bad after all...
i wouldn't play with a guy who insists on hurting you sonically.
they don't learn
if you have to explain, they wouldn't understand
I once had to get nasty with a guitar player. I had Magnavox era SVT and an 8-10. I borrowed another 8-10 and brought it to a show. When the guitar player protested about how loud I was, I simply told him that to get "my tone" I needed to run the rig as it was designed (and originally the SVT WAS designed to run with 2 cabs). Game over. He got a low-wattage 1-12 combo so he could crank the gain and not take our faces off with his volume.
- Feb 5, 2013
- 1,686
- 2,281
- Disclosures
- Endorsing Artist: Used Fender Lead Sleds and Hartke cabs with bent grills
Amateur city ... plain and simple.
I've been a lead guitarist in most of my bands over the years and even I have a problem with other guitarists over this. Most of these guys have $3000 worth of pedals and the tone is so scooped/gainy they have to crank it to be heard, then the freqs are all fouled up, too. I don't tolerate it as a co-guitarist nor as a bassist. Nor do I tolerate it with bassists (like last Sunday when a new bass player was cranking way too loud). I stand out front (long chords) and make suggestions on the mix. And if I can't hear the drums or if I have to walk in front of my amp to hear what I'm playing or if the singer has to scream or you're bleeding into the vocal mics ... we have a problem. And I find myself becoming less and less tolerant of it. You will either sit in the mix with the rest of us and back off the buzzy can-o-bees distortion or 'Thanks but no thanks'. Period. I don't have time for that crap.
If he needs the high gain from the amp have him get an antenuator. He will still be able to get his harsh tone but quieter. Also reccomend head phones because they really level things out. Another option if he gets a antenuator and cannot hear him self he can run a line out to normal headphones for himself like an in ear monitoring system.
IMO the worst kind of guitarist is the one who not only plays too loud but practices licks/riffs etc at the same high volume when the rest of the band is trying to discuss things-why do they do this-really pisses me off 
As a lead guitarist I had a THD Hotplate attenuator which was perfect for high gain sound at decent levels, it was perfectly transparent and also had a cool little light on the front for those guitarists who like lots of gimmicks
.
As a lead guitarist I had a THD Hotplate attenuator which was perfect for high gain sound at decent levels, it was perfectly transparent and also had a cool little light on the front for those guitarists who like lots of gimmicks
.IMO the worst kind of guitarist is the one who not only plays too loud but practices licks/riffs etc at the same high volume when the rest of the band is trying to discuss things-why do they do this-really pisses me off
As a lead guitarist I had a THD Hotplate attenuator which was perfect for high gain sound at decent levels, it was perfectly transparent and also had a cool little light on the front for those guitarists who like lots of gimmicks
I think it's because they want to be noticed, ALL THE FREAKING TIME! Kind of a non-verbal way of asking "How do you like my big, potent wiener?". In some ways, it's like a person who doesn't know when to edit what they say, says the wrong thing at precisely the wrong time, or just doesn't know when to shut up. It's even worse when they don't know when to NOT play, yet they keep playing really loudly.
Wow I'm surprised to see that this thread was still up. Yes I quit that band with the loud guitar player. The band that I was in after just sort of went away, the guitar player wasn't too loud and very skilled but just loved playing super long solos. So nothing going on right now.
- Feb 5, 2013
- 1,686
- 2,281
- Disclosures
- Endorsing Artist: Used Fender Lead Sleds and Hartke cabs with bent grills
As mentioned, I can't play with guitarists who do this, and I've learned not to way back when I was a wee lad.
But during yesterdays practice at my P/T country gig (guitar) I actually had a bass player violating the volume rule AND constantly noodling during songs or talking nonstop in between songs. Our second practice with him. I was standing in front of my C50 combo just to hear what I was playing, I thought I was losing volume. Time to clean the Fx loop again.
