Church, Guitar Balance and Equalization

[studio]

1. The Church Building

There are just as many sanctuary designs as there are
guitar / amp combinations.

Every church structure is different. From the types of building
materials used to the climate where the church stands, all things tangible
lend a hand in shaping the acoustical soundscape of your building.
The humidity even, shapes how music is distributed inside your
sanctuary and small water droplets can reflect sound like nobody's business!

So, in order to help someone who is in need of bringing a church building
to resonate or sing in mighty tones, we might have to look into
creating a game plan that includes all the musicians, all the singers
and the main people who present their sermon at the lectern.

We really don't want to subtract from the main speaker of your event
because the music was too good! Most people I have helped over the years
haven't really had that issue, it's usually that both the spoken word
and the music suffers simultaneously.

Let's say the church is a giant box but more specifically a giant
speaker box. With ports. With glass resonating. With babies crying.
Plus, we are fitting it with PA speakers, subwoofers, horn loaded
compression drivers etc. Like putting massive amounts of cheese
on your pizza, every inch of that building is being forced to listen
to what's being driven by that audio system and the musician's
amplification on stage.

You might say, "a piano doesn't have any amplification",
well, yes it does. The entire structure of a piano is designed
to hammer those strings and resonate them through wood structure
with a 17th century baffling design. It works too!
The piano is a microcosm of the inside of your church building.
How it's constructed will give us a clue on how to help the buildings
we worship in to sound musical.

Obvious to anyone, the piano is outwardly constructed of wood.
The wood gives a sonority to the instrument, a breathing tone
that distinguishes it from other instrument and also from
other pianos. Our churches will have their own character sound
quality to them and they become unique to the listener and instill
a sense of audible memory that can last for a lifetime!

The same can be said for bad sounding buildings.
Have you ever heard folks comment on how beautiful the service
sounded on Sunday? Sure we have. We have also heard people
mention under their breath how much it should improve too.

Why start with the building? The one thing that is the
hardest to change? The hardest to negotiate any change and
the hardest to determine what needs to be done?

 

[studio]

Why start with the building? The one thing that is the
hardest to change? The hardest to negotiate any change and
the hardest to determine what needs to be done?

Because it is always left for last. it is never the first thing
on any to do list and usually it's one of those,
If we have any money left in the budget......ugh.

A cool thing happened in my current church, when a
husband and wife started selling items on different
web services and used the money to purchase one of those
fancy PTZ cameras for our live stream services.

The same thing can happen anywhere and with any
need that arises. Start a fund for some creative sound modifications
that will have a great affect on your service.

These mods are getting us back to the piano structure I promise.
The walls inside your church all have a mode, a resonant frequency that is usually
on the low end of the scale and can make the room sound like, "Oh Papi, too much bass!". Because it is a build up of those frequencies in very specific places.
Like, if you listen behind any PA speaker cabinet you'll hear the typical
low end woof, that sub freq that seems to permeate especially when most places
will put the speakers close to the walls. The walls will act like extensions
of the speaker box resonating!

So we can address that sub frequency by simply putting a baffle made of
rockwool, Roxul or depending on your budget, some of the specific soundproof
material by Owens Corning etc.

Secondly, if your speakers are up in the air closer to the ceiling
on a truss system, then the ceiling itself becomes the culprit that
carries the back of the cabinet sub freqs. You could hang a cloud
baffle to eliminate that subharmonic and it will translate to better
speech intelligibility throughout the sanctuary. Pianos have hammers
that strike the strings with a felt material, softens it's tone yet
produces a clear sound when heard by the listener! Fascinating!

So not only can we reduce the unwanted freqs behind the speakers,
but also where the congregation sits. We can construct these frequency
absorbers on the cheap and get amazing results, better than if we didn't
do anything at all. Building the wood frames, getting the Roxul wool material,
and the mesh coverings can all be purchased at your local big hardware
stores and garden departments.



Absorption can be placed along the sides of the walls, behind the stage
or alter and they can be built to be a permanent install or temporary
if you are meeting in a rented space. You will kill a lot of the freqs
bouncing around the room creating feedback issues, midrange and high
end splatter will be greatly reduced! That's what we want right?

