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I've never liked overly bright amps (like Deluxe Reverbs, for example... always have to tame the treble big time), but lately I've been noticing that the amps I've been using can sound plenty trebly at home, but super dark in a band setting. Even my tweed Victoria, which can be glassy as all hell at home, sounded murky last week at the practice space.

I'm just curious if anybody else has dealt with this and decided on a remedy. Maybe just always go heavier on the treble than you think you need? My JMP is typically borderline abrasive on the highs, but I'm going to take it to practice this week and see how it sounds. I also stuck a buffer on my board and it did seem to help a bit.

If you have something like bass, mids, treble, I think its pretty common to kill all the bass and crank the treble and mids in band settings.

I think let the drums and bass sit in the bass EQ (scoop the drums EQ), vocals and melodic stuff in the mid EQ, rhythm guitar emphasized in the treble frequencies.

The tone I use live in most bands sounds way too trebly practicing at home but great with a band. It's just one of those things that happens once you add other people encroaching on the mix, you don't want everyone playing in the same frequency ranges.

Yeah tbh I've always been pretty horrible about mixing. Cutting competing frequencies seems like a perfect fix. Time to start acting like a grown up, haha...

If your practice space walls are padded out somehow, that'll dampen your sound substantially. Hard surfaces like wood floors and concrete walls reflect sounds and can make the higher frequencies really strident. My small room with hardwood floors makes my tiny amp sound really, REALLY loud, even though it's definitely not.

How many other people are you competing with? I found getting lost in a mix with another guitar was remedied by playing with the midrange. Helps if you're each using different types of amps or pedals. Food for thought.

Valve amps always sound fuller when you turn them up to band levels so you have to change the controls accordingly

Basically:

monkeydancer wrote:The tone I use live in most bands sounds way too trebly practicing at home but great with a band. It's just one of those things that happens once you add other people encroaching on the mix, you don't want everyone playing in the same frequency ranges.

HeavyXIII wrote:If your practice space walls are padded out somehow, that'll dampen your sound substantially. Hard surfaces like wood floors and concrete walls reflect sounds and can make the higher frequencies really strident. My small room with hardwood floors makes my tiny amp sound really, REALLY loud, even though it's definitely not.

How many other people are you competing with? I found getting lost in a mix with another guitar was remedied by playing with the midrange. Helps if you're each using different types of amps or pedals. Food for thought.

Yeah my house has concrete floors, and the practice space is of course carpet, so... big difference there. Competition wise, it's me on guitar, then bass (bassist plays flatwounds, very rounded off tone, so he's mainly occupying all lows), then keys (Yamaha organ, which is sorta Farfisa-like, and synth). The organ is sorta reedy sounding, so it might compete with the guitars a good bit... working that out, will have to see.

I'm assuming your amp volume is set lower at home and higher at gigs and, like the Deluxe Reverb, the Victoria has a treble-bleed/bright cap across the volume. There's a reason the bigger blackface and silverface Fenders have that cap defeatable with the bright switch turned off.

A lot of guys don't even bother making it switchable and just clip the bright cap out of the amp. (Not just for Fenders--some common mods for JCM-800s and even Soldano SLOs do the same.) Should make scant difference at full volume

Yep I thought about clipping the bright cap on my JMP, but now I definitely want to see if that brightness helps in a band situation.

Ah yeah particularly if you have keyboards less bass more treble should really help you out. Keyboards tend to be lots of the low-mid range and even the high notes in the guitar range don't have as much high frequency content as you get from guitars.

The points about valve amps sounding different as you turn them up louder and the effect of the room are also important.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCduT4bVXQQ[/youtube]

Chankgeez wrote:[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCduT4bVXQQ[/youtube]

I was gonna, but then I didn't. Geto Boys ftw though

I'm down for that jam anytime