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

[Borderline Productions]

Grew up in Chicago in the 70s, so any of the major bands played The Stadium, which was basically a hockey rink with the most horrid acoustics. Nobody sounded good there. In the cheap seats at the opposite end of the rink in the balcony, we would bring binoculars to watch and there would be about a one second delay from someone playing a note and our hearing it.

I think the band should be powered to sound good in a small club and let the PA do the rest. (40-50 watts for the guitar, 300-500 watts for the bass, give the drummer the wrong address).

[corky newman]

I had a drummer miss a gig one night and the place was packed..he went out with a girl I fixed him up with..go figure...
anyway we had all sorts of people come up and play drums, even the owner of the club, we even had the barmaids up...it was a blast...
at the end of the night we all went outside and tossed his drums down the street.."drum roll"...everyone took markers and wrote on his heads what everyone thought of him blowing off the gig....
needless to say we kicked him out, and yes he married the girl, had two kids, and a great divorce.....

[Stainboy]

It's subjective, but for personally me it's no contest. Big amps - not simply for volume, but for presence and moving more air. The best bands I've seen have a powerful balance between a big stage sound sweetened by great sound techs working the room. There's good powerful "loud" and there's weak painful bad "loud". In the end, it's down to what works best for the band's particular sound and style. I didn't pay to see the Ramones, AC/DC or Motorhead play through 50 watt combos. At the same time, I don't wanna hear Elvis Costello through Marshall stacks....although, that might be kinda' cool!

[Knuckle Bones]

I think the band should be powered to sound good in a small club and let the PA do the rest. (40-50 watts for the guitar, 300-500 watts for the bass, give the drummer the wrong address).

I LOVE the last piece of that! Hilarious!

[Bael]

Good stuff that you wrote but the part about the older artists not going back to the vintage stuff is not completely true. I mean, there's alot of stuff they would not want from the old days, like radio interference on the Ge fuzz units and things like that but some guys, like Townsend, are still pretty much plugging into a Fender combo and rocking out. He always had a big PA, though.

And even Gilmour, for all the sounds he gets, essentially uses a glorified, modern pedal board with 60 cycle hum single coils into a vintage strat.

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.

[MaxRossell]

Good stuff that you wrote but the part about the older artists not going back to the vintage stuff is not completely true. I mean, there's alot of stuff they would not want from the old days, like radio interference on the Ge fuzz units and things like that but some guys, like Townsend, are still pretty much plugging into a Fender combo and rocking out. He always had a big PA, though.

And even Gilmour, for all the sounds he gets, essentially uses a glorified, modern pedal board with 60 cycle hum single coils into a vintage strat.

... Into a handwired, single-channel Hiwatt. It is a pretty retro setup.

Doesn't he have a '54 strat with "0001" on the neckplate? Lucky bar steward, he is.

[scottdavis]

went to see metallica last year - it was totally weird seeing a metal band without a stack on the stage. all their amps are contained back stage in segregated sound booths to eliminate spill. the sound was pretty crap if i remember; drum mix was terrible, guitars way too low. maybe it's just me being an old fart, but rocknroll bands should have big amps ****!

[Bael]

He does have the "0001" strat but it supposedly isn't the first strat made. Plus, ther is some controversy as to if it's completely stock. Seymour Duncan, I think, claims he sold it to Phil Taylor (I think) and it had a '57 neck on a '54 body...or something along those lines. That's not the exact specs but I'm just giving an example. Then someone else claims this isn't true...blah, blah, blah.

It still sounds awesome. Check out the clip of "Marooned" at the strat-pack 50th anniversary of the strat. AMAZING TONE! I don't know how that guy does it every time. The most simple blues scales with a phrygian thrown in sounds better than the most complicated, technical stuff.

Good stuff that you wrote but the part about the older artists not going back to the vintage stuff is not completely true. I mean, there's alot of stuff they would not want from the old days, like radio interference on the Ge fuzz units and things like that but some guys, like Townsend, are still pretty much plugging into a Fender combo and rocking out. He always had a big PA, though.

And even Gilmour, for all the sounds he gets, essentially uses a glorified, modern pedal board with 60 cycle hum single coils into a vintage strat.

... Into a handwired, single-channel Hiwatt. It is a pretty retro setup.

Doesn't he have a '54 strat with "0001" on the neckplate? Lucky bar steward, he is.

[MaxProphet]

what sounds better is when the guitar amps don't drown out the vocals, which in a club/hall is much more often the case than not IME.

[ESBlonde]

Good stuff that you wrote but the part about the older artists not going back to the vintage stuff is not completely true. I mean, there's alot of stuff they would not want from the old days, like radio interference on the Ge fuzz units and things like that but some guys, like Townsend, are still pretty much plugging into a Fender combo and rocking out. He always had a big PA, though.

And even Gilmour, for all the sounds he gets, essentially uses a glorified, modern pedal board with 60 cycle hum single coils into a vintage strat.

Well not wishing to argue and after all this is just a web forum, but back in tha days of early WHO, Townsend and and the Ox did use huge stacks, indeed Th Ox insisted that his stage rig was the sound for the auditorium and consequently had stacks with thousands of watts, Townsend then had to have Several hundreds of watts in his stage stacks to hear himself, Heaven only knows how Daltry sang although he said in the early days they had no monitors and so he just got used to it. Now Townsend is completely deaf in one ear and apparantly 80%+ deaf in the other. Shame its to late for him to get the benefits of that single fender combo. The real Shame is that the whole fiasco was unnessaccary because Pete Owned and started Brittania Row PA hire (named after the street the warehouse was in I believe) for there own use and for hire when the Who were not on tour.

