What sounds better? (question for the older guys here)

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nerd
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What sounds better? (question for the older guys here)

Post by nerd » Thu Apr 23, 2009 4:05 pm

ITs common that bands nowadays play with lower wattage amps in big venues. (im reffering to important bands that play in arenas or big stages) These bands now rely on good and powerful PAs for making the sound spread.
In the past was more common to see shows with a couple of 100 watt full stacks for each member of the band.
So my question is:
For the guys who actually went to those big shows in the past; What sounded better? A a couple of full 100 watt stack or a low watt amp cranked and miked?

corky newman
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Post by corky newman » Thu Apr 23, 2009 4:07 pm

Its hard to say...with all the new rack gear and modern better PA systems, a 30 watt 1-12 can sound like a double stack 100 watt monster..???.

I bet it sounds better on stage to the artist playing a 100 watt stack..

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Post by BrianGT » Thu Apr 23, 2009 4:17 pm

An honest answer is both!

For instance, seeing Deep Purple letting rip with big stacks was awesome..........but.......I bet Ritchie would still sound awesome playing a small amp through a great PA if the same Deep Purple played today.

I loved seeing the major bands of the 70's with big stacks it was all part of the era but often the sound wasn't that great. If you stood near the bass stack that's all you heard really.......

The biggest improvement in sound reproduction for me has come in the huge improvements in PA's.......hearing a balanced sound where you hear all the band and every hit of the cymbals and every pick rake makes it a much better all round experience for me.
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Knuckle Bones
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Post by Knuckle Bones » Thu Apr 23, 2009 4:20 pm

Take a look at my sig.
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Post by riffmonster » Thu Apr 23, 2009 4:28 pm

I would think alot is down to the mix...I'm not sure one sounds 'better' than the other.

I saw Motorhead around 1980 ish. Wall to wall stacks on 10. Great gig but I couldn't hear for about 3 days after !

I saw Kings of Leon (not last years tour but the first time in UK) when they had a single mike on small combos. Great gig - and I could hear the next day!

I've played (small venues) with a 100w marshall and 4x12 (great to feel the guitar as well as hear it) - these days its my 30W 2x12 combos.
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corky newman
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Post by corky newman » Thu Apr 23, 2009 4:34 pm

Personally....I hate to only hear my tone in monitors...
I like the tone at my back..that I can feel..

I had a set of 15 watt 1-12 combos....matchless...
alone they sounded great, when my keys player kicked in, my 15 watt tone was lost on stage...I had to play from memory...really sucked..
I went back to 50 watts and 2-12 cab..happy happy happy...

Now I play a 1-12 40 watt combo, and it can do it all, I also have a 1-12 ext. cab for it for bigger rooms....40 watts to me is damn near PERFECT..

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Post by Knuckle Bones » Thu Apr 23, 2009 6:10 pm

...and....who you calling old, sucka!
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Post by tugartheman » Thu Apr 23, 2009 6:26 pm

I'm going to say that a well mic'd small combo put through a fantastic house system will sound a helluva lot better in the house. Stage wise...without good monitors you're not going hear anything on stage. But nothing feels as cool as standing in front of a big ass amp. Maybe they need a cabinet that's just a 1x12 but is 4 feet tall and a head that's just 15watts. So you feel like you're standing in front of a big amp, sounds is manageable and small, and weight is next to nothing...
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Post by Bael » Thu Apr 23, 2009 6:26 pm

It's kind of a moot point since A) Bands used to have very talented musicians like guitarists that that rocked great, guitar-based music (where the guitar was dominant and indentifiable; not mixed in with the wash of crap digital sound like nowadays. So the music was inherently better and therefore sounded better no matter what, basically.

And B) When these old good bands (or members from those bands) play live it's to large arenas that had house systems anyway and they are playing a watered down version of an oldie or a pile of poop new tune that is awash in digital processing, like delay and compression.

None of those "Wall of Marshall" type bands REALLY cared about the live sound so, so much. I mean they did...but it was looser.

Also, only 1 stack was ever really playing. The rest were for show or were literally EMPTY (to make it easier for roadies...no speakers, etc.). So they used the PA...which bands have been doing way before the big late 60's rock acts came along.

Do you think Hendrix could have been heard by 600,000 people at the Isle of Wight by 3 Marshall stacks alone? Or another huge, open place like Woodstock?

