Commercial profiles seem REALLY bright at gig levels, anyone else notice this?

    It is no wonder that Palmer units are so popular especially in live situations. For example Palmer PDI-09 is basically a low pass filter set at 5kHz. The low end gradually and very slightly rolls off from 200Hz to 20Hz. It also doesn't have the bump at around 150Hz that regular guitar cabs have, so it may sound a little bit lighter when palm muting etc. It may sound dull and blunt when played at home but it works with a band very well. Also, the Palmer's eq curve is more like a straight line, compared to the eq curve of a miked cab which is jagged with peaks and valleys. So the sound, while not being so authentic, is more full.


    In my opinion it is the mid content between say, 600Hz to 4khz that are crucial for a fat sound and cutting trough live. Many profiles are too scooped in that area for live playing.


    In studio one will use whatever sound that is suitable for the track and double or triple tracking guitars may need more high end than a single guitar. Plus the guitar sound has to leave room for the vocals etc. But for live sound, the "frown" curve eq is the way to go imo. In other words, guitars slot in band sound is in the mids, whereas the lows and the highs will be washed away once the band kicks in.


    Listen to profiles made by professionals with lots of live playing experience, for example Michael Britt or Bert Meulendijk. Those guys' profiles have ample of mids and not too much piercing high end or boomy lows, so they work live very well.


    Thanks for the info. I'm basically a hired gun around town, 100% live player besides my home preparation. Helps fund the gear so my day job can go to normal expenses =) I don't do a lot of studio work. So before I got a kemper I used a palmer PGA-04 power soak and speaker emulator with my tube amp heads. For live playing I preferred it to a real mic'd cab. It was just so much easier to get a good tone out of it than micing a cab, and sound guys loved it exactly for the reasons you mentioned 1) full, flat EQ and 2) no bad peaks or valleys. My back liked not lifting 80lb AC30s around any more either.


    I definitely agree about really emphasizing the mids. Sounds honky and dark at home but live in a mix it really shines due to the fletcher munson thing and just as a result of where guitars sit in a live band mix. Some of Mbritt's profiles fit this mold and as a result work really well live, like the Vox AC30 B1.


    I am regretting mentioning the HPF thing in my initial post because the ear piercing brightness is still there with some of these profiles with or without the HPF. These profiles sound great in headphones for recording, but again, live they just become an absolute ice picky mess.

    So what I do for live is: I pick up my favorite tone and than I search for some similar tones but with brighter and darker characteristics. During soundcheck I decide which one to use together with the tech. If I've found some sounds which worked good in a live situation than I save this sounds to have something to compare in the future.
    This worked out good for me because I get to know what will work for me in different venue sizes.
    I have a gig at friday and I will also try to match the venue better with the high and low cut filters from the studio eq. If it's too boomy or too fizzy I will try to use the filters.
    The funny thing is, in my pre-kemper days I trusted a more or less precise miced up amp situation which is often made only by eye and sometimes in less than 30 seconds and now I have "problems" to trust already miced up sounds which I can pre-check before the gig even starts. ;)

    Quote from Monkey_Man


    When I saw the question in the title, asking "Anyone else notice this?", my knee-jerk thought was to say, "Yeah, Fletcher and Munson did a looong time ago!".


    An HPF aint an HPF, just like oils aint oils. More information is needed.


    If the roll-off was 6dB / octave, which is quite commonly used, but more so back in the day when conservative values ruled the roost in mixing (remember the white lab coats?), it wouldn't have destroyed much of the warmth and character of the Profile/s, you'd think. However, in live situations, IMHO much-steeper slopes are used often and without second thoughts. This is because when the FOH engineer hears a bunch of mud and lowish-end mic boom that's bordering on feedback and so on, his / her priority is to squash the problem, and he / she reaches for the heaviest hammer in the toolbox. I expect that, by default, most live desks are set up with pretty-steep slopes selected as their default live starting points.


    That's certainly a distinct possibility worth investigating.