Live gigs and volume.

[markolguitar1]

With the new Stadium has anything changed with regards to how you setup your stage volume? I'm still having a hard time cutting through live drums on stage even with two Power Cab Plus speakers. Is anyone changing parameters in the global settings that they could share here?

 

[silverhead]

The volume of the Stadium, or any other guitar multi-processor device, doesn’t really affect the ability for a guitar to ‘cut through’ in a band mix on stage. Volume is less critical than EQ, making sure the guitar frequencies are highlighted. A guitar tone that sounds great while practicing alone won’t necessarily cut through on stage. I suggest you experiment in rehearsal with the band to find better EQ settings for your preset(s). Or make a recording of certain songs or just song sections with everyone in the band playing except you. Then take that home and experiment with adding your guitar to the mix. Focus on the mid range where the guitar shines and cut the low end to get rid of muddiness that results from fighting with your bass player for those frequencies. You could use Global EQ for this but that’s really intended to be adjusted to suit different venues you may play in rather than to compensate for all presets. Learn the EQ settings that work with your band and apply those to all presets.

 

 Might be helpful to get your drummer to play less aggressively but good luck with that.

[markolguitar1]

On 5/22/2026 at 8:05 AM, silverhead said:

The volume of the Stadium, or any other guitar multi-processor device, doesn’t really affect the ability for a guitar to ‘cut through’ in a band mix on stage. Volume is less critical than EQ, making sure the guitar frequencies are highlighted. A guitar tone that sounds great while practicing alone won’t necessarily cut through on stage. I suggest you experiment in rehearsal with the band to find better EQ settings for your preset(s). Or make a recording of certain songs or just song sections with everyone in the band playing except you. Then take that home and experiment with adding your guitar to the mix. Focus on the mid range where the guitar shines and cut the low end to get rid of muddiness that results from fighting with your bass player for those frequencies. You could use Global EQ for this but that’s really intended to be adjusted to suit different venues you may play in rather than to compensate for all presets. Learn the EQ settings that work with your band and apply those to all presets.

 

 Might be helpful to get your drummer to play less aggressively but good luck with that.

Thank you. You have given me a place to start.

[silverhead]

The following is a bit theoretical but may be useful for you…..

 

You know from using any guitar tuner that standard tuning is A440. That’s the frequency of the A note on the 5th fret of the 1st (high E) string. An octave in music is a doubling of the frequency. Hence the A note on the 2nd fret of the 3rd string has a frequency of 220, and the open A 5th string is 110. The 17th fret of the 1st string is 880. When you want to have those frequencies ‘cut through’ make sure you make them prominent in your EQ settings. The most common way to do this is to cut adjacent frequencies rather than boost those frequencies, but you can do either or a combination of both. I like to use a parametric EQ to let me select specific frequencies to target . Experiment with the Q value to broaden or narrow the effective frequency range. Relatively small adjustments of 2-5 db can make a big difference to the tone.

 

For each song solo think about where you are playing on the fretboard and what frequency range is involved. Focus on making those frequencies prominent. It may be different for different songs; it may even be different for each song section. That’s where Snapshots come in really handy; a Verse snapshot and a Lead snapshot with different EQ settings. A small lead boost is helpful too but frequencies are important.

 

As already mentioned interactions with your bass player can muddy the low end. Understand the frequencies they are using in each song and leave that range to them; cut those in your guitar tone - not so much that they are gone but enough that they don’t interfere.

 

Hope this is helpful and doesn’t come across as stating the obvious.