First gig yesterday -- impressions, and finding my sound in the band

    "I should not copy him exactly, to avoid getting overlapping our spectrum ranges"


    What about double-tracked guitars on pretty much ever modern rock album? Sometimes the tones are divergent, but often its the EXACT same tone, just a different take. When you pan L/R you get stereo separation and there's no "fighting", but a synergy of tone! I don't know how you run everything live, but I don't think there's a real danger of having a very similar tone as your fellow guitarist.


    It's nice to have different tones so you can more clearly each guitar, but unless they're both panned dead center, I wouldn't worry about frequency overlap.


    Also, make sure to try small (+/- 0.2) adjustments to high and low shift on the cab profile. These can have some pretty large effects on the tone that you can't get via EQ.

    Quote from meambobbo

    It's nice to have different tones so you can more clearly each guitar, but unless they're both panned dead center, I wouldn't worry about frequency overlap.


    In a live situation usually everything is summed to mono, both guitarists come from FOH on both sides of the stage. Otherwise you'd have the people on the other side of the stage hear only the rhythm guitars during a solo and vice versa.

    Quote from nakedzen

    It's nice to have different tones so you can more clearly each guitar, but unless they're both panned dead center, I wouldn't worry about frequency overlap.


    Quote from nakedzen

    In a live situation usually everything is summed to mono, both guitarists come from FOH on both sides of the stage. Otherwise you'd have the people on the other side of the stage hear only the rhythm guitars during a solo and vice versa.


    Yeah, I'm trying to get a similar tone to the other guitarist's powerfull midrange-driven sound so mine will hold its own, but not exactly the same.


    Oh yeah, another thing we found out while discussing the gig with fans who were present is that the soundguy apparently added a lot of reverb to the guitars. He was probably more used to mixing "classic" rock bands (we play melodic/proggy/Pink Floyd influenced/low-tuned death metal...). Nothing we (or my Kemper) could do anything about, unfortunately, since we didn't hear it from the stage.


    By the way -- speaking about solo and rhythm guitar: we recently started slightly reducing the rhythm guitar's volume during solos as opposed to boosting the solo to "louder than loud", it works well as long as you keep it subtle!

    yeah, i don't really play live, so i'm not as familiar with the standard practices.


    i remember seeing on meshuggah's rig rundown they have cubase automating all their patch changes, so I think they actually switch from L/R pan on rhythms to mono rhythm/lead when the solo's kick in. so yeah, that'd be neat...


    anyway, if you are both equal through both sides, then yeah, it'd probably pay off to diverge your tones a bit. But that means that the other guitarist has to back off as well. If he's taking up all the guitar frequencies, of course he's going to sound big, but there's nothing you can do to also sound big; or you will be battling each other. He needs to thin out or darken or scoop, while you provide the chunk or the brightness or the mids, respectively.

    It's been mentioned previously that you should set the main out to master mono if you want to use the L/R signals separately. However, regardless of whether you run the master to FOH in mono or stereo, I recommend that you use the monitor-output to feed your backline. Then you are able to adjust levels separately, and can even unlink the main output from the master volume control. This is what I do, with main output level fixed at -20 or 25. Sound engineers really appreciate to get a stable level from my KPA regardless of how I adjust my backline.

    Quote

    Then you are able to adjust levels separately, and can even unlink the main output from the master volume control. This is what I do, with main output level fixed at -20 or 25. Sound engineers really appreciate to get a stable level from my KPA regardless of how I adjust my backline.


    Good point. I adjusted my backline volume using the dials on my powered speakers, but your method definitely seems the way to go. I'll make sure to get the requisite cables ready for next time.