greigmcmillan Posted May 5, 2014 Share Posted May 5, 2014 Hi, I've played about four gigs now in fairly large rooms. I go straight from my POD to the PA and use IEM's to hear myself. This all works great and has so many benefits for the rest of the band..........less stage noise by having no guitar amp, no bleed into mice, no feedback. The thing is I've listened to recordings of those gigs from iPhones, from recording devices, from straight out the desk and every time, the guitar is really quiet! My clean sounds seem to cut through, my solo's can be heard but general heavyish rhythm parts just can't be heard. There sort of mush in the background. Ive spent ages working on my patches and I balance all the levels between them so thats not an issue. It just seems that when i'm playing through the song the guitar sounds like its squished into a corner of the room or something. I play in a Rush tribute band so songs like Tom sawyer and Spirit of Radio have nice big (but not mega heavy) guitar sounds. I'm pretty pleased with the patches and at home and at rehearsals they sound close to the real deal. I can turn the PA at rehearsal up loud without clipping these patches so why doesn't the sound engineer at these gigs do that? Is it just because maybe they don't know the songs so keep the guitar at a level they think is decent or do you think I've got too much of a gap between my solo boost and my normal song level? If that was the case though surely the engineer could just turn me down at solo's if they were too loud? I'm starting to think that the sound guy's set the levels on the desk for the loudest level they get i.e the solo and just leave it there. Then when you're playing the main song at a lower level - the guitar is way too quiet. Any ideas? I'm really starting to think I might have to go back to playing through an amp which I don't really want to do but I'm getting fed up with low guitar at the gigs. For some patches I'm going to look again at the amount of compression I use, but thats not on all of them and even if it was - it should be even easier for the sound guy to turn me up as my level should be more balanced with the compressor smoothing things out. Just wondering if anyone had experienced the same or can think of something I'm doing wrong. Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greigmcmillan Posted May 5, 2014 Author Share Posted May 5, 2014 Sorry - I posted this in the wrong forum! I've now added it to POD HD forum. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gunpointmetal Posted May 5, 2014 Share Posted May 5, 2014 You're sound guy is either an idiot, or he comes from the school of "Everybody only wants to hear vocals and drums" which, surprisingly still runs rampant. Get a long lollipop cable and go out front without your IEM when you're sound-checking. If it doesn't sound right, tell the sound guy. If he gives you lollipop tell him its his lollipop ing job to make you sound how you want to sound, not mix every band the same. I've had sound guys who literally have no idea what to do with use when I tell them we don't have a vocalist...its like they have everything pre-EQed on the board around vocals and they just go blank. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
greigmcmillan Posted May 5, 2014 Author Share Posted May 5, 2014 Thanks for responding, even though i've put this in the wrong place! Yeah some recordings were the iphone and some were straight from desk and some from pretty nifty portable zoom recorders - but in all of them the guitar was just not up there enough. Thats not me being self indulgent it just genuinely isn't loud enough in the mix. Yeah I take your point about sound guys but most of them we use are pretty good overall, they just don't push the guitar. I think a bit of eking on the pod might help though. Good idea to get out front, I think I need to do that next soundcheck. Thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BucF16 Posted May 6, 2014 Share Posted May 6, 2014 Less scoop, more midrange. A common lament of the recent modeller convert.... Us geeky modeller guitar players tend to make patches in a room by ourselves or playing along with a studio recording that is totally lacking in low end. Then we bring our fantastic patches to practice and find out that the live sounds our drummer and bass player are using are a complete conflict with our tones! The nerve of these fellas! The result can be a total volume war. So, if competeing with a heavy hitting drummer and other guitar players, tweak your solo patches for more midrange and 3-9 db boost (depending on the patch and the mix). You will find that the "smaller" sounding patches sit better and cut through better with less volume IMHO. Sooooo many guitar players forget that the low end is left to the bass player. I continue to make these mistakes every day. One of the best work arounds is to be good enough with your POD to be able to tweak on the fly at practice. Then if you can only get some consistency out of your bandmates (good luck!) you'll have better results. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mauritzSA Posted May 8, 2014 Share Posted May 8, 2014 http://www.harmonycentral.com/articles/31098280 This article is relevant Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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