Is volume killing smaller gigs?

[skankdelvar]

13 minutes ago, Lozz196 said:

Yeah and those Fender amps seemed to be voiced to really hit the loud-spots.

One of the historic issues with Blues Juniors is they go from quiet to insanely loud with nothing much in between. A tech friend thinks its so guitars shops can say to prospective buyers 'Hear how loud it is, just on 3'. Apparently there's a fairly easy fix which involves changing the volume pot (or something) which opens up the available sweep.

Another problem with Fender amps is that some people plug in a Tele set to the back pick-up then crank up the amp's treble in an attempt to get 'that Fender sparkle'. Instant ice-pick in the ears, particularly if you're the poor bastard stood exactly on axis to the speaker.

5 minutes ago, Monkey Steve said:

The smaller the amp, the lower the volume needed to achieve the best distorted sound (if that's what you're after)

The other option is to use a big amp but install less efficient speakers. The problem is that guitarists in search of LOUD proceed to install more efficient speakers (Eminence Red Fangs, anyone?) and then everyone dies.

[discreet]

19 minutes ago, Monkey Steve said:

I'd suggest that 50w is the maximum you'd ever need for a valve guitar amp for any gig, anywhere, ever.

Absolutely agree. Back in the day guitarists would routinely play stadia with a Vox AC30, which was more than up to the task. And still is.

[discreet]

In my current band one guitarist uses a 15w amp, the other goes through FX to the PA. Drums and bass only go through the PA when absolutely necessary. We are a quiet band.

I use a Fender Rumble V3 500 Combo, which runs at a maximum of 350w at 8 ohms without an extension cab. Pretty much overkill in this band, as at gigs I have the gain at zero and the master lower than I have it at home!

So why use it at all? Well... y'know... It looks cool... and I like the luxury of all that headroom... 

Edited September 20, 2018 by discreet

[skankdelvar]

Back in the 60's-70's and without PA reinforcement one needed a 100w valve head to fill out big club / cinema gigs where a thousand or more people were all dancing and screaming at the tops of their voices.

Small room in a pub, four men and a dog, not so much. It's like using a JCB to weed your flowerbed.

 

Quote

@discreet said: Back in the day guitarists would routinely play stadia with a Vox AC30, which was more than up to the task.

I met up with a guy one time looking to start a pub covers band in Oxford. Asked me my rig wattage. Well, FWIW, 500w, I told him. Says he scornfully, if you're going to work with me you'll have to buy a bigger rig, at least 1000w, I always run my AC30 at full whack. 

Twunt.

Edited September 20, 2018 by skankdelvar

[Monkey Steve]

12 minutes ago, discreet said:

In my current band one guitarist uses a 15w amp, the other goes through FX to the PA. Drums and bass only go through the PA when absolutely necessary. We are a quiet band.

I use a Fender Rumble V3 500 Combo, which runs at a maximum of 350w at 8 ohms without an extension cab. Pretty much overkill in this band, as at gigs I have the gain at zero and the master lower than I have it at home!

So why use it at all? Well... y'know... It looks cool... and I like the luxury of all that headroom... 

Exactly - headroom makes a lot of sense for bass. Plus we generally know that the volume control goes in two directions

[Dad3353]

5 hours ago, mikel said:

I have been drumming for over 50 years and have tinnitus quite badly, not just from drumming but from listening to loud music and playing in even louder bands back in the day.

I now wear hearing protection when playing but as I said, in my current drumming band we practice and gig at a volume I could easily not use it. We rehearse at a volume you can talk over and gig so we can hear each other clearly without in ears. The guitarist gets the tone he wants from a 1 x 12 20 watt valve combo. I learned to play quietly over the last three years and its a revelation. The different tones and sounds available from a single drum or cymbal are obvious when you play lightly.

+1 ^^

[discreet]

51 minutes ago, Monkey Steve said:

...headroom makes a lot of sense for bass. Plus we generally know that the volume control goes in two directions...