So, what about the back wall? You know, where the sound guys and gals
usually sit and complain how bad everything sounds! Front Of House...
I thought you'd never ask!

 

[studio]

The PA systems in most churches are facing the
FOH (front of house). Audio techs are usually found
in this area to mix the music and dialog for the appropriate
level for that specific room.

But what if the sound from the PA is a bit too loud and
some of those freqs are bouncing off the wall behind their head
and won't that cause them to have a somewhat skewed
perspective of the sound they are trying to mix? Well, yeah.

In this instance, that particular wall is better suited to get
diffusion instead of absorption panels. Or possibly a combination
of both. Let's stick to diffusion for now.

Frequencies in the speech range, the dialog band gets difficult
to decipher when you are sitting trying to mix from that position.
Building diffusion in your plans is not only necessary but also
the one that takes on different design methods. To be honest,
some look rather daunting while other designs are more appealing
to the eye.

The purpose of the diffusion panel is to scatter the incoming frequency
and make the sound a little more complex and therefore soothing
to the listening environment. Much like a chorus effect gives a complexity
to a guitar signal yet has a comforting ambience to it.

Speaking of guitar signals.....

 

[studio]

2. Guitars and Amps on Stage

Hollowbody, Solidbody, Headstock with a spike on it,
there are many ways to play guitar in a church setting.
How would it sound in a room that has been treated
with a bit of acoustical happiness? Wonderful!

A guitar has a somewhat limited frequency range, yet
it gets the most questions about how to dial in
the sound that makes it in the mix. A good sounding mix
happens in a good sounding environment. If you are working
in the same sanctuary week after week, you have
room to experiment with your balance , your overall balance
in the mix.

So, is your guitar the right one for the group you are in?
Is your church guitar the same one you ran with in
your wild and crazy days?
Are you holding on to a guitar that might not fit in
with the players you are currently with or the songs
you are currently playing with them?

This might have an impact on how you sound to
yourself and how the sound crew interprets your
playing. When I first get introduced to a church
musician, I notice how polite they are, and then
I do a squinty eye search over their gear. I get a mental
perception on how their rig is going to sound
and I make mental notes based on that perceived notion.
We all do it.

For the most part your are not going to sound like George Benson
with that BC Rich axe in your hand! So do the sound guy
a favor and bring the guitar that is best suited for the songs
you will be playing. Trust me, you'll be respected in the mix
if you give and take a little performance courtesy.

Make sure your "sound" is up to date with how your church
music is being performed these days.

Is your guitar in tune? In tune with the piano and not just your tuner?
Are you in the song and give it the proper attitude when asked?
Are you finding your own parts in the songs or simply trying
to find a fill area to noodle around in?
Can you play the song completely by yourself?

These are all preparations for the next step of
plugging in your amp.......( and do you even need an amp?)

 

[studio]

From Boogies to Boogers.
Amps come in all kinds of fabrications!

Again, what fits the group you are playing in?

How do you obtain a good sounding EQ so that
the sound crew can relax and not be fearful of
what might happen next in your pedal pushing.

Once you plug in your amp, you are committed
to give the sound tech a working environment
where he can comfortably place you in his mix.
After all, the goal is to not freak out the sound guy.
I thank you in advance!

I know sometimes it's hard to hear things on stage
that you might subtly pick up on in a more quieter
setting. Don't get frustrated by that. Try and be
accommodating to everyone around you.
When tensions are high, nobody hears correctly,
so a more positive and relaxed attitude will give everyone
a sense of unity and comfort.

How does that help with your amp settings?
The people that are NOT on stage will give you
input as to how to dial in your settings. Believe it or not,
most audio techs actually listen to what they are mixing!

If the sound guy tells you you have too much reverb
coming from your amp, trust in what he is telling you!
He's trying to create a mix, more importantly he's trying
to create in context, a working praise and worship environment.
Help him out. Every musician should become an extension
of what the audio team is trying to accomplish.

