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Pushing a head too hard?
- Thread starter BernardBass
- Start date
There's a saying in Ireland.... There's no such thing as 1 pint. Lol a few beers is fine, just don't be langers.
Yep.. I have to shape my tone every venue because the lads "have their settings" lol doesn't matter if it's a shed, outdoor, pub, on the moon... So I change my settings as the venue dictates. When I'm playing the better venues with house pa my kit is just a large monitor. The last gig in particular I sounded like 90s grunge metal just to get rid of all the lows and subs coming from the stage.
and snide ss says...get annother 1kw amp, run it into a guitammer securely mounted to the floor...max it, and get ready...nobodys ears will take a hit but... when they all start loosing bodily fluids you will be basking in king tut status and they ?...depends !!!
I’m certain it’s been said already, but On behalf of our community please wear earplugs. Even posting at moderate volumes will cause damage. Not to mention the volumes you’re describing. I didn’t wear plugs the first couple years of playing in a loud rock band. I did develop hearing issues.
A guy asked about tone settings to offset 412 guitar cabs and got 7 pages of warnings about hearing loss. OK, we get it. How about some actual helpful info for the guy?
Whatever hearing issues I have I can track back to a show I attended in May, 2011. My hearing was cottony for months afterward. I’m not sure I ever fully recovered. It was ridiculous.
If the band isn’t unified on this, one player’s settings don’t amount to anything.
A good portion of the hearing in my right ear was surely damaged from Lolapalooza 97’ when Metallica was headlining.
From my experience of Marshall quad warriors they are probably competing with each other to be noticed. If so you are in an unwinnable war zone fuelled by testosterone!
I’ll echo what everyone else said - ditto.
It’s easy to make guitars loud. A 4x12 is a tank. It is an art to get a bass rig to cut through two guitar stacks without going scorched earth. (Sub cabs with their own 1,500 watt amp, and a tower of speakers on top of that, or a pair of 8x10’s running 800 watts each, plus the subs.)
Here’s the real advice though: your ears are much more fragile than you think. You get your ears ringing for a bit after practice but it goes away after a few hours - until it doesn’t. That’s the day it just never goes away, for life, and it sucks. Bad.
Also, the ear filters you buy (not the foam things you roll and stick in your ears) allow you to hear a whisper, but they attenuate loud sounds in various frequency ranges. They tend to really knock down those guitar volumes, while allowing you to hear your bass crystal clear. So great to save your hearing for life, and great for hearing your bass clearly. Win win.
This may seem a little crazy but just maybe crazy enough to work...
Before the gig while the lads aren't around pull the volume knobs off and offset them
to the left so when they crank the volume knob to 10 they are actually on 8 maybe even 7.
They probably won't notice the adjustment you made because there trained
to but it on 10. You may have to buy the lads a few rounds before you attempt
this but it's just crazy enough to work. I was watching the television show the office
and Jim kept adding a key to Dwights keychain once a day...Pam foils the plan...watch
the episode for inspiration.
Before the gig while the lads aren't around pull the volume knobs off and offset them
to the left so when they crank the volume knob to 10 they are actually on 8 maybe even 7.
They probably won't notice the adjustment you made because there trained
to but it on 10. You may have to buy the lads a few rounds before you attempt
this but it's just crazy enough to work. I was watching the television show the office
and Jim kept adding a key to Dwights keychain once a day...Pam foils the plan...watch
the episode for inspiration.
The whole problem is that they aren't unified. Bands seldom are. I wish I had a dollar for every time I had to make drastic adjustments in dealing with the damned guitar player's "tone". We're talking about needing to wear protective gear because of the selfishness.
Really good guitarists can get that tone at a very low volume. I'm now occasionally working with two of them using Mesa triple rectifier heads and 412 cabs that sound great, and I need to tell them to turn up! Another was a Marshall guy with incredible tone that I had to put in the monitor. Otoh, there are many others, with incredibly loud stage volume who sound awful.
Talent is multifaceted.
I don't think I'm gonna go past the first page because, as has already been pointed out, the answers are probably largely the same. What I will say is I usually don't have any trouble hearing myself but recently I forgot my ear plugs at a show and that night was a struggle. Besides lowering the overall volume, most ear plugs filter out high frequencies at least a little bit, so you can more clearly hear your bass.
In other words, GUARD YOUR EARS!!! With Gorman's (tm).
In other words, GUARD YOUR EARS!!! With Gorman's (tm).
