Very limited soundcheck time - what do you do?

Zwiebelchen

Zwiebelchen

Fractal Fanatic
Hey guys,
Got a gig on friday, but the time planned in for soundcheck is extremely limited due to people still being at work and arriving late. Also, there's other bands playing there that night.

So I'd like to know; what do you guys do if you only have a couple of minutes time for sound check?
Thanks to the Axe, at least it doesn't take long for me to set up my gear.

And what do you do if the space on stage is very limited for all the equipment and there are multiple bands performing?

Greetings!
 
Just about the only thing I need is a line check -- making sure that there's sound coming from your Axe to the PA. Whenever there's a sound engineer I'm not familiar with, I always tell him to pan hard btw l & r, and leave the eq. Frome there, I'm usually good to go. From the Axe is plugged in, this takes 10 seconds. If the space is tight on stage, I leave the axe in a horisontal position (in the rack) wherever's there space and lean the midi board to the Axe when I'm not using it. I usually don't need to see the Axe when I play, so there's no need for a stand etc.

My Axe is in a 4U soft rack and I use one U of space for a rack strip just underneath the Axe, where I have more or less copied what's on the Axe's back (XLR female plugs, female jacks for output 2 etc. This way, I can plug in everything from the XLRs to the power cable from the front. Makes it easier to rig and easier on the Axe, not having to plug everything in and out of the Axe itself.

My 2 cents ;)
 
EQ is too important for good sound, I gotta say, so I will probably take my rehearsals Global EQ setting (which will come close to on-stage volume) instead of flat, simply because from my experience the lows tend to mask the bass too much and the highs getting too sharp at gig volume.

I'm also thinking about bringing a strap in case I need to place my Axe on a chair or something for me to see it.

Any more ideas?
 
I control my whole ear mix, so i dont need a check.. just levels. I took that power out of the inept soundmen a long time ago.
 
Same for me, all I need is a line check. I tell the sound guy to put my eq at noon and let him/her know I am sending line level. If space is ltd I would try to put the axe as far to the back or side as possible. I make dudes work with me, I typically require less room then they do except maybe my pedal board which if I take my big boy pt pro with mfc and 3 boss fv500 pedals so I may need to do what wembly said pull it back bring it up when needed then pull back again. If I am using my LFJ then I really use no space and they need to work around me, it is not my fault the stage is small and their rig is not. I usually don't have issue because they can see how little room I need to begin with
 
Zwiebelchen said:
EQ is too important for good sound, I gotta say, so I will probably take my rehearsals Global EQ setting (which will come close to on-stage volume) instead of flat, simply because from my experience the lows tend to mask the bass too much and the highs getting too sharp at gig volume.

I'm also thinking about bringing a strap in case I need to place my Axe on a chair or something for me to see it.

Any more ideas?
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I hi/low cut all my patches, I am always mix ready. I literally have been told buy sound guys after working with me that they get disappointed every time a guitar player walks in and isn't running an axe.
 
brokenvail said:
I hi/low cut all my patches, I am always mix ready. I literally have been told buy sound guys after working with me that they get disappointed every time a guitar player walks in and isn't running an axe.
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Nice to see the axe is already a standard at your country. ;)
Here in germany, I've seen only very few people using it yet. I bet most of them will look like "what the?" if I tell them that I want to go directly to FOH instead of onstage amp/cab.
 
Like others have written, line check only.
Because of the direct feed and because the output signal is already limited to the range 120 Hz - 6.5 kHz.
The FOH guy only has to finetune which can be done during the performance.
 
Zwiebelchen said:
Nice to see the axe is already a standard at your country. ;)
Here in germany, I've seen only very few people using it yet. I bet most of them will look like "what the?" if I tell them that I want to go directly to FOH instead of onstage amp/cab.
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It is still far from standards but I am making FOH guys believers one gig at at time. What is the rest of your rig? Are you strictly going direct? A few guys here on the forum carry a DI box in case the sound man refuses to let them go direct. One guy even said a sound man insisted on micing his frfr wedge. SO why the DI box? Simple after fighting a losing fight with the sound guy he says ok fine run me a mic but please start my eq flat. As soon as they ran him the mic he tool the cable out of it and plugged it into the DI that way his hot line level signal was brought down to mic level and the sound man never even knew he was getting a direct feed, he just thought he was doing an amazing job as a sound man lol
 
Hmm, really, low cut on 120Hz? Isn't that a little bit too low? I always got the problem with way too boomy presets at gig volume masking the bass, especially on clean sounds (sounds great on home listening volume levels though), so I usually start to roll of at 300Hz, with 150Hz reaching the magic -12dB.
 