Generally.  This is one of the very few bands I've been in where the master control routinely goes counter-clockwise and yet I can still be heard - and so can everyone else in the band. Taking that a little further, as an originals band we make a point of avoiding instruments clashes - not volume-wise, but playing-wise and sound-wise... obviously if you make your contribution fit in rhythmically and sonically with everything else, and you're not sucking up all the available bandwidth in the room, and everyone else is aware of that too, then you have a musical jigsaw with an overall picture that can be seen (or in this case, heard) without effort and without being ârse-shatteringly loud. This also makes it about a billion times easier to get a decent sound in a not-so-decent room. Sounds obvious, but I don't see much evidence of it when I'm out and about.

Also not much thought is given to sound combinations... for example if your drummer likes a clicky kick drum at 100Hz and you're playing rounds with a pick at 100Hz, it may be better if you played flats fingerstyle so that the kick/bass combo isn't the total mess that the sound engineer so often gets the blame for. And so on. Maybe those bagpipes aren't really fitting in with your version of 'The Birdie Song'?*

*Actually in this case, bagpipes would definitely improve matters.

Edited September 20, 2018 by discreet

[discreet]

53 minutes ago, skankdelvar said:

I met up with a guy one time looking to start a pub covers band in Oxford. Asked me my rig wattage. Well, FWIW, 500w, I told him. Says he scornfully, if you're going to work with me you'll have to buy a bigger rig, at least 1000w, I always run my AC30 at full whack. Twunt.

Twunt indeed, but it does make clear the point that an AC30 is a really bloody loud amp.

[Japhet]

57 minutes ago, skankdelvar said:

Back in the 60's-70's and without PA reinforcement one needed a 100w valve head to fill out big club / cinema gigs where a thousand or more people were all dancing and screaming at the tops of their voices.

Small room in a pub, four men and a dog, not so much. It's like using a JCB to weed your flowerbed.

 

I met up with a guy one time looking to start a pub covers band in Oxford. Asked me my rig wattage. Well, FWIW, 500w, I told him. Says he scornfully, if you're going to work with me you'll have to buy a bigger rig, at least 1000w, I always run my AC30 at full whack. 

Twunt.

The 'loud' guitarist I mentioned further back in the thread had a 30 watt Marshall Bluesbreaker at one point and 'Holy Mother of God' that thing was loud. I'd imagine an AC30 at full chatt is quite something, not that I'd want to be anywhere near it.

[discreet]

“The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy notes that Disaster Area, a plutonium rock band from the Gagrakacka Mind Zones, are generally held to be not only the loudest rock band in the Galaxy, but in fact the loudest noise of any kind at all. Regular concert-goers judge that the best sound balance is usually to be heard from within large concrete bunkers some thirty-seven miles from the stage, whilst the musicians themselves play their instruments by remote control from within a heavily insulated spaceship which stays in orbit around the planet – or more frequently around a completely different planet.

Their songs are on the whole very simple and mostly follow the familiar theme of boy-being meets girl-being beneath a silvery moon, which then explodes for no adequately explored reason. Many worlds have now banned their act altogether, sometimes for artistic reasons, but most commonly because the band’s public address system contravenes local strategic arms limitation treaties.

This has not, however, stopped their earnings from pushing back the boundaries of pure hypermathematics, and their chief research accountant has recently been appointed Professor of Neomathematics at the University of Maximegalon, in recognition of both his General and Special Theories of Disaster Area Tax Returns, in which he proves that the whole fabric of the space-time continuum is not merely curved, it is in fact totally bent.”

[skankdelvar]

22 minutes ago, Japhet said:

The 'loud' guitarist I mentioned further back in the thread had a 30 watt Marshall Bluesbreaker at one point and 'Holy Mother of God' that thing was loud. 

I knew one guy who had a Bluesbreaker combo (first re-issue). He thought it was too quiet so he got a tech to whip out the chassis and somehow squeeze a JCM800 into the cabinet (he had to leave the top back panel off). 

Of course, the amp sounded much less interesting but it was louder so that was all right.

[51m0n]

Dont have vocals...

 

You would be surprised how much this solves 😆

[Woodinblack]

2 hours ago, discreet said:

Absolutely agree. Back in the day guitarists would routinely play stadia with a Vox AC30, which was more than up to the task. And still is.