Nope. This guy had been turning up little by little all afternoon till I was drown out. I was paying attention to the vocals and arrangement (new song) and finally my drummer turns to the bassist in between songs "Dude, is something wrong with your volume pot? We set the levels pretty good today." and he says "No I really like to thump on that song". But he had been turning up all afternoon. Drummer saw him on the volume pot after he (drummer) had set the mix.
That will be our last practice with him. I won't tolerate that crap, especially when he was told up front, day one. Everyone will turn the volume pots wide ass open for the mix and will stay at that level unless punching up for a solo ... or they will play somewhere else. Period. Life's too short for juvenile crap like that when we have limited practice time each week. I mean really, *** are you trying to accomplish by running all over the entire rest of the band with the bass? WTH?
But during yesterdays practice at my P/T country gig (guitar) I actually had a bass player violating the volume rule AND constantly noodling during songs or talking nonstop in between songs. Our second practice with him. I was standing in front of my C50 combo just to hear what I was playing, I thought I was losing volume. Time to clean the Fx loop again.
Nope. This guy had been turning up little by little all afternoon till I was drown out. I was paying attention to the vocals and arrangement (new song) and finally my drummer turns to the bassist in between songs "Dude, is something wrong with your volume pot? We set the levels pretty good today." and he says "No I really like to thump on that song". But he had been turning up all afternoon. Drummer saw him on the volume pot after he (drummer) had set the mix.
That will be our last practice with him. I won't tolerate that crap, especially when he was told up front, day one. Everyone will turn the volume pots wide ass open for the mix and will stay at that level unless punching up for a solo ... or they will play somewhere else. Period. Life's too short for juvenile crap like that when we have limited practice time each week. I mean really, *** are you trying to accomplish by running all over the entire rest of the band with the bass? WTH?
You should be proud on creating something that is perennial, like this thread which involves all of us. You hit a nerve among the most of us.
I wonder what happened to that guitarist anyway. I bet his still seeking new bands to play with. And will do for some time. He plays with them some time and then, all of a sudden, without anyone really doing anything about it, it slowly peters out, and sort of being in limbo. I've played with too many bands that, when one of the members doesn't really cut it for some reason, or are socially obnoxious, or too much ego, the others can go on with all other excuses, explanation in the world, without ever saying "I leave because of you, you pisses me off..". No one have the guts to actually sack someone.
I played with one guy like that in a band. All of the others left slowly, each one, it took a year and a half. Then 2 years later we were in the same band without him. Instead of sacking that guy, all the others left to join "other" band... but it was all imaginative. That guy was a LOUD GUITARIST.
Agree completely. That is the rule for live sound. The one that is max volume is the voice of the vocals of all or lead singer. You should set that max volume in the PA first. When it starts to feed back in the monitors, back off a little, and then: that volume is what should be considered MAX and should be all others yardstick. Do not cross that line, ever on any stage. Period. No one in the audience will care if the vocals aren't heard.
Went to the B.B. King show last night in "the most acoustically perfect venue in the region." The show-opener never saw that, evidently, because his constant self-indulgent guitar and vocals were WAY TOO DAMNED LOUD and SHRILL. "Boogie" somebody from Louisiana. Imagined himself some kind of blues-rock guitar god. He shouldda been able to tell the sound was cr&ppy because he took _2_ long strolls up into the house playing extended solos with many notes - not a one of them with any sincerity but there were many.
Oh - there was a bass and drums too, evidently. I heard thumping from time to time, when my ears weren't ringing.
After way too long of that (40 minutes or so, objectively - seemed longer) they reset the stage for B.B. King and evidently the real sound guy showed up, because that part of the show sounded great.
Best example of a back-to-back amateur/poseur/pretender to real-thing pro I've seen in a long time.
Oh - there was a bass and drums too, evidently. I heard thumping from time to time, when my ears weren't ringing.
After way too long of that (40 minutes or so, objectively - seemed longer) they reset the stage for B.B. King and evidently the real sound guy showed up, because that part of the show sounded great.
Best example of a back-to-back amateur/poseur/pretender to real-thing pro I've seen in a long time.
