Sound guy attempted to adjust my amp

[mlove]

Lots of peeps on TalkBass are the upper tier and really do know what they are doing

Speak for yourself

 

[beaglesandbass]

Never happened. I think I may have been asked to turn down a little, but no one's ever touched my gear.

 

[IJBurns]

This really happened? What a jerk! Too bad you didn't have a soft drink in hand so you could have an "accident" on top of his keyboard. Well, I really don't mean that...or maybe I do...unbelievable, indeed!

Yeah! Like I said before man, up until that point he had been a sweet heart of a guy, great player, but something was really wrong with him. I don't know if it was mental illness or drugs, but he was not present in this reality at all. I had to have compassion because I honestly don't think he knew what he was doing.

 

[JimmyM]

Depends on perspective and location of the listener. If a guitar player dials in their tone of the gods with their amp aimed at their knees, then their ears aren't gonna be a good judge of the sound that is actually coming out of the amp/speaker. i.e. what FOH has to work with.

Maybe they won't, maybe they will.

 

[mlove]

Deal with people making funny faces and telling you how crappy the mix is.....and it will motivate you to try to save it in order to save your very reputation as a FOH person.

There is a funny t-shirt that summarizes the FOH experience:

View attachment 1126736

My favorite sound guy story goes like this:

My band was setting up then did a quick sound check.
Soundguy: "are you going to play that loud"
Band: "yes"
Soundguy then put his stuff away

 

[HolmeBass]

Depends on perspective and location of the listener. If a guitar player dials in their tone of the gods with their amp aimed at their knees, then their ears aren't gonna be a good judge of the sound that is actually coming out of the amp/speaker. i.e. what FOH has to work with.

That's why you put it in their foldback, loud, so they are confronted with it. If they like it anyway, you are SOL. At least you don't need to pump it FOH.

 

[MDBass]

I'm sick of this "Never piss off the sound guy" mindset. If you're such an amateur to where you screw a mix because someone offended your delicate sensibilities, you need to find a new line of work. And why doesn't the sound guy worry about pissing off the musicians who may be in the position of hiring them one day? Only rank amateurs pull stunts like that.

Sounds like something I said a few pages back...brilliant minds think alike, evidently

 

[Buster Brown]

My friend and I played in bands back in the 1960s/70s but don't gig anymore. Now we do sound for mostly bar bands, and some fairly large outdoor shows. Sometimes we do open mic nights where we have no idea if there will be a fiddle, accordion, and a flugelhorn show up and join the guitars, and maybe a pedal steel player on stage, with a doghouse bass and four, or five vocal mics all at the same time. We get complimented by bands and audience members on what we do, so I think we must be doing most things well.

I find guitar players to be the hardest to deal with, mainly because of stage volume, and also the over-use of pedals that make their guitars sound very bad, and with drastic level changes as they switch things in and out. Whenever I see a giant pedal-board, I expect that our job will be more difficult than I would like. When necessary we ask guitarists to turn down. Most do initially, but then as the night progresses, they turn back up. We often end up with their channel turned all the way off in FOH, and get requests from the audience, (often musicians themselves) to turn down the piercing over-distorted guitar, (in a modern country song where it seems inappropriate to have such a distorted sound). We once had a pedal steel player crank up a Fender Super Reverb into crunchy ear-spitting nastiness, (on a pedal steel yet!), and he said that is the only way to get "his sound". Ruined the jam for everyone else on stage. You should have seen the other people on stage staring at this idiot.

When this stuff happens, we just tell people in the house, "Sorry, there is nothing we can do. He's not even in the FOH".

About 25% of the drummers love to hit hard, and we usually just say something to them like "Hey this is a small room, so try to take it easy on the volume" That helps sometimes, but often our recordings are filled with drums in the vocal mic channels.

I find that bands who go amp-less, and in-ear to be the easiest to work with to get great live sound, and live recordings.

I like to DI (pre) as much as I can to give us a chance to have a signal that we can make the best use of, but if the guitar player cranks his 100 Watt Marshall at a venue where I could get by with a 15 Watt combo, (miced, if needed), I just accept the fact it is out of my control.

