How to make a rig road ready?

Quote from Blodsmak-Tom

...about making a profile that sounds good through my earphone, sound great through a PA, competing with the rest of the band?

I would like to turn the approach upside down. Because most prominent source of amateurish band / song sounds is that "competing with the rest of the band".

The ancient knowledge about a good sound for a whole orchestra is a good point to start from. Each instrument was build - and used - to fill a certain part of the frequency spectrum - and just that! The result is automagically a rich, full and still transparent sound of the whole orchestra. And this comes for free, no EQs needed.

The biggest culprits to work against that magic is us guitaists! Adding lower strings to compete with the bass, overdrive with tuned-down sounds and oooomph at 60 Hz, eating up the whole midrange and then adding creamy highs up to 5k. Then there is absolutely no space left for vocals, bass, bass drum, etc...

To make a long story short: The fattest, coolest guitar amp sounds (for noodling around) are typically the worst in a band or song context!

If you want your band to sound great then yes, use high-pass for everything (I mean *everything*) but bass and bass drum. Use many low-passes as well, except the drum cymbals. Try to cut your guitars midrange (or synths or bass, if kindof distorted) at a point where your vocals sit. Cut, cut, cut, avoid boost. And dont be afraid, if those instruments are kindof whimpy when soloed!

Imagine your general guitar sound gives gracefully space to the others and especially the vocalist. Now, during your solo, you switch the Kemper to your fat-super-heroe-noodling sound. The audience will think: WOW! If you plyed that sound all over the song neither your solo would get that attention, nor the singer and the whole song. It would just not be dramatic enough.

Just my 2 cent.

While there are many on the Rig Exchange, The Kemper Factory Content, and all of the Kemper Rig Packs have sounds that work well in a live or recording mix.

You may be overthinking it a bit, but your planning will enable you to do your onstage job: performing, without thinking about it.

Mix-ready sounds tend to already have the problematic low end removed. If you are used to low end thump onstage, you can use the KPA Monitor EQ to dial some of that in, without sending it to the Main Outputs and PA.

if you were using a regular amp, what would you do to make the sound "live-ready"? Same thing with the KPA:

I suggest making sure your sounds are the same relative volume, and there are no unintended radical EQ changes.

The FOH sound engineers will do their job, and make any additional needed minor adjustments

It is tough.

I have similar issues. The way I have managed to get good live tone is as follows:

• Generally, using the "amplifier" section to boost "clarity" and "definition" seems to give a more transparent sound that cuts the mix better
• Same section "Pick" attack helps cut into the mix as well
• Bass heavy rigs sound good by yourself, but can't cut it live. The HF content is essential to get through the mix. Make sure you have adequate "treble" and "presence"
• "Presence" brings out the clarity of your guitar. Too much and you have ice-pick-in-the-ear syndrome
• Less gain usually results in more cut through the mix

The process....

Once you have created a good clean, a good rhythm, and a good lead tone using the above stuff, you simply have to gauge the sound off of how it sounds in the mix.

When you have some sounds that you KNOW are good in the mix, then you have to listen to how those rigs sound through your head phones. Think about how they sound and use that as a base to get other rigs with different sounds to cut into the mix as well.

I have found that when I audition something from the rig manager, or purchase a new rig, they frequently sound good to me ...... until I put them up against my gigging performance rigs. I generally always end up tweaking them at that point.

OneEng1 nailed it for me when he mentioned less gain. At high volume it can sound messy. Also I found some rhythm sounds for rock or metal that sound good in a studio mix often are too bright live.

It's a problem for me & here's how I've approached it. I've got about 20 performances on my KPA where each performance features a different amp. The 5 slots in each performance feature a range of gain for that amp - typically, clean, crunch & solo tones. I usually take the profiles as I find them - I'm not a "tweaker". Out of about 20 performances, I've only found 2 performances that will consistently cut through the mix in most live situations. Unfortunately, most of the people I play with don't give much thought to leaving "sonic space" for others, so if I want my rhythm gtr or my solos to be heard by everyone in the band (while maintaining a tone that I like) I have to make it happen myself. Using 2 DXR10 powered speakers (totalling 1400 watts RMS) helps a lot too!!

I'd suggest that if you want to have everything sit in the mix, you and your band set aside one jam session to just set your levels and tones at *gig volumes*. Doing it at home alone without the band is a recipe for disaster. You all want to be together to set the tones and the levels so that you get maximum sonic clarity when you go live. An extra pair of ears really does wonders when finalising your tones.

It's guaranteed that not all venues will be the same, so your sound may change in different places. Even positioning your speakers differently can impact the sound. Best option in that case for on-the-fly setting is to use the EQ in the output section, should get you relatively the same sound wherever you are. If you play the same venue often, you can save those output settings so that you can recall them every time you play there.