An overly distorted guitar will get turned down in a mix
faster than an out of tune guitar. Both are anathema
in my book, but a guitar signal that creates ear fatigue
has got to go! There are smooth sounding distortions
and overdrives for sure, but it's kinda hard to tell
when the speaker from your amp is pointed at your butt
and not at your ear level. So who hears it? You guessed it,
the sound guy but not before the congregation gets a load of it
in passing!

I can't tell you how to get a guitar sound, it's all apples
and oranges and speakers. Notice how most amp manufacturers
don't make their own speakers? Hmm. That should tell you that
they rely on the voicing of an expert in that field. Much like
how mastering engineers are relied upon in recording.

You don't need bottom end if you have a bass player in your group
and if your keyboard player also pushes bass, you might want to
stay out of that frequency range. Along with the frequency range
above 5Khz. there's nothing up there for guitarists but a crushed ego
when they turn you down in the main mix.

That guitar chunk might sound cool in your head, but it might also ruin
the chance of other frequencies being heard. You can cut out that bottom
chunk usually at 150hz or so. Just cut it out and they might be able
to bring you up in the mix! Wouldn't that be nice!

So, how do we bring it all together and start playing with the EQ?
Well, the EQ is not a toy......

....and what do all those numbers mean?

 

[hotraman]

@studio
Great insights. No doubt you have years of sound installation experience, along with FoH mixing.

At a previous church where I was a full time Pastor of Worship, all of your insights are spot on. I had to install a system from the ground up, in a new building that was designed to be multi purpose ( it rains a lot here in SW WA). We hired consultants to guide us in the process.

I would add, that whoever is the lead in installing, revamping the sound, IMAG, etc.. needs to somehow bring leadership ( church elderboard, committees, etc ) in the process. Easier said than done. I had a lot of push back when I wanted to install line arrays. But that went away, once people said, they could hear the speaking pastor at all parts of the room ( this room held 800 +).
Patience and having the right "tools" is crucial to reaching the goals: good FOH that is pleasing for the music and speaking. IMAG for people in the church and at - home.

Keep your insights coming.. thank you!

 

[JuneauMike]

This is great. I've got an EQ pedal that is all magic to me. I've played around with it a little bit but never used it as a tool to subtract unwanted frequencies (I can't identify those frequencies by name, but I can hear them. Frustrating).

Where does the splatty Strat reside in all this?
Or the wooly and inarticulate humbucker sound?

 

[mRtINY]

Splat is usually in the 800-1500Hz range.

Wool is typically excess 200-500Hz.

 

[JuneauMike]

Splat is usually in the 800-1500Hz range.

Wool is typically excess 200-500Hz.

Wow, that's an eye opener. Sincere thanks.

 

[scooteraz]

Splat is usually in the 800-1500Hz range.

Wool is typically excess 200-500Hz.

Obviously I’m not tracking at 100% today, this caused me to scratch my head for a bit, until the lightbulb turned on...

 

[JuneauMike]

Obviously I’m not tracking at 100% today, this caused me to scratch my head for a bit, until the lightbulb turned on...

Pretty cool, right?

I haven't gone home and tried it, but I can kinda visualize the characteristics better in this context.

 

[studio]

3. Equalization

To set the tone, I'm going to start off with a small rant.
The worst salesman catch phrase jargon to hit the streets is:

"This EQ setting will help you cut through the mix!"

That is such an ego driven, unrealistic, curtail of
all things logical in the sound world. So, thousands of
manufacturers of PA systems, speaker designers, Microphone
and effects processing companies have it all wrong?
We don't really want Flat Response or Full Range then
do we? Poor dumb musical manufacturers haven't got a clue
what the modern musician is looking for, do they? Lol.
Such nonsense. The same guys that pride themselves
in creating flat systems also have a department that
makes toys to help you "cut through the mix!" selah.

________________________________

Anyway,

We need to define our roll in the overall process of
EQUALIZATION. In caps because the overall
game plan is to have all the instrumentation and
vocals sit in their respective and proper place
within the working environment. Sit in the mix.

