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Thoughts on 1st live performance


cclement
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So last night (June 26th) was the first time I've used my HD500X and Alto TS110A for a real gig... not just rehearsal. So I thought I would share a few thoughts for those who may be coming up on a similar situation. For our gig, we only had mics for the vocals, and the kick drum. The other guitar, and the bass were not mic'd.

 

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Mid-range - Most of my patches seemed to get a bump in the mid-range when playing at on-stage level. This was good is some ways - cuts thru the mix - but it also seemed unusually high in a few spots. I might tweak them a bit to drop the mids some or use the global EQ the shave a bit off.

 

Get it up off the floor - Getting your FRFR speaker up off the floor and at a waist/ear level is a must I think. Not only do you get to hear yourself better, but for gigs when only vocals get mic'd... you can cover more of the audience with a higher vantage point. I had brought my speaker stand along, but ended up just putting it on the Bass Player's amp. The Pioneer Saloon has a small stage, and every inch is needed.

 

Low cut - It's your friend. Use it. I had already used the low cut on just about all of my patches to tame the low end, and it made a big difference in stage volume. Also, my Alto TS110A was on top of our bass player's SVT and 2-15" cab... so there was NO WAY I could ever compete in the bass department ;)

 

Gain - Turn it down. As I expected - at least to some degree - my patches had a bit to much gain to them. I will definitely going back in and dropping the gain (aka distortion/overdrive) down some. One patch in particular - a Brian May AC30 style patch for Queen's Dragon Attack - was the killer.. straight to squeals when not playing.

 

Overall volume - I had done my best to tweak all of my patches at home - at a loud level - to get them all about the same overall volume level. I use a SPL meter app on my iPhone. I did some further tweaking live with the band at rehearsal to get them closer. This was a BIG help. It's didn't mean that patch to patch, song to song was perfect... but it sure did help.

 

Boost your solos - There are a few ways to do this, and it's really a must. My current method is to use the Tube Comp at the end of the chain - but before the reverbs - with the Threshold set to 100% (no compression) and the Level set to 15%. I have this set to FS8 for all my patches to give me a nice bump for solos - kick it on and go. I may swap this technique for the FX Loop boost trick... just have to try them both and see.

 

Overall, the HD500X and TS110A were a great match. A buddy of mine who is also a player, said that we sounded great and my tone sound good from the front to the back of the bar. That's about all you can ask.

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WRT the solo boost - I use a Tube Comp but I use Exp 2 to control the Level of the Tube Comp - from 0 to 25, I use a variety of picking styles from the gentlest finger picking to hard plectrum strums and get a wide variety of tones that way; even on 100 threshold the tube comp is doing quite a lot of levelling and being able to control the output level means that the gentlest picking can be used for the Solo while the hard strums fall into the background.

 

Your style will of course vary - and our band does play acrss a very wide dynamic range

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Thanks for all the tips.  Couldn't agree more with the low cut to avoid getting in the bass' frequency.

 

Regarding boosting solos, I'm currently using a studio EQ at the end of the chain with about a 4db boost in the 125 and 3K ranges.  Tried the FX loop thing a few times with some mixed results as well.

 

 

Oh and LOL....I HOPE YOUR DRUMMER USES EAR PROTECTION!

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Oh and LOL....I HOPE YOUR DRUMMER USES EAR PROTECTION!

 

LOL... Despite our best efforts... we were pretty loud by the end of the night.

 

Our other guitarist has a partial hearing loss (ironically from playing in loud bands for years), so he tends to turn up to hear himself... which means we all have to turn up. Oh well... the crowd dug it, and I heard no complaints about the volume.

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Awesome. I'm glad your show went well.

 

While you were at yours, debuting your 500x, I was debuting mine across the bay. My setup was through a power amp and cab because the 2 sound guys at the place I was at have the combined brain power of a drunk slug and couldn't get a sound from my XLR outputs. both worked fine for me when I switched from one to the other with amp/cab but I didn't want to take up too much time so they just miced the cab

 

Because I had to get a replacement pod and didn't have a rehearsal with it (flaky bandmates), all my clean sounds were too quiet but other than that everything went fine.

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Good show mate!

 

I made a cheap but cool wooden "floorboard" for my floorboards lol. Just a nice big square of 3/8" birch plywood and 2x4 under one end. Mitre'd to a 45 or whatever, on the top of the 2x4 so it sits better.

 

Then I stained it with a nice dark cherry and then varnished it. I know it's just more krap to lug around but I always like resting a foot on it whilst singing and playing geetar. Saves my back sorta and gets the foot controller to a nice angle :)

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Go for it... Slow Poison is damn good bro... was that all POD? really liked it.

 

Thanks for checking it out! That track was actually my Mesa Rectoverb 25 through a CabClone, but our last full length was 95% Pod HD (and the album before that all Pod XT).

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Couple suggestions:

 

- Solo boosts:  Run a jumper between the send/return in the effects loop jacks...and use an fx loop block and assign it to a button or the exp pedal...for a perfect/powerful clean volume boost.  

- In terms of low end:  Just like a tube amp...if it feels like too much bottom on stage, most likely it's not too much.  Walk out into the room...a number of feet out...you'll notice that in most cases what sounds/feels like too much bottom on stage...usually isn't enough...or barely enough for the room.  It's about the audience's perspective...not what the hollow stage construction gives you.  Most of the time...the bottom end gets lost within a few feet of the front of the stage.  

- Mids:  I don't hear many mentioning this, but the POD line definitely has a lot of high mids (probably depending on the model).  I've always needed to smooth out or even out high mids to where it's manageable.  I just finally gave the global EQ a chance and found an amazing sweet spot.  Prior to that, I used to have a parametric on every patch.  

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I have this old SKB floorboard that came in handy to load back up when I recently bought my hd500x. The 3 space rack part of it on top is just holding a wireless unit and light unit for now but it worked great at it's first gig this last weekend.

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Here's a video of it from Saturday in front of me (guy in the middle). It's kind of big floorboard but doesn't look to big on stage I think. It has a hard cover that goes over the whole thing too. SKB doesn't make these anymore but I think they're cool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP_omaPhFGc&feature=youtu.be

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