From (good) bedroom tone to (weak) live sound...

Kingfloyd

Inspired
I know that as a consequence of physics law, “bedroom level” presets will sound differently at louder volume. While I have no problem dialing good presets at “bedroom level”, I am unsuccessful at adapting these presets to gig level, which is extremely frustrating. Usually I do not have much time to tweak controls at rehearsal as my mates want to play and always ask that I reduce volume when tweaking presets between songs… I imagine that some of you went through this process:-x … Thus I would l would like to know if there are priorities to consider first to approach good live sounds starting from bedroom presets without tweaking during hours … (as bypassing compressor, reducing gain, or lowering bass … ???) In short the question is, could one guess in which ways the “bedroom level setting” will evolve as the volume goes up …
Hardware is not the problem. I am lucky enough to own good gear (Gibson les Paul with Mule PU + AXE FX II (Firmware 6) + “2:ninety” Mesa through 2 Marshall Handwired Cabinets). Main problem is to adapt higher gain presets: weak tone, lack of body, early Larsen, muddy bass notes …
Any directions on how to proceed is welcome (or have the tweaking process organized ...;)).
 
In general I usually find this happens when there are not enough mids. Especially when doing anything high gain. It sounds awesome playing by yourself, but then doesn't cut when playing with a band.
 
My recording (low volume) tones have never translated to great live tones... Try this out... Use any of the recent "tone match" patches and they will ALL sound thin when used in a live setting. Usually kicking up the master is a decent "fix" but I usually just default and start from scratch at gig volumes...
 
playing live, i generally cut the bass and treble to let the mids out more. i think like a sound engineer, where cutting EQ is usually better, than a guitarist, where adding EQ is many times better.

even at bedroom levels, i use the gear i'll be using on stage to create tones. you're that much closer to a good sound than using a completely different setup and expecting it to work.

that said, if you can spend even 5 minutes adjusting things at gig volume, or even better, during a song playing with the band, you'll be closer to the best tone.
 
You know what happens as well? Presence... too much of it and you get lost. In the axe keep the presence under 12 o clock and you will cut through playing with a band.
 
Home setup vs Gig setup

Hey guys,

I was wondering how you guys compensate between the two setups? At home I have KRK Rokit 5 monitors. And on stage I use QSC12. Yea... I know it's two totally different setup. However my room back in my house is not big enough for me to fit a QSC12's and I need to use the Rokit with my AXE2.

I was reading a thread in the Review section and Cliff mentioning to someone that he/she might be setting a preset to compensate with small drive 'Adam A5x' has. So this got me thinking if anyone has a similar situation where you use a smaller monitor in your studio and use a bigger speaker in gigs and if so, how do you guys set up your patches or what would be the best way to go about setting the patch? DO you use X/Y to switch between amp settings? Do you use OUTPUT 2 for one speaker and OUTPUT 1 for the other one and use their EQ's to compensate? Etc.

I'm ASSUMING the best thing is use the QSC12 when I set up the patch. Hahaha

Thanks!
 
That also brings me to another question. When you record, you will be listening through the smaller monitors, right? So I'm assuming patches you setup for recording sessions don't really translates to live patches since you would be monitoring the sound with two different speakers?

Hope that made sense :)
 
I use output 2 for home & output 1 for live & rehearsals & tweak the global EQs to make the patches sound right for each use. Make sure you have copy out 1 to out 2 set. Generally this means less of the lowest lows & highest highs on the out 1 live EQ although I have never had to have too drastic of an EQ to make things work. On both I have between 500 & 4k flat.
 
usually, when i setup patches for my live rig k10s, which usually means less bass and treble, etc., when i listen to them back home on my ax5s, the patch sounds good there too! not the other way around though.

but i'm creating guitar tones that sit well in the mix usually, so maybe that's skewing my definition of "sounds good."
 
I gig live with an ART2 power amp and an EVM12L cabinet. When I took my tones live, i didn't change much, just turned the gain down on the presets, and on global eq did a gradual roll off from 2k and on.
 
You might try a few of the presets here by people using similar setups to yours, see if you like the sounds and also see where the EQs are on those presets. Some of the guys here use their presets in a band format weekly and have already given them the "trial by fire" to make sure they will carry a show. Once you introduce a bigger room, drums, and other instruments, everything changes. I second the previous statement... there is no option to building the preset on the equipment you'll play, in a similar physical environment and volume. Save that, it will always be a crap shoot.
 
they use headphones exclusively... haha j/k.

probably 80-90 dB would be my guess, but there are still so many other factors.
 
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