If the sound guy has a particular ideal sound
in his mind, then he or she will create a mix that
closely follows that reference mix. Most audio mix
guys carry with them a reference mix, a playlist of
songs that they know and have listened to hundreds
of times and can tell the flaws of any sound system
just by listening to something familiar and picking out
the misapplication of certain components in a given system.

We all know how The Beatles song, Come Together should sound.
Deep driving bass on the intro, soft muffled drums....
Well what if you played this song at your church during
a tech production clean up and that bass, that million
dollar mix just doesn't sound right? Or it was waaay too boomy?
That should tell you the system you have needs EQ work.

So, your guitar amp has EQ, the mix board has EQ, your
guitar's tone knobs are also considered EQ and the many
pedals current guitar players use include the kitchen sink
and extra EQ, as if you need more EQ!

We really need to apply the less is more theory here.
How do we really know or understand what that knob
you tweak on your pedal or your amp is affecting the
overall sound mix? Is it just because you can't hear the end result
and twisting knobs is a last resort? Probably.

Like I had mentioned earlier, the guitar needs to sound like a guitar
to you and when you're ready, let the sound team know and
they can adjust your EQ in the main PA accordingly.

So, are all those extra knobs on my gear just useless?
Well, how about we put them to work......

 

[studio]

It used to be that you could set up an amp's
sound by simply knowing the manufacturer.
Fender amps and their EQ could be set at 12:00 noon
or 5 on the dial and you would obtain that Fender sound.
No problem.

Same thing with Peavey amps as they addressed their EQ
on some amps as passive EQs. If you ever played a passive
EQ'd Peavey, they sound wonderful in their world.

But today, it seems everyone wants to be the Swiss army
knife of settings. The awesome DSP power that is so compact
allows designers to implement a whole array of tone suggestions.
But do we need all that? How about we find our own musical
reference point and live in that sonic environment for awhile!

We discussed the importance of sound techs having their
reference playlist, so what references do we as guitar players
have immediate access to?

We have our guitar heroes, our favorite players. We buy the
guitars that they play, the amps that they use and the pedal train
they cart around with from gig to gig. This is why signature model
guitars are so popular. You heard a song that you just want that
tone, fair enough, you bought the guitar..... and the amp... and the....
However, on a stomp box pedal you can have that golden voice
Clapton setting but it doesn't do your rig justice. Oh, the shame!

It's perfectly okay to sound like yourself! Yes, sounding just like
you, unique and individual, gutsy, raw or refined and soft spoken..
it's all okay to let your mind, your spirit flow through your guitar rig
and express through musical form, your inner most expression.

No EQ in the world is going to make you sound like Santana
or Phil Keaggy. The thing to do is make sure your guitar sounds like
YOUR guitar going through YOUR amp. If that means eliminating
that pedal you bought with half the rent money, then so be it!
But if there's certain sounds you can't live without, then you
need to dial in your EQ to make it transparent sounding. As if
it wasn't there in your signal chain.

You can use an EQ to alter the sound of your guitar as an effect,
like to make a nasty nasal sound for a certain part in a song
but you wouldn't want to live there, right? You can also use
your other pedal EQ settings to eliminate feedback to a certain
extent without damaging the overall sound of your rig.

You need to find out ahead of time at the venue or stage
you are playing, just how your rig interacts within the room.
If the room is treated with any measure of acoustical care,
your job should be fairly easy. Play the loudest you will be performing
at without drowning out the other musicians and search for
feedback points. Then use your EQ already set on the flat position
and lower the culprit frequency and eliminate the feedback.
In audio speak we call that pulling frequencies. We almost never
add any boost to any frequency unless it is for a special request
like making a trumpet sound like a UFO.

Usually, the culprit feedback frequencies are tamed quite easily
once you memorize the correlation of guitar to EQ settings.

A guitar normally tuned has the low E frequency of 82hz.
The highest a guitar speaker puts out is usually around 5khz
and then it rolls off rather musically. meaning it sounds good
when the frequencies are rolled off.

