Live sound: cranking one channel on a two channel amp?

[tony_clifton]

Hi,

Latest practice we found out how georgeous a Fender HRDX sounds when you crank the master volume of the distortion channel and keep the gain at 0830 o'clock. Esp. with the more drive engaged you get a nice, nasty distorted tone perfect for blues.

However, there is some volume bump when you switch to the clean channel. Is this a big problem live? I mean, will a soundman just kick in a limiter to even things out or will he complain about the channels being somewhat uneven?
Our guitarist uses his tone knob a lot and avoids the bridge pup (= more bass), so the headroom on the clean channel is kind of limited...

[blacklight_uk]

It really depends on how drastic the volume drop is. Compression will certainly help to smooth the difference out to some degree but only if the volume difference isn't absolutely crazy. See if you can find a compromise where the sound is still good but the master volume isn't quite so high.

If you want to make a sound guy really happy - see if you can pick up a device for measuring dB SPL. There's an app for iPhone with a dB meter that works fine. Measure the difference between your clean channel and your dirty channel. If you can get it down to like a 6dB difference then a compressor will do the job without sounding too obvious.

Or if your sound guy is versed in parallel compression you may not need to do anything at all. Just depends on how big the volume drop is.

[tony_clifton]

Okay! Don't think it will be too much of a problem but I think it's better to be prepared... I'll keep some hi-pre/ low-master settings in mind...

I have to say, once you are in powertube distortion territory the volume increase is almost non existent (at least on this amp). On the clean channel too. Gets more compressed and gainy, but not louder.
And it's a 40 watt amp with a 50 watt speaker (Eminence), so I take it it doesn't reach 80/100 watts output like they say Marshalls do...

Dang, those iPhone/Touch thingys are versatile... Too bad it's too expensive for me (I don't really care about 'consumer electronics' - I'm in a better save for later mood this year - weird).
Gotta buy some spare tubes though.

[irish_admiral]

Forgive me - I don't know the amp, but does it have volume & gain controls on both channels? If so, just adjust here.

[tony_clifton]

Hey

The amp has a shared gain pot so you can't really adjust.

For example:
Bedroom volume: with clean and distortion channel volume set as low as possile, gain should be 2 o'clock to get a nice crunch. This is a kind kind of raspy tone, and because of the position of the gain pot the clean channel is somewhat edgy too.

Full throttle: Clean just before breakup, distortion channel maxed out, gain as low as possible - the rock tone on the distortion channel is good as it gets on this amp (distortion is almosty exclusively coming from the powertubes), and the clean channel is even cleaner because the shared gain pot is set as low as possible.

The latter gives the volume bump, but then again, good to know it might be a problem for some soundmen.