Or to rephrase, the only valid use for an AC30 is playing stadia!

[thodrik]

These days I mostly play very ‘loud’ rock music. However even bearing that in mind, with smaller venues there is always a real risk of being too loud, even in a genre where a pushed valve guitar amp through a 4x12 or 2x12 is the norm,

It is context dependent though. If I am specifically going to see a doom metal band, I am going to expect a fair amount of volume. However I don’t expect to hear that levels of volume when listening to a band playing a set of covers in a pub that is open to the public or a function band. I wouldn’t want to hear Mustang Sally at a ridiculous volume when I am really trying to watch a game of football or chat to my mates while listening to a bit of music.

 

[jazzyvee]

On ‎19‎/‎09‎/‎2018 at 10:59, Raymondo said:

Something that I have complained about for years....bands seem to balance the instruments and then try to get the vocals to cut through...never works! 

I have been in bands where I have complained about this and eventually got my way....Vocals first then bring everything else up to just under their level....the other members then enjoy the gig more because everyone can hear what is happening.

 

I hate pub gigs where everything is too loud drowning out the vocals.

We are on the same hymn sheet here. About 2yrs ago I  was invited to be the bass player in the house band for a weekly open mic event in a pub. At the time there was two guitarists, keys, drummer and me. The two guitarists took care of the singing. Anyway after the first gig I said to them it's far too loud and if it stayed that way I would not be there much longer. But got no support for that. So from then on I used my 20db custom ear plugs which kept things at a decent level. However over the past year the volume has gone up mainly due to the people who come to play guitar and set their volume far too loud then tell me to turn up. I always refuse and suggest they turn the guitars down. Falls on deaf ears and mumblings about having to have a particular volume to get their sound. The thing is the punters complained to the management and to the band leader who took very little notice because the complainers were not musicians. Eventually they started complaining to me as they could see I had ear plugs in, I talked to the band about it but again nothing changed. So I decided enough was enough and left giving the reasons that the volume was too high. They got in another bass player to replace me and I was told that it was even louder than before because now the bassie was turning up to be heard over the guitars...…. you can see where this is going. A few weeks after I left the manager sacked the band and has now got a new band in there. I still have friends who go to those sessions there to listen and get told it is even louder than we were and the audience numbers are dwindling with less people getting up to the mic.

In my experience, jazz and folk gigs are usually at a volume where I don't need ear plugs.

 

[skankdelvar]

Coming back round to Molan's initial hypothesis, I think that over-loud performers contribute to the continuing decline popularity of 'local' music but they're not the only factor in play. There's a whole heap of other things which we could discuss another time, but I'm of the opinion that the wider 'pub gig' model is verging on breakdown. 

[FinnDave]

3 hours ago, skankdelvar said:

Back in the 60's-70's and without PA reinforcement one needed a 100w valve head to fill out big club / cinema gigs where a thousand or more people were all dancing and screaming at the tops of their voices.

Small room in a pub, four men and a dog, not so much. It's like using a JCB to weed your flowerbed.

 

I met up with a guy one time looking to start a pub covers band in Oxford. Asked me my rig wattage. Well, FWIW, 500w, I told him. Says he scornfully, if you're going to work with me you'll have to buy a bigger rig, at least 1000w, I always run my AC30 at full whack. 

Twunt.

Wonder if it's a twunt I know, being an Oxford lad myself.

[skankdelvar]

5 minutes ago, FinnDave said:

Wonder if it's a twunt I know, being an Oxford lad myself.

Very possibly. IIRC, he claimed to have served at one time with a certain military formation based in Herefordshire (or something like that).

[discreet]

51 minutes ago, skankdelvar said:

I'm of the opinion that the wider 'pub gig' model is verging on breakdown. 

Yes it is, and I think (as said above somewhere) that's because the pub itself is verging on breakdown. The entire notion of the pub as a focus of a community and a place to meet friends is definitely on the way out. My theory is, that as people gravitate towards the internet instead of friends or family for solace and advice, the age of mass communication is ironically leading to an age of very little actual communication between real people in the real world. Live music, by definition, can't be part of the great internet experiment. Look at how punters will record gigs on their phones and watch (and share) them later - because they don't think anything is real or valid unless it's digitised and seen on a screen. They don't want to experience the performance as it happens, even though they are physically present at the time!