Totally agree with @nightlight

Use a rehearsal to help set volumes / tonality.

Talk to band about issues of 'sonic space' if needed as with the reply above. Nothing frustrates me more than selfish musicians when I try my best to be generous.

Have fun

I'm not sure you should be compromising tone to compete with other instruments. In any case, it is hard as a musician playing a single instrument to judge what is coming through at the right levels.

Our FOH engineer let me know what levels were wrong for the first few shows with the Kemper.

This might sound rather obvious, but get to know your Kemper inside out! If someone says to you, need less bass, more treble, adjust this, adjust that etc.. on that sound. make sure you know where to adjust the settings and how to save them. I used my Kemper virtually out of the box to play live, and experienced the same, just to be left scratching my head! Had to lock myself in the rehearsal space for a few weeks with the Kemper and the manual!

Do you guys really low pass everything on rigs you send to FOH? I usually aim for the way I would set a real amp (not cranking the bass, but I never had a high pass filter in the effects loop of my tube amps or anything).

I figure that, if my rig sounds like a really good amp normally does, the FOH will EQ it the same way they do real amps, which they are used to dealing with. It's already probably less bassy than a mic with proximity effect anyway...

Then again, I'm a Fender guy so maybe my guitar tones are on the brighter side naturally than some.

I got very good results when i tweak sounds at home. What i do is, i tweak when i start a backing track.
I do it very loud and when i think it fits to the mix with the backing track its 90% ok for live playing. The rest is fine tuning with the band. My experience is, that a tweaked rig when i play at bedroom level and without anything else never fits in a mix, because this " good sounding rigs" have too much punch and bass . Cool for playing alone, but never with a band.when i try to use a rig like this in band context i have to cut the bass, increase mids and reduce presence and i have to deal with definition and clarity.
If a sound is too harsh after dealing with this parameters i use the lead booster in stomp A , tone setted to prox. 5.0 and boost at + 1,5 to 2 db, try this effect.

@MBE

I don't high pass filter my live rigs. But, like you, the rigs I use live sound balanced to me at gig level volume.

paults. What monitor system do you use to get gig level volume? Dxr 10? If so do you use locut/hipass switch on your monitor systems?

Yes, I use a DXR10. I have it side washed, in wedge position. I have the EQ options for the speaker turned off.

The EQ on the KPA Monitor Out is usually flat, too. In some rooms, I will turn the low end up (+0.1 ) or down (-0.1) very slightly.

Lol @ some of the advice in this thread.

I've been a FOH engineer for over 15 years now. Guitar tone in any given venue is a moving target. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. This is why there is a guy out front whose job it is to fiddle with his knobs(!) to make your sound work within the constraints of the equipment and room that it's creating sound in/through.

That said, I would say it's fairly simple from your point of view: get a good studio sound going on your KPA's main outputs. Your FOH engineer will be pleasantly surprised by that. He will do whatever needs to be done to it (maybe a HPF, maybe tame some high mids) to translate it to a PA. Assuming that he knows what he's doing (most pub engineers don't) and that the PA doesn't sound like a sack of ass (most small PAs do). Although if you're rolling with a studio-processed profile (e.g. you profiled the complete studio signal chain of your last record while you recorded it), theoretically he should be able to leave it flat if the PA is tuned well enough (hah! Too many hack system techs in this business...)

If you're unlucky with the FOH engineer and the PA, NOTHING you can do with your Kemper will solve that. Employ a FOH engineer to gig with you, and buy a decent digital mixing desk for him to use (even an X32 if you have little cash). If you can't afford one, you're just going to have to deal with it and make the best of a bad situation.

If your doing a gig at a large festival, or supporting a large tour (I'm talking arena size gigs here), generally speaking they will have high end PA systems and decent system techs and decent FOH engineers to run it all, and in that scenario you have nothing to worry about with your nicely studio processed profile.

All you gotta worry about is using your monitor EQ to adjust the tone coming through your cab (this is why we're all asking for parametric EQ on the monitor out) on stage to your liking. Don't sacrifice the FOH sound just for your monitoring. Remember: you are one person on a stage. There may be hundreds or thousands of people out there expecting a nice sound from you. Why ruin their experience just for your ego trip of having a nice sound on stage?

Oh, and protect your Kemper. Shock mount it - don't use one of those cheap racks with no shock absorption. Get a proper one with rubber or foam between the rack strip and the outer case. Or build your own if you have workshop skills.

And carry spares of everything (even your KPA) if you can afford it. When the SHTF you'll thank me.