Amp Settings For Different Places

zanshin777

New member
Should we change our amp and e.q settings when playing different places (venues, halls, theaters, stadiums vs.) ?
 
Re: Amp Settings For Different Places

Generally a little fine tuning at each venue is a good idea. But drastic changes aren't generally needed.
 
Re: Amp Settings For Different Places

Will depend a bit on style of music and how your rig interacts with the venue. If you're room sound is almost entirely the PA, you probably wont need to, or it can be handled at the mixer.

If you get weird room resonances that turn your bass/downtuned guitars into a wall of mush and that isn't desirable for your death metal/dancecore numbers, well maybe you have some EQing to do...
 
Re: Amp Settings For Different Places

You should listen to your amp in each new room, and adjust what needs to be adjusted. After all, that's why EQ sections got put on amps in the first place...:scratchch
 
Re: Amp Settings For Different Places

A HUGE impact on your live sound is the PEOPLE that are there. This is why, when you run a soundcheck with no one around, it doesn't sound ANYTHING like your sound when the room is packed. All those bodies suck-up a lot of sound and prevent your sound from bouncing around the room. There's nothing I hate worse than playing a large room with lots of wood/hard walls and floors, that's only half full (or less). It's just boomy to the point of being a nightmare. Whereas, my favorite place to play is a smaller room, with hard wood walls and concrete floors, but it's ALWAYS packed and always sounds just so tight and perfect. So more people make you sound better, which makes you play better (generally), etc, etc, etc. It's something that feeds on itself. Whereas the times we play for some stuffy party or something, with a huge, boomy room and barely anyone there, serve to make me want to keep turning-down and just crawl inside my shell.
 
Re: Amp Settings For Different Places

So do we change only amp setting or do we also adjust the analog pedals (compressor, noise gate, distortion, effects vs.) ?
 
Re: Amp Settings For Different Places

It's a matter of being there and listening, man.

For instance, delay is a bit of a problem in a not too tight sounding venue.
It sounds fat and accurate on rehearsals, but live it can sound muddy and murky and undefined. So I treat it with care.

The usual problem live is things being less clear than what you expect.
So you want to focus your EQ with more mids and presence, maybe less bass too, not piling on the distortion, and trying to keep the signal as clean as possible.

We can talk about this for a day, but in the end you have to learn to listen at each venue, and diagnose what could be improved.
 
Re: Amp Settings For Different Places

Depending on room size and Marshalls I use, all I usually have to do is tweak the Mids.
 
Re: Amp Settings For Different Places

I played a gig with the mids dimed and the bass and treble at 4. it was perfect. ive been using those settings since and its worked out for me. its kind of an odd setting, but whatever.
 
Re: Amp Settings For Different Places

george lynch said something to the effect of never having the same tone ever and that it's like starting over every night he's in a new place.
 
Re: Amp Settings For Different Places

I always try tweaking the amp settings for each room I play in. I nearly always end up with a somewhat large dose of mids compared to all the other tone dials, though.
 
Re: Amp Settings For Different Places

When are you playing a stadium or arena? And, what kind of venue is a venue? hehe Seriously though, it depends on the material of the walls and shape of the room, mostly. If the room is kind of boxy and live, then you don't want to use too much volume or it will really mess with people's ears all that sound bouncing around, but that same volume might not be enough outdoors on a stage. It's usually a volume problem rather than EQ, but the two are also related as you know, if you have a tube amp and different speaker cabs.
 
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