We have had almost no problems with bass players.

I would never adjust anyone's amp, (unless they came to me and asked for help), which has happened a couple times.

The bottom line for me, is we do what we can without trying to tell someone how to use their own gear. If they have crappy tone, I just assume we have a difference of opinion of what sounds good.

We try to accommodate every player as best we can. We use good equipment, and our schedule is full, so we must be doing something right. I have a policy to never say anything negative about any performance or tone to my partner at these shows until after we have loaded out and are on the drive home. The easier people to work with are also the ones that pay the best.

I began playing in the 60s as well....Sound man!?!?! What the hell was that!?!? 9 times out of 10 we had a kid that used a Shure vocal master - no monitors and crappy Mics. Every now and again, we'd play a larger venue where they had Altec Voice of the theater cabs and a 8 channel board. We just turned up the amps and had at it...I have every reason to believe that the mix was horrible..but that the hell! We were making MUSIC!!!

We finally got so fed up that we started transporting our own PA - Altecs (4) and a Sound City board and took our own "sound guy" who was actually quite good. However, to show you the times back then...when we DID get monitors (1969?) we couldn't figure out why the hell we couldn't hear anything out of them (hey! we were kids). It took us a while to figure out that HEY!!! You need another amp to power the damned things!!

The "mix" changed dramatically when we could actually HEAR what the hell was going on.....Yep! Those were the days! That and the advent of the "Snake"...Jesus, we were superstars then!!!

 

[MDBass]

Simple. There's plenty of mics bleeding bass thru the FOH. A bad stage/room can give intolerable sound even before you get to a normal bass rig volume or band volume.

Nope.

Bleed is a volume/placement issue, not an EQ issue.

If the EQ changes you make to an amp are that perceptible in the vocal microphones, either the stage sound levels are deafening or you have the cabs literally aimed directly into the microphones; doing a proper FOH mix in this scenario is flatly impossible.

Either turn down, turn the amps around, or both; cutting bass/boosting mids will NOT help any bleed issues, if anything they'll actually be made worse since you should already be running an HPF above 100Hz on the vocal mics anyway.

 

[Buster Brown]

I'm sick of this "Never piss off the sound guy" mindset. If you're such an amateur to where you screw a mix because someone offended your delicate sensibilities, you need to find a new line of work. And why doesn't the sound guy worry about pissing off the musicians who may be in the position of hiring them one day? Only rank amateurs pull stunts like that.

Indeed. I played a Hard Rock gig a while back and the young dude running FOH was OUTSTANDING! First number, I just looked in his direction and he gave me the "thumbs up". Next song, I was having a tad bit of trouble hearing the guitar. I looked at him, stuck up 2 fingers (for his line) and then a "thumbs up" and like magic, the guitar in the monitor got louder.

My God....Everything after that was crystal clear and perfect. He and i shared a beer later. Great kid!

 

[Pops OB]

There are no facts, only opinions.

 

[wraub]

There are no facts, only opinions.

Yeah, well, like, that's just your opinion, man.

Besides, your statement is counter-factual.

 

[Chad T]

Indeed. I played a Hard Rock gig a while back and the young dude running FOH was OUTSTANDING! First number, I just looked in his direction and he gave me the "thumbs up". Next song, I was having a tad bit of trouble hearing the guitar. I looked at him, stuck up 2 fingers (for his line) and then a "thumbs up" and like magic, the guitar in the monitor got louder.

My God....Everything after that was crystal clear and perfect. He and i shared a beer later. Great kid!

How did it sound out front?

 

[caligula]

Never has a sound guy touched my rig in more than 20 years of gigging.
I've been asked to turn down by band members on a few occasions and very few sound guys have asked for a pre EQ signal from my amp, but that's it.
Btw, I always go post EQ, it just sounds better and I hardly use the EQ on my amps anyway. Very rarely, someone tells me to use this or that DI box, but I always politely decline and use my amps instead.
Once, years ago age 19 when I had just started to gig for money, a singer walked over to my amp and turned the volume down.
I told him to come to me and tell me first before touching my stuff ever again, otherwise I'll mess with his stuff.