I conceed your point though, and of course there are exceptions to every 'rule', but they are exceptions.

I get to go backstage on a few tours courtesy of a friend that is a seasoned tour manager. At Rock concerts, more than most of the 'stacks' on stage are about 5" thick and empty, the sound often comes from a small amp and the PA or a single stack and one 4x12. The current trend to use IEMs grows a pace (although I personally would prefer wedges and a stage sound). Again there are lots of exceptions to the 'rule' but it is how its done these days.

I'm not saying old amps and guitars are not the thing (actually I'm a huge fan of both) but the idea of using them in the way they were originally designed died before electric guitars really took off in the mid 50s.

Peace.

[Le Chat Noir]

Back in the day, the Beatles were playing stadiums with no proper sound reinforcement, cranking amps and hoping for the best - my parents saw them at one, and said you literally couldn't hear the music over the screaming of the crowd.

Setting aside any questions of whether bands themselves were better back then, I'd definitely rather see any band from any era in a venue with all the modern advancements in sound reinforcement. I really don't think anyone who cares about good, balanced live sound could prefer the old ways over modern, in terms of underpowered PA gear etc.

I think all that really matters is if you can consistently deliver a quality, balanced sound in venues of any size - and modern sound reinforcement technology means that is now possible, whether you're using full stacks or low wattage amps.

[Bael]

Why do you use it then? Unlike back in the day when that WAS the only delay..(that rhymed), there are hundreds of "dependable" delays? Probably because of A) The fact that it IS old and vintage and B) It sounds good.

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.

[Bael]

If you were giving me a counter-point, I honestly didn't see it. The only reason I am assuming you are is because you said, "yosee the point, but...". The Who always used fairly simple stuff into a PA that they inevitably lent out (to the likes of Hendrix, etc.). Ironicalyy NOW, after he's a practically deaf, does he use a lower powered Fender combo through the PA.

But my point was that even those "Wall of Amps" you saw back in the day, the PA was STILL used a lot of times. The sound wasn't dependant on the amps themselves. Example;, The Who at the Isle of Wight and Woodstock and Monterey.

Good stuff that you wrote but the part about the older artists not going back to the vintage stuff is not completely true. I mean, there's alot of stuff they would not want from the old days, like radio interference on the Ge fuzz units and things like that but some guys, like Townsend, are still pretty much plugging into a Fender combo and rocking out. He always had a big PA, though.

And even Gilmour, for all the sounds he gets, essentially uses a glorified, modern pedal board with 60 cycle hum single coils into a vintage strat.

Well not wishing to argue and after all this is just a web forum, but back in tha days of early WHO, Townsend and and the Ox did use huge stacks, indeed Th Ox insisted that his stage rig was the sound for the auditorium and consequently had stacks with thousands of watts, Townsend then had to have Several hundreds of watts in his stage stacks to hear himself, Heaven only knows how Daltry sang although he said in the early days they had no monitors and so he just got used to it. Now Townsend is completely deaf in one ear and apparantly 80%+ deaf in the other. Shame its to late for him to get the benefits of that single fender combo. The real Shame is that the whole fiasco was unnessaccary because Pete Owned and started Brittania Row PA hire (named after the street the warehouse was in I believe) for there own use and for hire when the Who were not on tour.

I conceed your point though, and of course there are exceptions to every 'rule', but they are exceptions.

I get to go backstage on a few tours courtesy of a friend that is a seasoned tour manager. At Rock concerts, more than most of the 'stacks' on stage are about 5" thick and empty, the sound often comes from a small amp and the PA or a single stack and one 4x12. The current trend to use IEMs grows a pace (although I personally would prefer wedges and a stage sound). Again there are lots of exceptions to the 'rule' but it is how its done these days.

I'm not saying old amps and guitars are not the thing (actually I'm a huge fan of both) but the idea of using them in the way they were originally designed died before electric guitars really took off in the mid 50s.

Peace.

[LeonC]

I think lots of today's 15-30W amps are capable of sounding great and as everyone knows, the PAs today are almost infinitely more sophisticated and better-sounding. So I think the sound that is produced at concerts today, can be (though isn't always) a lot better.

One big problem at the few recent "big" concerts that I attended was the mix. E.g., I saw Jeff Beck a few years ago and the low-end was so incredibly loud in the mix that it was making me physically ill. I got as far away as I could from the speakers in watched the concert on closed circuit video up at one of the bars. Something happened within the last 10 years or so where sound men seem to think the bass and low-end has to pulverize the audience. God I just can't stand that!!!

Another problem is the same as it was back then--some big venues just sound like crap. Nothing's going to change that.

One last point. While a lot of low watt amps can really sound great, they will never--by definition--sound like (or feel like) really big amps. There's something about pushing that much air that just feels a lot different. E.g., I saw the original Fleetwood Mac (with Peter Green, Jeremy Spencer and Danny Kirwin) playing through some Fender amps--probably Dual Showman (based on videos I've seen)--and they were very loud...but it was a relatively small venue (held maybe 350 - 500 people) and there's just no way to duplicate that sound with small amps and 1x12 cabs. The big rigs were definitely part of the formula.

[Bandeapart]

I like the styling of bands with small combos. It's just as "vintage" to me, just more "garage" and raw. That stadium garbage is everything punk set out to destroy anyway.