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Junior Varsity
Do guitar players really need guitar in their own stage wedge?
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<blockquote data-quote="Steve Kirby" data-source="post: 146232" data-attributes="member: 9411"><p>Re: Do guitar players really need guitar in their own stage wedge?</p><p></p><p></p><p>As much as possible I try to keep the front line wedges to vocals only. When I only had 4 monitor mixes my standard was one mix across the front with vocals only, one for the drummer and a separate sidefill mix on each side to feed instruments into. As someone else said, primarily for people to hear the folks on the other side of the stage but I will add some of them if they really want it.</p><p></p><p>There are also Beam Blockers which attach to the inside of the grillecloth in the center to block the dust cap beam and disperse the sound a bit. The Bogner Cube has one built into the grille frame. (greatest guitar monitor cabinet I've ever heard. I've seen folks from Steve Vai to Norman Brown use them on stage as what they hear with the rest of Vai's rig being stage props. Although I personally prefer the spread of an open back cabinet, I used a Cube for years in places where I was jammed up agains a draped or carpeted wall)</p><p></p><p>Turning the amps around depends on what the back wall is. Heavy drapes or carpet will suck a lot of highs and it may be some work to compensate. We're probably talking different musical genres here as turning the amp around mostly makes a difference with closed back cabs of the stack variety used for raunchier stuff. Which also have dispersion patterns that are very narrow due to interference of the 4 drivers (all of Ivan's posts about destructive interference also apply to guitar cabinets). The other thing with such rigs is that they have an excess of bass energy. Which sounds great to some guitarists, in love with that big heavy thump. But also obliterates what the bass player is doing. Probably why metal/rock bass playing has degenerated into just following the root of the guitar chord (other than the occasional Jack Bruce/I wanna be a guitar player guitar riff stuffed in).</p><p></p><p>The examples of Beck and Prince are actually good. Jeff has amazing tone production in his hands and needs to hear as much as possible the natural sound of his amp. Before his ears got so bad he used to have wedges with guitar speakers in them connected directly to guitar amp heads so that he was enveloped in the natural sound of his rig rather than what a mic picked up and played back though a full range speaker. Prince in contrast (although a fabulous player) uses a very highly processed sound and is a studio rat by nature. He uses devices rather than his fingers to produce his sound. So he doesn't need that direct connection. As long as he can hear the notes he's playing and that the effects he wanted are engaged, he's good. People like that make a recording producer or soundman's life easy as they aren't bothered by being disconnected from their rig. People like Jeff Beck, Robben Ford, Larry Carlton, Michael Landau, the folks I'd rather listen to (and would like to play like in my dreams) do utilize that closed loop between their hands and what they hear in the air.</p><p></p><p>Sorry for the earlier rant. I just get so tired of non-playing people trying to tell me how I should utilize my instrument. In big festivals, they have pretty much complete control and can do whatever they want, playing "producer" all they want. Although the more they try to do that, the worse things get as we will have already arranged our dynamic cues and if you start jacking faders around it's going to sound bad when someone drops down and then turns up to stick in an arranged line. But in a small venue, where the task is sound "reinforcement" that same arrangement is 90% of what is needed. A bit of fill on instruments to spread the sound out to the other side (although I've never seen a symphony orchestra with basses on the left or both sides so that people over there get the same "balance". Classical music is arranged to make use of spatial counterpoint as well as pitch and timbre) but mostly the task is to "reinforce" those things that acoustically need it. Vocals, horns, some aspects of the drum kit. YMMV</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Steve Kirby, post: 146232, member: 9411"] Re: Do guitar players really need guitar in their own stage wedge? As much as possible I try to keep the front line wedges to vocals only. When I only had 4 monitor mixes my standard was one mix across the front with vocals only, one for the drummer and a separate sidefill mix on each side to feed instruments into. As someone else said, primarily for people to hear the folks on the other side of the stage but I will add some of them if they really want it. There are also Beam Blockers which attach to the inside of the grillecloth in the center to block the dust cap beam and disperse the sound a bit. The Bogner Cube has one built into the grille frame. (greatest guitar monitor cabinet I've ever heard. I've seen folks from Steve Vai to Norman Brown use them on stage as what they hear with the rest of Vai's rig being stage props. Although I personally prefer the spread of an open back cabinet, I used a Cube for years in places where I was jammed up agains a draped or carpeted wall) Turning the amps around depends on what the back wall is. Heavy drapes or carpet will suck a lot of highs and it may be some work to compensate. We're probably talking different musical genres here as turning the amp around mostly makes a difference with closed back cabs of the stack variety used for raunchier stuff. Which also have dispersion patterns that are very narrow due to interference of the 4 drivers (all of Ivan's posts about destructive interference also apply to guitar cabinets). The other thing with such rigs is that they have an excess of bass energy. Which sounds great to some guitarists, in love with that big heavy thump. But also obliterates what the bass player is doing. Probably why metal/rock bass playing has degenerated into just following the root of the guitar chord (other than the occasional Jack Bruce/I wanna be a guitar player guitar riff stuffed in). The examples of Beck and Prince are actually good. Jeff has amazing tone production in his hands and needs to hear as much as possible the natural sound of his amp. Before his ears got so bad he used to have wedges with guitar speakers in them connected directly to guitar amp heads so that he was enveloped in the natural sound of his rig rather than what a mic picked up and played back though a full range speaker. Prince in contrast (although a fabulous player) uses a very highly processed sound and is a studio rat by nature. He uses devices rather than his fingers to produce his sound. So he doesn't need that direct connection. As long as he can hear the notes he's playing and that the effects he wanted are engaged, he's good. People like that make a recording producer or soundman's life easy as they aren't bothered by being disconnected from their rig. People like Jeff Beck, Robben Ford, Larry Carlton, Michael Landau, the folks I'd rather listen to (and would like to play like in my dreams) do utilize that closed loop between their hands and what they hear in the air. Sorry for the earlier rant. I just get so tired of non-playing people trying to tell me how I should utilize my instrument. In big festivals, they have pretty much complete control and can do whatever they want, playing "producer" all they want. Although the more they try to do that, the worse things get as we will have already arranged our dynamic cues and if you start jacking faders around it's going to sound bad when someone drops down and then turns up to stick in an arranged line. But in a small venue, where the task is sound "reinforcement" that same arrangement is 90% of what is needed. A bit of fill on instruments to spread the sound out to the other side (although I've never seen a symphony orchestra with basses on the left or both sides so that people over there get the same "balance". Classical music is arranged to make use of spatial counterpoint as well as pitch and timbre) but mostly the task is to "reinforce" those things that acoustically need it. Vocals, horns, some aspects of the drum kit. YMMV [/QUOTE]
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