Pros? Gain db?

J

JohnLutz

Member
Recently saw the rig rundown with Neil Schon. He had three basic amp presets: cleanest, crunch, go nuclear, (or something like that, please don't quote me).

Here's the question...

A good band has great dynamics, they can go from whisper quiet to "blow the roof off" in the course of any given song. Given three presets, what amount of DB would you have separating them?

In my experience, I tend to set gain based on playing along to recordings that have good dynamics. But I'm just curious how others think about this...

Clean - Super touch sensitive. Should almost be the same gain level as "go nuclear". Use it carefully.
Crunch - Clean (playing softly) +6, by ear because the compression can fool you.
Go Nuclear - Crunch +6 - "Everyone needs to hear what I'm playing now!"

How do you think about such things?

John
 
I do something similar. I use scenes to do it. I have one for clean one for crunch and one for full OD. I play clean to medium gain tones. I do not set them by values. I set them by ear. The output volume of all of them are basically the same. I don't want volume jumps out front when I switch between them. I use drives to push things harder for solo tones so I can get them a bit louder with a little more gain, where appropriate.

I have spent quite a bit of time behind a mixer so I try to keep the signals I am sending to the board consistent. I can't stand running sound for bands where the guitar players volume jumps way up or drops way off every time they step on a pedal. It gets very annoying quickly. That makes me think of things from the stage side as well as the FOH side.
 
it depends what volume you ultimately play at. a stage with no limits will have different volume differences between sounds vs someone playing in a coffee shop with a full range of tones.

it also depends on how you play. some play hard all the time, so cleans - which are more dynamic - are lower than someone who plays lightly.

i don't think there's a formula.
 
For the most part, you can forget about formulas. Set your levels to where they sit well in the mix, in the part of the song you're playing. Some thoughts:

- You can't directly compare clean and gained-up sounds. If they both read the same on the meter, the gainier tone will always sound louder.

- You say you want both your crunch and "go nuclear" tones to both be +6. I'm going to guess that you mean you want them 6 dB hotter than your clean sound, but I really don't know what you mean by that. For most uses, I think clean and crunch should be at the same perceived volume (not necessarily the same level on the meter).

- 6 dB is pretty aggressive for a lead boost. You might get some looks from your bandmates.

- Don't forget that, unless you're using a lot of distortion, you can control your volume with picking dynamics and the volume knob on your guitar.
 
I agree with @Rex. With a nice rhythm crunch tone you should have a large dynamic range available with adjustments of your attack and guitar volume knob. I use 2.5 dB for my lead boost. +6 dB is four times louder and that might be too much. The best way is to dial in your levels at gig volume with the rest of the band. There is no substitute for listening and adjusting in context.
 
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