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Post by MaxRossell » Thu Apr 23, 2009 6:28 pm

Interestingly I saw Aerosmith play in Paris in the early nineties, and the evening before I went to this gig in a 600ish capacity venue where the guitars and bass were just going through the band's big old stacks.

Sound-wise, there was no contest, Aerosmith's giant PA rig was tuned to perfection and I could hear Steven Tyler clearing his throat six feet away from the mic, the sound was amazingly detailed.

But on balance I felt more part of the gig the night before, because I was hearing the musician's personal amps directly, rather than their amps fed through a PA rig. Okay so I couldn't really hear everything clearly and it wasn't as slick and the sound levels overall were pretty unbalanced, but I felt less remote.

Sometimes when you go to big arena gigs, you almost don't feel like you're in the same room as the band, unless you're one of the crazies knocking heads in the front row.

I saw part of Metallica at Wembley in '07, and we were so far away from the stage that it felt like we were watching a live broadcast of something that was happening somewhere else. A sh*t one too, since the giant screens had a two-seond delay from the sound.

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Post by tony_clifton » Thu Apr 23, 2009 7:16 pm

riffmonster wrote:
I saw Motorhead around 1980 ish. Wall to wall stacks on 10. Great gig but I couldn't hear for about 3 days after !
I wonder if Lemmy en co can tune their guitars by the tinnitus in their ears :(.

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Post by bclaire » Thu Apr 23, 2009 7:29 pm

My two cents is, who really knows what you were hearing? A lot of bands had the big stacks for show, and played through small amps either behind or off-stage mic'd up.

Aerosmith definitely did rock the big rigs but back then, a lot of PA's weren't capable of handling everything going through them- so you needed the Superleads to cut through with guitar and then the PA would handle the rest... and monitors were sometimes impossible to hear no matter what.

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Post by not_again » Fri Apr 24, 2009 6:06 am

Insane Bass "thump", horrid PA, generally sounded like total crap...IMHO
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Post by ESBlonde » Fri Apr 24, 2009 9:57 am

Hmmm,

Back in the early days (mid 60s) when bands found themselves doing venues bigger than 500 water bags regularly, they needed larger amplifiers do get the sound across so 50w and eventually 100w amps were developed. Loudspeaker technology was way behind and 8x12 then two 4x12 cabs were needed to handle all that energy without melting! At this point guitar amps overtook the drummer as the loudest thing and PA systems tended to be another 100w or 200w amp into a 4x12 column. Those PA amps had little or no mixing facilities and 2 or 3 mics for vocal was about all the handled (in a distorted way of course) and monitors were unheard of. Keyboards were a huge hammond and leslies or a rhodes type thing, nothing else.

25 years ago you could go into a pub holding 200+ water bags and hear a rock band doing thin lizzy, AC/DC, Free etc. with a couple of 100w guitar stacks, a 200w bass stack and a 2000w PA. The sound was usually harsh in the top end, the drum sound was muffled despite being miced and the stacks roared and beamed like mad. If you moved to the bar or the bog, the soundscape changed dramatically as you walked across the room.
The audio assault left your ears ringing for a day or two, I'm sure permanant damage was inflicted on at least some of the regular audience members. I kind of enjoyed it in my naive and drunken state but now I'm older and wiser, I would not subject myself to that high risk again because my hearing is too precious.

Nowadays, dramatic technological developments in electronics and cones and cabinets and the understanding but more importantly the implementation of audio science means that we have crystal clear monitors, powerful and portable PA systems that can provide balanced clear sonic reproduction to each seat in the house.

Would I go back, to hear the classic artists? Yes in a heartbeat. To experience the technology NO! And I suspect if you ask any artist still performing today whether they would go back to using all and only the old technology to gig, you'd be told to **ck *ff.

Valves are a part of the guitarists sonic arsenal, but nobody would give you a second glance at the other old technology. No FX, No master volume, No dual chanel switching, no multiple gain stages, permanant hiss. Echo tapes breaking or jumping off the heads. No not a chance.

Thats my 0.02 allowing for inflation and indexation.
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Post by bclaire » Fri Apr 24, 2009 10:46 am

Oh yeah... the tape hopping out of the tape path or jamming in my old Echoplex- usually just before or during an important gig. I miss those days.... NOT.

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