Long before internet forums I must have picked up on the essential truth from one of the old pros I got to jam with as a beginner.
In my first rowdy band with my pride and joy Trace rig being hard to hear over the stupid loud guitarist I drew a line in the sand and the guitarist was forced to pull his head in.
The line I drew was where the speaker didn't get any louder despite increasing the master and backing off a tad for good measure.
Ten years later I learned about ohms and watts and volts and sensitivity and it made little difference to operations aside from the addition of a high pass filter.
Off topic but one of the most entertaining cover bands I ever heard played everything funky. All the usual suspects, no matter how non funky the original, got made into funk without sounding wrong. That's not easy!
An outstanding example of the kind of lowlife that gets up to that sort of thing story...
A few years ago Christchurch had a bad earthquake. The worst building failure was the near total pancaking of a reinforced concrete multistory office building. Something like 3/4 of all the deaths in the quake were in it.
The investigation turned up that the supervising construction engineer was a con artist. Had the building been built properly it should have stood up but they couldn't prove it. As far as I know the guy never even went to court but he lost his job as a ''helicopter maintenance ''engineer'''' in Australia. Some mothers' children....
A spike is very unstable rotationally until you add a wing to brace yourself into. That's why the tripod is the usual goto stand.
Your original plan to spike it between your feet and pad it against the chair would work but it would put the instrument quite vertical and too far forward unless you can sit up and balance on your haunches?
The trick is to put the heat shrink on the wire before soldering together ( DOH!!!) and not get it all so hot that the heat shrink goes off before you slide it onto the joint!
Tinning the wire ends goes a long way to making it quick to get a joint.
Remember that solder flows towards the heat.
There's a lot missing from what he can play if he never learns some technique.
Disclaimer, I am entirely self taught and can't slap my way out of a paper bag. To make it talk I am relying on muting AND ringing when appropriate.
OP still didn't say if he was a pick player.
True. But the reason for the misstep is knowing amp power specs and cab impedance and power handling one can intuit a little easier than working in volt amperes.
Maybe it has been improved on since the early MAG combos? The one I played on for a couple of years of rehearsals would often sound horrible when I plugged in. All mush of a low end. Solution was to turn OFF the SubHarmonic button.
The Thumpinator is a very bare bones HPF that only takes out actual thump generated LF. Fine if that's your bag but there's a whole world of 30+ hz that other filters will tame.
Yep. Next step is to take out the sponge and learn how to play it properly! It will imprint eventually now that you know it's a lack of muting from the plucking hand. Getting it down will improve your playing no end.
I think it is fair to assume anyone after gains is already running full tilt and coming up short. Usually they will be lacking dynamics from exhausting their headroom or their cab is complaining.
In the case of the Elf it's touching on being able to overdrive one BF110 but won't deliver double the power into two of them.
Power is a derivative quantity of voltage and impedance.
I blame the prevalence of open mics. Tell them where to find one of them and stop bothering you.
Better yet, put on a better show than an open mic pickup band so there's less confusion.