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#21
I had that same Hartke head. The mids are cut-only. Turn mids all the way up and adjust from there. There is a tremendous difference with that single knob, even from around 6 to 10, and nothing sane should really overpower the Hartke provided you have enough speaker area.

Oh, if the guitarist won’t turn down, and since it isn’t a doom/stoner band where unnecessary decibels are part of the experience, consider finding another band.
 
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#22
Rip Van Dan said:
What? What was that you said??? I couldn't quite hear you. Actually I can hear you, just can't understand what you're saying because above 3K, my hearing takes a :poop:.

Yeah, that because of playing too loud for too long. I'm an old fart but most of my hearing loss was when I did the three years of touring playing 5-nights a week, 50-weeks a year (nightclubs) in my early 20's. Started out with a reasonably loud amp and then got an ungodly one for the last 2½-years. Got it because...wait for it...the guitar player and the keyboards both got 4x12 Vox amps and buried my '66 Bassman. Bought my Standel and was never buried again, but now I wear hearing aids so I can understand what you're saying or watch TV without turning it all the way up.

The moral of the story is...don't following in my footsteps...I stepped in something.
Click to expand...

I would probably be totally deaf, but I started wearing ear plugs from a very young age. Did I like wearing ear plugs, no, but IMHO, they are necessary for most musical performances if you are interested in protecting your hearing.
 
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#26
Rearrange your practice room. My guess is, you're both standing in front of your amps. Maybe the amps are resting on beer crates to elevate them a little. Rearrange that setup so:
1. each of you has at least 10ft distance to the own amp.
2. both of you have your cab pointed towars you
3. the cabs are not pointed towards each other.

With this setup, I had massive success in my insanely loud band (where I need to bring a full stack). The super loud guitarist has his amp across the room, pointed at him and creates a narrow channel with deafening guitar volume in which only he is standing. The rest of the band lives off the spill that bounces from the wall, which is loud enough for us.
 
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#28
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#30
You probably have a guitarist that just thinks he has to be really loud - he's more important than you, so he should be louder. Turning yourself up will only make him turn up more. The solution is to somehow get his cabinet pointed at his ears, and noone else's, so he can bask in his own magnificent loudness, without deafening anyone else.

Your rig is not the issue, the issue is between the guitarist's ears.
 
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#33
micguy said:
You probably have a guitarist that just thinks he has to be really loud - he's more important than you, so he should be louder. Turning yourself up will only make him turn up more. The solution is to somehow get his cabinet pointed at his ears, and noone else's, so he can bask in his own magnificent loudness, without deafening anyone else.

Your rig is not the issue, the issue is between the guitarist's ears.
Click to expand...

Increasing the volume of the bass may or may not drive the guitar player to turn up. There is a good chance that the guitarist sets the amp to produce a certain level of output saturation.

If this is the case, you just need an amp that is loud enough to keep up...but that's a tall order because a Marshall half stack is brutally loud by the time you get the output tubes cooking.

I have a couple of vintage 100 watt Marshall heads and a full stack loaded with greenbacks which are a few dB less efficient than Vintage 30s. I bought an Aracom PRX150 DAG attenuator and it helps take a little bit of the edge off.

IMHO too much attenuation tends to suck the life out the sound though. It's probably not to bothersome to listeners, but it really changes the feel and makes an amp feel sort of lifeless when you use more than about 6dB of attentuation.

The real solution is probably for the guitarist to use a significantly lower powered amp. For context, I also have a vintage top-boosted AC30 and a cab with Celestion Blues....also brutally loud IMHO.
 

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