Feedback can occur at any point, but I've found that at
most church settings if you lower the EQ at 315 or 400hz
you can curtail most feedback issues. Since EQs are working on
a standard musical frequency per octave ratio, if you pull
400hz down, you will subtly taper down 200hz, 100hz etc.
and going in the other direction, you will ever so slightly be pulling
800hz, 1.6khz, 3.15khz, 6.3khz and on. Once you get the hang of it,
you can tailor your guitar and amp to have a very smooth sounding
tonality to it that your sound person will be proud to turn you
up in the mix (when needed okay?).

As far as sounding tubby or loosey goosey, hey man
it's all a subjective matter and you have to spend time,
honest to goodness homework and church environment time
to dial in a good sounding guitar.

All the other EQ filter faders or knobs should be left
at the flat or zero position, ready and waiting to be called
on if and when needed.

So what if the church decides to go all ampless on stage?
What do I do then? Let's find out......

 

[Chester P Squier]

Our church used to have a really good tech guy. He left for greener pastures during last year. I suspect he was looking for (and found) and job that allowed him time to sleep. He and his team put in a LOT of hours.

He was really great at what he did.

 

[SBClose]

THANK YOU STUDIO!

 

[hotraman]

@studio .. great insights as usual.
The challenge is: most churches have volunteers running the sound board. And even though they may know the "specifics " about gain, EQ and compression, their knowledge goes out the door once the music starts. But there's hope: more of the modern digital boards can save "settings" for each instrument. They should be set by those who know, what they are doing, not by personal preference.

 

[studio]

If you can make yourself morning coffee, then chances are you
can effectively use an EQ because they both use the same method
to get results.

What is an Equalizer you may ask? It's pretty simple in it's design.
Just think of it as a mixing board with only the faders for volume
and pretty much nothing else. You don't really patch anything into
those faders as they are a fixed setting within their given frequency range.
which is why they are called filters. Like a coffee machine, the filtering factor
is used to exclude the coffee grounds and only allow the diluted bean water
to pass through. An EQ is similar in that you can turn down any one of those
volume faders also known as filters and refine your audio input to accept
only the level of that certain frequency you have allowed. To continue with
the coffee maker analogy, just like an EQ, the coffee maker usually has a
fader that allows one to have a dark, medium or light brew right at your
fingertips!

If you are still using a guitar amp on stage, the EQ section of your amp
is going to sit right next to your volume knob. Actually, in this simplified
view we have going here, the bass, mid and treble knobs are just
extensions of your volume control, only this time they control a fixed
frequency.

When you play a guitar chord and you are switched on your neck
pickup, especially with humbuckers, does it sometimes sound like
it is over saturated with low end? How do we quickly remedy that?
Correct, by grabbing that bass EQ knob and twisting it till we get
the desired response out of the speaker. So you see how easy that
is? One of the problems has become how we label our sounds and why
we don't just use numbered frequency standards to communicate
with other musicians and audio techs on what we are searching for.

If we all spoke the same frequency language, a guitar player could
essentially tell the audio crew he has too much 800hz in the monitor
wedge and almost immediately the problem gets resolved!
But NOOO! We have to subscribe to using terms like woody, woofy,
slinky, dopey, bashful, prancer and of course good 'ol Rudolph!

Can we agree on how difficult that makes life for everyone that
has their hand on an EQ fader? It's almost impossible to define
what tubby sounds like, yet we constantly try and reinvent
terms to disguise our lack of willingness to study and understand
the guiding principles of our beloved guitar rigs.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not just picking on guitar players!
Heck, most musicians can't tell you the frequency range
of their instrument, yet they devoted a lifetime of practice
hours and Beato videos to no end. This EQ subject is
just as important as all those other study materials!

Get to know your EQ, assuming you work with more than
one EQ at a time, make sure they all are on a level playing field,
meaning set at zero, mid fader position usually, and are
ready to be called upon when needed. I don't think they should always
be "on" and create a hodgepodge of cutting and boosting frequencies
all the time. That creates a distorted signal path that you might
not even be aware of!

Now, let me take a sip of coffee and I'll be back to discuss
the cab simulator and the ampless stage. Preset Heaven! LOL!

