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Joined: November 2003 Posts: 11
| I am interested in improving my tone and keeping it consistent from venue to venue. I have studied Pauls rig in the album section. Which components are essential vs. nice to have? Which are the key elements in shaping your sound? |
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Joined: February 2002 Posts: 5750
Location: Scotland | Wane, Unless you always carry carry your own sound system consistency isn't easy. Club systems vary enormously, especially in the quality of the monitors. The ears & skill of the house engineer is also a potential spanner in the works.
My rig is designed to take care of 4 or 5 instruments simultaneously depending on the situation, & send them all to a single channel on the board (guitar, slide guitar, dulcimer, mandolin, lap steel & sometimes Ashbory bass)If you use one or two instruments you wont need as much kit. If I had to break it down to the bare minimum it would be a DI box with EQ, so you can get a sound from the stage without relying on an engineer (Boss AD5, Baggs Para-Acoustic, Sans-Amp Acoustic DI, there's others) and a personal monitor/acoustic amp. I use a Gallien Krueger 200MV which I've had for nearly 20 years. In the case of venues with crappy monitors It's good to have a monitor you know the sound of and can trust. Only other thing I find essential is my Berhinger Shark feedback destroyer. A compressor is nice but certainly not essential. If you have a couple of intruments & a single DI box an A/B switch comes in handy. |
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Joined: November 2003 Posts: 11
| Which that info, I can look at your rig and understand better what you are accomplishing with that setup. Very helpful!!
Thanks!
p.s. I love this site!! Expert advise in the moment |
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Joined: March 2002 Posts: 14842
Location: NJ | I have my 6-string and my 12-string going to an A/B pedal. From there it goes to the tuner. From there it goes to my effects pedal which has a parametric EQ and an XLR-out to the P.A
The problem I have is that when I dial in a pleasant setting on the EQ for the 6-string, it's not necessarily an optimum setting for the 12. The 6 is a deep bowl, the 12 super shallow. See how this ties in with a previous thread on "bowl depth/plugged-in". I can get a fair compromise by tweaking the on-board EQ's. Fortunately, I usually prefer a bright, thin, "strummy" sound to my 12-sound, so I pretty much tailor the parametric in favor of the 6 (since I usually use that the most) and adjust the 12 accordingly.
It's funny, we'll sometimes do half a set where I'm playing the 12 all high and bright and almost with an "overgrown mandolin" sound, then I'll switch to the 6 for a song and wow!! what a difference!!
It's like hugging a big bellows! You can almost SEE the air being pumped out through the soundhole!! |
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Joined: December 2001 Posts: 10582
Location: NJ | I would love to steal Paul t's compressor and watch him scurry around like a hedgehog wondering what on earth he would do. |
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Joined: February 2002 Posts: 5750
Location: Scotland | I didn't realise my compression addiction was so obvious. |
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Joined: December 2001 Posts: 10582
Location: NJ | yup |
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