Zwiebelchen said:
Hmm, really, low cut on 120Hz? Isn't that a little bit too low? I always got the problem with way too boomy presets at gig volume masking the bass, especially on clean sounds (sounds great on home listening volume levels though), so I usually start to roll of at 300Hz, with 150Hz reaching the magic -12dB.
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Yes, can be 150 - 200Hz, but I like giving the FOH guy the illusion that he still has some control. ;)
 
Zwiebelchen said:
Hmm, really, low cut on 120Hz? Isn't that a little bit too low? I always got the problem with way too boomy presets at gig volume masking the bass, especially on clean sounds (sounds great on home listening volume levels though), so I usually start to roll of at 300Hz, with 150Hz reaching the magic -12dB.
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I do al my high and low cutting in the cab block so I don't deal with x# of db drop. I have had a few clean amps that needed more but I have never gone up past 200. In that region your bass player should have plenty of room to live below you. If not he may need to do some adjusting of his tone and you may need some more mids to help push you though but my low cut always start at 120 and my high cut at 6000 (some times a smidge more but never over 7) oh and I play on stage with a bass player and a keyboard player who's keyboard is 88 keys. at one point we had a 2nd keyboard player who's keyboard was 76 and I still has no issue.

You never told us what you are using rig wise. If you are using a cab for stage monitoring the boomyness can be from that
 
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pick one song the band plays that has vocals [lead and bv], your main rhythm tone and a solo tone

and play an extract of that song like from the 2nd verse -> chorus -> riff / groove -> guitar solo [maybe just the first half]

this way you can see how you sound as a band..
nail the level of the lead vocals..
sort the bv mics [in the chorus]
make sure your soloing tone level is ok

so this could be something like a 2min 30 extract from a song
 
brokenvail said:
I do al my high and low cutting in the cab block so I don't deal with x# of db drop. I have had a few clean amps that needed more but I have never gone up past 200. In that region your bass player should have plenty of room to live below you. If not he may need to do some adjusting of his tone and you may need some more mids to help push you though but my low cut always start at 120 and my high cut at 6000 (some times a smidge more but never over 7) oh and I play on stage with a bass player and a keyboard player who's keyboard is 88 keys. at one point we had a 2nd keyboard player who's keyboard was 76 and I still has no issue.
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As I said, the boomyness is mostly at clean presets, probably because my main guitar has a lot of bass (using a Duesenberg Starplayer TV, which is a semi-hollowbody mixture of Jazz git and Les Paul).
But I'll probably set up a filter on my clean presets instead of rolling off the global EQ at the 250Hz band.

You never told us what you are using rig wise. If you are using a cab for stage monitoring the boomyness can be from that
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No cab, just directly to FOH, using whatever monitoring is available on stage. I like to hear what the audience hears when playing.

Can someone make a suggestion on how much the highs should be rolled off? I usually back the 6k+ bands by like 3-4 dB, should I cut them all the way down for a better mix? Usually I'd rely on the sound guy doing the setup (mainly because I think of them as co-workers, not enemies), but as I said in the opening post, for this particular gig, there is almost no time to do the soundcheck so I can't trust on it.
 
Zwiebelchen said:
Can someone make a suggestion on how much the highs should be rolled off?
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I suggest you do it in the cab block and leave the global eq flat. Hi cut at 6000 and low cut at 120 or higher (go as high as you think you need. In a mix 120-fuffly 6000(7000) is where the guitar wants to be so I force it into that space. Anything above and it is not really pretty for guitar and hits some annoying highs ect
 
CodePoet said:
Yek - where are you making the 120Hz and 6.5k rolloffs?
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I use Low Cut and Hi-Cut in the Cab block. That signal goes to the FOH.

I run a separate signal (OUT2) for my own monitor which is a power amp and guitar cabinet.
No Low/High Cut applied to that signal (no Cab block).
Although I do adjust the Global EQ's low frequencies for OUT2, depending on the volume and room.
 
Zwiebelchen said:
ACan someone make a suggestion on how much the highs should be rolled off? I usually back the 6k+ bands by like 3-4 dB, should I cut them all the way down for a better mix? Usually I'd rely on the sound guy doing the setup (mainly because I think of them as co-workers, not enemies), but as I said in the opening post, for this particular gig, there is almost no time to do the soundcheck so I can't trust on it.
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Depends. Some sound engineers roll off (block) all the way to 5kHz, and I must say that fits just fine in a rock band. Others keep it at around 6kHz, for bright but not harsh clean tones.
This is FOH only, because on its own, you may find 6kHz too dark for bright clean tones.
IMHO of course.
 
Hmm, I wouldn't want to change all my presets with the high and lowcuts, simply because I use the same presets for recording purposes (I took almost a week to make them sound large and fat in stereo, but still have perfect mono compat).
Is there any downside in using the global EQ over the cab settings?
 
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