Anyone want to join my Campaign for Real Reality? Obviously it can't be started online... meet me in the Back Room at the Dog and Duck tomorrow night at 9pm. If they say I'm not there, tell 'em Nobby sent you. 

Edited September 20, 2018 by discreet

[Cato]

21 minutes ago, skankdelvar said:

 IIRC, he claimed to have served at one time with a certain military formation based in Herefordshire (or something like that).

I believe there's an obscure law that states that there must be a former member of the SAS stationed in every pub in Britain at all times.

Edited September 20, 2018 by Cato

[FinnDave]

31 minutes ago, skankdelvar said:

Very possibly. IIRC, he claimed to have served at one time with a certain military formation based in Herefordshire (or something like that).

Ah, could be Bullsh!t Bob, scourge of every pub in the area! He didn't mention sailing, did he?

[Norris]

13 minutes ago, discreet said:

Anyone want to join my Campaign for Real Reality? Obviously it can't be started online... meet me in the Back Room at the Dog and Duck tomorrow night at 9pm. If they say I'm not there, tell 'em Nobby sent you. 

Only if you can live stream it

[skankdelvar]

6 minutes ago, FinnDave said:

Ah, could be Bullsh!t Bob, scourge of every pub in the area! He didn't mention sailing, did he?

TBPH, all I can remember of him was the AC30 and a reference to The Regiment. Other than that, he's a total blur.

[la bam]

For me theres a few things:

Firstly, pub wise, it always seems to be the wrong pubs that have live music on. The small one out of the five in the town. The one with a couple of small rooms and limited visibility. The one surrounded by houses. Meanwhile, the massive pub down the road with no neighbours and massive floor area and potential has nothing going on.

Hence for those venues - theyre up against it from the start. No real scope to get a good sound balance across the pub, not much chance for the band to get out and hear the mix (as the public are right on top of them) and smokers constantly having the doors open, letting the music out to upset the residents. Also the bar is usually about 20ft from the stage.

Aside from that - it is amazing that the role of the sound engineer is pretty much neglected for pub gigs. Somehow, theres always someone in the band who either thinks they can do it from the stage area, or gets forced into doing it because no one else will. If every band had someone just with rudimentary understanding of mixing and appropiate volume level mixing for them, that would help everything. I dont know if its because of a lack of speople wanting to be sound engineers or the band trying to save a few quid, but it would be a massive help. Even just white gloving it - riding the volume and any obvious changes needed.

I also think bands and artists can struggle from not understanding EQ themselves. You can be quite quite and sound really loud and piercing by having way to much mids on the vocals and guitars - thats awful for the crowd, and is what makes you wince. Likewise you can be really loud, but not sound it if everything is beautifully balanced eq wise. If bands spent more time getting their mix right between themselves without PA at practice, then it would be so much easier to balance through the pa at a gig. With not much need to be too loud, as it would sound magic at most volume levels.

Kit wise, theres nothing wrong with large gear if used for the right reasons. I have used all kinds of amps and cabs, but now stick to my 610 as i know i can get a rich sound at both low and loud volume levels. Where it would be stupid is if i played at the same volume in a small pub as i did on a large stage. Same equipment - different volume.

As for guitar valve amps- trust me AC30s can rip your face off if pushed! Id say 30w - 50w is max. Again, if guitarists understand why they are using a valve amp (for the break up tone) they would realise which wattage would give them the best sound for the venues they play. 

 

Edited September 20, 2018 by la bam

[FinnDave]

Just now, skankdelvar said:

TBPH, all I can remember of him was the AC30 and a reference to The Regiment. Other than that, he's a total blur.

probably another chip off the same block, the area round here is full of 'em. This village alone has ex-SAS guys, bomb disposal experts, champion water skiers and round the world yachtsmen. Often all in just the one bloke, who goes strangely silent when anyone who actually knows what they are talking about appears.