HD500X into PA system

[Old-Rocker]

I'm reading all i can in various sections,about 500X/DT25 & useing them in a live situation & maybe direct to PA etc.

I've read in various threads about cutting off the Bass response from the HD500 at about 85hz,

my first question is does a 6 string electric guitar go lower than 85hz(bottom E)?i've been playing for nearly 60yrs & embarrassingly i don't know.

I think our Band PA is a fairly typical Small venue PA,where the Bass bins cut off at about 125hz into the Mid/Highs,so a fair amount of the Pod would be going into the Bass bins 18" speakers,would that not make the Guitar sound too bottom heavy?

If i mic up my Moddeling Cube 60's(if required),then we normally push the 100hz shelf button in the on desk channel & then have to roll off the Bass in the channel.

I'm sorry if this is a stupid question,but i really have no idea about how a Modelled HD500 reacts in this scenareo. 

 

 

[DunedinDragon]

That's actually the point of why many people that go direct into a PA from a POD limit the frequency range of the POD so that it will reflect more accurately the frequency ranges heard on most guitar cabinets.  Like you our band engagese shelves even on mic'd guitar cabinets as well as voices, because there really isn't much value in either of those below such frequencies and helps to isolate such frequencies from going into the subwoorer.  In my case I go direct into a PA and I set the Global EQ parameters to limit the range of my guitar to between 85 to 7300 hz, which is little bit more the the typical range of a guitar speaker cabinet.  Otherwise the sound from the PA speakers tends to be harsh at the top end and boomy on the bottom end.

 

Your results will likely be different if you're going into a DT25 and direct out of the DT25's XLR output.  In my case I have no guitar amp and go direct from the POD XLR to the board, and another line on the stage direct to a FRFR monitor/speaker.  I do this to better ensure the sound I'm hearing from the guitar on stage is pretty well reflective of the sound being heard from the PA.  In any case it's worth checking to examine how well the PA speakers reproduce the sound of the guitar rig on stage.  Some vary quite a bit.

[Rewolf48]

An electric guitar can go down as low as you can imagine, and needs to have a low cut when direct to PA for the same reason that a bass needs it too.

 

For example hold your bottom E string in you fingers and pull it side to side taking about 1 second for each movement - you have just created a signal that is 0.5 Hz and the speakers should have done exactly the same movement. 

 

Every guitarist does something like this at some point or other, and the signal is going to be mixed in with the rest of the bands sounds, but is absolutely useless for audio purposes. As DuneinDragon says, you need to cut these low frequencies on all instruments somewhere in the chain.  If you do it in the Pod then it helps avoid clashes with the Bass, Kick, Keyboards, other Guitars and Vocals in the backline or personal monitoring, and if you a using a "FRFR" cutting the low end will increase the available headroom giving much more clarity.

 

Once you take into account where the Bass, Kick (and in my case the other guitarist playing acoustic) are filling up the audio spectrum and the relatively modest rate of cut on many filters you may find that you can go a lot higher than you think before you sound "thin" - depending on amp and gain even settings of 200 Hz or more may improve the overall band sound.

[Old-Rocker]

As usual,i didn't explain myself well enough,my point really was should the Guitar be getting into the Bass bins,in our case 2 x 18" active cabs,which are crossing over at about 125hz,or would it be better cutting off a bit higher(as Rewolf suggested) to keep the guitar sound out of the bass bins,i don't know what goes on nowadays with pro rigs,but maybe Malcolm Hill had it right after all back in the 80's & 90's. :)

[brue58ski]

These are some great tips. I can';t wait to try them. Thank you all for sharing!!!!

[Rewolf48]

Whether the guitar goes into the subs depends on what style of music you are playing; drop C tuned modern metal then yes, especially if the bass is playing higher, but for classic rock it always amazes me how little low end guitar you find in studio and live recordings.  Generally with everybody contributing to the low end then you get mud - even drum and bass electronic music has (when well mixed) a lot less down low than you think.

 

I would keep the subs doing bass and kick drum. 