 

[studio]

NOTICE:
The production people and the folks who have
no clue what goes on with stage production have decided
that from now on, the church services will be accommodating
the no amps on stage formula. They tried to get the musicians
off the stage too but they couldn't figure out how to do that
and be annoyingly polite at the same time.

OMG! What's a guitar player to do with no amp to fiddle with?
No worries! The entire PA has just become your playground!

So now, your guitar is going direct to the PA system and
direct to the monitor mix and all those speakers or
IN EAR MONITORS! What could go wrong? Happy Days, right?

This is where our little talk on reference material still applies.
You can still strive for that Clapton tone from your guitar
and you can still simulate the tone characteristics of
the amp of your choice with good old fashioned EQ.
Yup, EQ now has become your best friend by default
because multiple units of it sit on your pedal board!

So how do we get to sound like my favorite cowboy
guitar church star? First we have to emulate, a fancy
word for copying, what the speaker of that stage amp
sounds like. For a guy with a mixer, I'll always start out
with the guitar player's channel emulating a plain vanilla
guitar amp speaker. This way, if the rest of my PA system
is dialed in correctly, I'm half way home with making your
guitar sound!

Laugh out loud. The first graph is what a guitar player is looking for
and the lower graph is what a sound engineer thinks he's looking for!
This is a big possibility why sound techs and guitarists knock heads:

This Frequency graph is from a Katana amp. See how it rolls off on the
high end starting around 3khz then takes a dive at 5khz! Exciting yes?
Then on the low end, (the left side of the graph) it starts to fall off
around 80hz, the same frequency the guitar's low E lives at!
Check out the crazy 2khz dip!

This one here is the Eminence Ragin Cajun Speaker. Very popular.
Following the bold line, what a difference compared to the Katana,
yet very much in the same ballpark design on the ends.
It's the mid section, between 1khz and 5khz that seems to make a difference.

Let's say you wanted to copy one of these speakers and utilize your EQ
to do so. It's very doable. Just follow the numbers on the graph to
correspond to the numbers on your graphic EQ, meaning, follow the curves
and you will get a pretty close representation of that sound. Simple right?
See how that works here:

Well, now here's where the cab clone designers come in. With their fancy graphs
and cabinet emulations, they very accurately measured just like you did how
a speaker inside a cabinet(s) should sound. It's great to have a 4x12 Mesa
cabinet at the flick of a switch, but does your band require that sound?
Does the open back single speaker fit in better with the music you perform
at church? These are questions only you and your team can answer.
But you have to have that discussion first in order to get it right.

Music and audio are interdependent vehicles creating the same
goal. Communication is a must.

So what secret sauce do cab simulator folk use to create their boxes?
It's really no secret. They can only work within the audio realm of
Frequency and time. Time and time delay comes in many over the counter
boxes or plugins. We have delay, chorus, flange, phasers, reverb...
All of these types of delay units can give a complexity to a sound
just like the church building we discussed and properly done will
give great results and make a simple guitar into a PA sound like
a million bucks!

It's totally okay to experiment with EQ and delay times to try and capture
your favorite amp sounds. Just be sure you use the buddy system so
you don't get lost and always do your experiments during down time
on a day where nothing is going on in your church sanctuary.

Get yourself an audio tech and go to task! Even if the audio
person is a volunteer, bring them along for the experience and the
knowledge you both will find!

So how does all this fit me in the mix? Like this......

 

[studio]

Sometimes you just gotta sell yourself!

Back in the day, guitar amps used to have a mere tone control.
Then, bass and treble knobs started to appear. Sometime after
that came the mid and presence knobs! Whoa, all that just to
satisfy a need for speed! But we're not done just yet....
Then came the introduction of the sweepable mid section knob
combination. You've seen them, one knob to control the volume
and the other to sweep across a fixed band of frequencies!

This is where some people get bogged down in trying to
cope with so many variables as if the knobs are challenging them
to a duel or cage match!

Remember when I said EQ would become your best friend?
Well, parametric EQ, those sweepable mid knobs have now
become your business partner! If we experimented with our
EQs to obtain a selected speaker sound, the parametric
EQ can help you design different speaker setups just by
adjusting the frequency on those knobs!