 

[AshInAmsterdam]

There's a lot of testosterone in this thread.

 

[mikecd1]

About 25% of the drummers love to hit hard, and we usually just say something to them like "Hey this is a small room, so try to take it easy on the volume" That helps sometimes, but often our recordings are filled with drums in the vocal mic channels.

We have had almost no problems with bass players.

I would never adjust anyone's amp, (unless they came to me and asked for help), which has happened a couple times.

The bottom line for me, is we do what we can without trying to tell someone how to use their own gear. If they have crappy tone, I just assume we have a difference of opinion of what sounds good.

We try to accommodate every player as best we can. We use good equipment, and our schedule is full, so we must be doing something right. I have a policy to never say anything negative about any performance or tone to my partner at these shows until after we have loaded out and are on the drive home. The easier people to work with are also the ones that pay the best.

These guys give soundmen a good name! Unfortunately, there are many with an attitude like the OP suggests and the one he encountered is the most dangerous of all because he's not interacting with the client at all. I never presume someone knows everything or in this case anything. How the sound guy behaves gives you a barometer of how your band is going to sound and in this case either the guy is a genius or an ******* and his approach certainly seems to indicate the latter.

 

[Wicked G]

There's a lot of testosterone in this thread.

Maybe so, but there are certain things you just don't do. You don't grab another mans bass, you don't hit on another mans wife, you don't sit on another mans motorcycle, and you don't make changes on another mans amp.

 

[73jbass]

Having played bass since 81,and running foh for the last 3 years I can see both sides of the issue. As a bassist, I have never had anyone touch my rig. I have been asked to turn down a couple of times in my younger days. I always matched my stage volume with the drummer. As a foh guy,I had more issues with the bass player than anyone else. One close friend liked lots of low end on stage,so much that it blew through the front of the stage and messed my mix. After about 3 gigs I finally got him out front during sound check and I played his bass. With just his stage volume I would have to bring everything else up to an unacceptable level to get the mix balanced. He finally understood. He turned down,and backed off his low end and there were no issues after that. He even said he could hear everything better. Go figure.

 

[Delsan]

Played a gig last night at a club I've played more than several times. They have a rotation of 2-3 sound guys. They're all fairly accommodating....all for the exception of one guy who's attempted to adjust my bass amp (with his fingers) on two separate occasions. The first time, he asked for more mids. Which struck me as odd.....since he has the ability to add whatever he needs at the FOH via the mixing console. Nonetheless, he bends down in front of my amp as if to start tweaking knobs. I immediately (politely) tell him I'll adjust....and asked him (politely) not to touch my amp. This happened several weeks ago.

Rewind to last night. Setting up, haven't even sound checked, haven't even turned on my amp. Sound guy is crouched down looking at my rig. I thought maybe he was tech geeking out on my gear. NOPE. He was looking at my amp settings!! His fingers extend and then starts adjusting my amp. ***!! Again, I have to remind this clown to not touch my gear. Next time he's loosing a finger. Or better yet, I'll hang around sound booth and start adjusting his mix.

Have any of you ever had a sound guy uninvitedly start jacking with your gear. First time in 20+ years of gigging I've had a sound guy touch my gear.

Touching my amp is touching my preferred tone. If he needs to do some sound guy stuff, he's got a mixer- like you said. Otherwise, he can ask for my permission, better yet, my hands.

Neck 'em.

 

[Stevorebob]

I’ve had the sound engineer suggest settings on my amp to me, and I welcomed it. But never I’ve never had one dictate my settings.

Funny story: Once recently, I found all three tone controls, volume and p’up balance all full counter-clockwise. I figured out the volume immediately at the first song, but couldn’t understand why my bass had no oomph as compared to the soundcheck — was everyone else’s stage volume that much more? I fiddled with my amp into the second song until I figured it out. Turned out our lame sound “engineer” zeroed out my active bass while I was away; he assumed some low-end feedback was coming from my rig. (Dude, I muted it with my tuner!) It was the drums. But he didn’t tell me what he’d done or reset by bass. We fired that sound “engineer” for that and general incompetence.