[DunedinDragon]

Your use of the term "bass bins" is throwing me off a bit as I'm not sure if you're referring to a normal subwoofer arrangement or not.  But as an example, in our case we have QSC KW181's as our subwoofers and QSC KLA12's as our main arrays.  The KW181's have a fixed high-pass filter of 100hz.  Even if we don't have the hi-cut filter engaged on the mixing board channels for the guitar, little to no guitar goes through the subwoofers.  The fact is in a true subwoofer arrangement you really don't "hear" much out of them at all in a traditional sense.  You feel them more than hear them in an omnidirectional pattern.  Often times during soundchecks we have to wait for the bass and drummer to show up to ensure the subwoofers are working correctly.  At 100hz you don't really get a feel for the tonal aspects of the bass, that's provided more by the main KLA12's, but you will sense the lower end harmonics or punch of the bass through the KW181.  Likewise you'll feel the mostly the punch of the kick drum.

 

So generally speaking the subwoofers really have little to do with guitars.  What is an unpleasant artifact of guitars occurs generally right around that 100hz cutoff from the subs roughly from 85 to 125 hz in what a lot of people term as "boominess", but it's actually heard through your main speakers more than reflected through the subs and produces what most people refer to as "mudiness" when applied to the entire band mix.  That's the reason I tend to limit that range on my patches as much as I can to reduce that kind of artifact.  But that really has little to do with the subs, and far more to do with carving out my own space in the frequency spectrum of the entire soundstage of instruments and voices that are heard through the main speakers.  This is one of the key advantages of using an HD500X direct through the PA over a traditional mic'd amp in that I have precise control over where I sit in the mix.  Typical amps don't have that precision unless you employ parametric EQ's in the sound chain.

[Old-Rocker]

Hi,ok i mean Subwoofers(i'm showing my age with Bass Bins :) )to be precise,our system is a Yamaha DSR consisting of 2 DSR 115 Mid/Highs & 2 DSR118W sub-woofers,the Subs have a fixed X-over point of 125hz.

My only experience of running direct to Desk/P.A. is using a Boss GT100,which i couldn't get comfortable with(always sounded "muddy" :D) ,to me it always sounded worse than my mic'd up Cube 60 Modeler Combos,which as i stated above i shelved in the desk/mixer at 100hz & still had to role off the bass level on the channel.

I do believe that in our system the GT100 even with a 85hz cut was getting into the Subs,but i can't check,it's gone.

I would really like to go direct to PA & have a Monitor(FRFR)for my on stage sound,but my experience with the GT100,has made me think i won't adapt to it,just like our drummer won't adapt to V-Drums.etc ;) .

[DunedinDragon]

Well don't give up hope.  I've adapted to direct in to the mixer with my HD500X and a Yamaha DXR12 monitor...and our drummer has adapted to a V-Drum kit, so there's always hope.

 

As I said, I doubt seriously it had much to do with your subs and more to do with your configuration on the GT100.  The biggest thing I had to adapt to moving from a traditional amp to this setup was the wider range of frequencies the new setup exposed which caused my patches to sound boomy on the low end and harsh on the upper end.  It made sense when I thought about how limited traditional guitar amp speaker cabinets are in that regard.  It's exacerbated by the fact that most of the state of the art speaker systems such as yours use drivers and DSP processors in the speakers themselves to widen and flatten out the speaker's response across the frequency range.  This results in very responsive highs and lows which is great for the overall sound of the band, but that means that you have to take charge of the frequency range where your guitar will play.  There are lots of various ways to do this on the HD500X.  I took the easiest route using the Global EQ so it would apply across all my patches as I described in my original response and it works fine for me.

[pfsmith0]

To answer one of the original questions, a low E on a standard tuned guitar is around 82.4Hz. That being said, you can have a highpass rolloff somewhat higher than that without losing much. You'll still hear a "low E" even if it's attenuated quite a bit. The ear is a wonderful and somewhat mysteries thing. Even if the fundamental is gone the brain fills it in based on what it hears in the harmonics.

[BlueViolince]

I use a lot of sub-octave with my electric violin, which go pretty low, but I keep the 100 Hz high pass on, for all the same reasons.  The harmonics come through just fine, and there's nothing to add to the mud.  I like to put the high pass on the amp models, so that delays and reverbs don't have the opportunity to build the low end into weird harmonics(which happens anyway).  Pass higher than you think, earlier than you think.  You will come through clearer and cleaner in the mix.  One thing I do in Mainstage, after the Pod, is to put a high notch cut around 4.5kHz right out of the gate, and then boost the same frequency/Q at the end, after my multi-band comp, and cab sim.  This prevents bad piezo noise from being accentuated, while letting everything else get appropriately shaped and boosted enough.