As we see in this photo the frequency knob can shift from 100hz all the way to 5khz!
That should get you in the game of dialing in a certain speaker sound from the graphs
we saw or others you can research. The freq knob allows you to adjust what you
want to cut or boost or set at level 0 for no change, like a bypass. See the Q knob?
That adjusts the wide or narrowing of the bandwidth you want to adjust, like a boss!

So now at your whim with plenty of homework, you can
have your one amp or stage effect pedal EQ give you the
amp speaker sound you want to come out of the PA.

The sound guy will love that you can now control and tame
your own rig by knowing just what to do with your rig.
He can now enjoyably place you in the mix without fear
or reluctance to have you prominently displayed right up there
with Liberace Jr. on the church keyboard!

Yes, if you sell yourself by discussing how you have arrived
at your stage sound, then that confidence backed by
your hard work will get you great mix placement and possibly
a cup of coffee.


But there's something about that guitar graph
that bothers engineers and boggles the minds
of guitar players wanting to be heard in the mix.....

Celestion Vintage 30:

Now we can see that between 1khz and 5khz there is a big jump
in those frequencies! This is why when a guitar player wants to get
turned up in the mix it usually ends in terrifying ear agony because
those freqs are now blistering hot and create a thinner than normal
guitar sound out of the PA. Our ears are tuned to hear 4khz more
intensely than other frequencies. That's right in our path of that guitar
graph! Look out!

But it's okay. Because now we know how to correctly and smoothly
iron out any frequencies we need to tame to give us a nice and full
guitar sound!

Thanks Chuck!

The End.

 

[hotraman]

Sometimes you just gotta sell yourself!

Back in the day, guitar amps used to have a mere tone control.
Then, bass and treble knobs started to appear. Sometime after
that came the mid and presence knobs! Whoa, all that just to
satisfy a need for speed! But we're not done just yet....
Then came the introduction of the sweepable mid section knob
combination. You've seen them, one knob to control the volume
and the other to sweep across a fixed band of frequencies!

This is where some people get bogged down in trying to
cope with so many variables as if the knobs are challenging them
to a duel or cage match!

Remember when I said EQ would become your best friend?
Well, parametric EQ, those sweepable mid knobs have now
become your business partner! If we experimented with our
EQs to obtain a selected speaker sound, the parametric
EQ can help you design different speaker setups just by
adjusting the frequency on those knobs!

As we see in this photo the frequency knob can shift from 100hz all the way to 5khz!
That should get you in the game of dialing in a certain speaker sound from the graphs
we saw or others you can research. The freq knob allows you to adjust what you
want to cut or boost or set at level 0 for no change, like a bypass. See the Q knob?
That adjusts the wide or narrowing of the bandwidth you want to adjust, like a boss!

So now at your whim with plenty of homework, you can
have your one amp or stage effect pedal EQ give you the
amp speaker sound you want to come out of the PA.

The sound guy will love that you can now control and tame
your own rig by knowing just what to do with your rig.
He can now enjoyably place you in the mix without fear
or reluctance to have you prominently displayed right up there
with Liberace Jr. on the church keyboard!

Yes, if you sell yourself by discussing how you have arrived
at your stage sound, then that confidence backed by
your hard work will get you great mix placement and possibly
a cup of coffee.


But there's something about that guitar graph
that bothers engineers and boggles the minds
of guitar players wanting to be heard in the mix.....

Celestion Vintage 30:

Now we can see that between 1khz and 5khz there is a big jump
in those frequencies! This is why when a guitar player wants to get
turned up in the mix it usually ends in terrifying ear agony because
those freqs are now blistering hot and create a thinner than normal
guitar sound out of the PA. Our ears are tuned to hear 4khz more
intensely than other frequencies. That's right in our path of that guitar
graph! Look out!

But it's okay. Because now we know how to correctly and smoothly
iron out any frequencies we need to tame to give us a nice and full
guitar sound!

Thanks Chuck!

The End.

I used to gig with that Yamaha amp.
Wish I still had it.