Playing Through Another Players Amp

Quote from Ruefus

Reminds me of a club owner's story of a guy with a Fender Twin that he turned up to 6 and refused to lower it. There are very few local gigs where a Twin on the boil 'fits' in the mix.

The story goes that the guitarist was indignant and said "That's my sound. I'm not changing."

At the end of the night, the club owner was talking to the entire band and said (pointing at the other members) "You guys are great." Then he points to the guitarist "But this prick made sure you won't play here again."

I’m ashamed to say that I have been that guy too when I was young and stupid and thought I was an under appreciated rock star rather than a twat playing pubs.

first thing I always do is asking the sound engineer what kind of signal he wants and whether is ok for him that I use my own monitor

Occasionally (~10%) I'll use a Dynaco Mark III rather than the Powerack amp when an outdoor venue supports it. Although I do like the tone, the additional gear and load in/out of the Mark III is still a downside.

Quote from Grumpter

Thanks for all the replies. I read through and tried to absorb everything.

The gig was cancelled due to an accidental double booking. They are looking to reschedule for later in the summer. I am definitely going to give it a try as far as convincing them to let me use my gear instead of theirs but don't want to push it too far. We are doing a favor for one of our band members cousins, or maybe it's the band members wife's cousin. Either way I won't rock the boat too much if it comes down to it.

I fully understand why they want to reuse the gear, drums is particular and its not unusual for 2 bands on the same bill. It makes the sound guys job easier and quicker change arounds....but its very rare to use the whole set up the same i.e. with drums you normally swap "breakables" which are cymbals and snare.

Same principle with guitar so it's key to find out what they want to keep the same. I suspect its because they want to minimize setting up a full guitar set up.

Not sure if you clarified what the set up is but:

1) If its miked cab i.e. guitar goes throught he PA, then they should have no issue with taking that mike lead and using it for your KPA and giving you a monitor feed

2) If its off the backline ( which I personally think is nuts) then you plugging your KPA into their amp for me will cause loads of issues, not least I suspect you will have to change the other guitarists "precious" settings. In that scenario I would look to use their cab and have a power amp in between you KPA (perhaps borrow one)? This is a huge advantage of the powerrack/toaster and you just plug it in!

If I was in that situation I'd base my decision on the actual tube amp. If it's a great 2 channel amp with reverb and a switch onstage I'd just bring a tiny pedalboard for compression, delay, wah and get all the amp tone from the tube amp.

If the amp has the ability to unplug the speaker I'd be asking the amp owner if I can bypass the amp and plug my powered toaster into it. I have a male/ female phone plug adapter specifically for this sort of thing.

Obviously you'll have a problem if you leave the speaker unplugged after and they fire it up for the next band with no speaker load!!!

One issue that can come up is that if you going FOH with the KPA, they'll have to have a decent monitoring system for which you'll need 100% of you stage volume from. For the other bands, the guitarist is getting most of his needed stage volume from the cranked up amp behind him vs being 100% on being turned up in the wedge, in a mix that might be shared by the rest of the band.

As one that usually plays with IEMs and usually doesn't use any stage amp or personal or shared FRFR monitor, I've gotten use to the sound of playing through buds. A few summers back I played two sets a day for 8 days at a camp with the worst possible monitoring situation with the whole band sharing one mix. I could hardly hear myself. So (with help from a 15ft 1/8" stereo extension cable) I plugged my IEM's directly into my kemper Stage and gave myself the extra volume of my own instrument, while simultaneously lowering the volume of everything else as the buds blocked out some of the other stage volume. Couldn't be happier.

Quote from Grooguit

One issue that can come up is that if you going FOH with the KPA, they'll have to have a decent monitoring system for which you'll need 100% of you stage volume from. For the other bands, the guitarist is getting most of his needed stage volume from the cranked up amp behind him vs being 100% on being turned up in the wedge, in a mix that might be shared by the rest of the band.

As one that usually plays with IEMs and usually doesn't use any stage amp or personal or shared FRFR monitor, I've gotten use to the sound of playing through buds. A few summers back I played two sets a day for 8 days at a camp with the worst possible monitoring situation with the whole band sharing one mix. I could hardly hear myself. So (with help from a 15ft 1/8" stereo extension cable) I plugged my IEM's directly into my kemper Stage and gave myself the extra volume of my own instrument, while simultaneously lowering the volume of everything else as the buds blocked out some of the other stage volume. Couldn't be happier.

Agree although again it fully depends on the set up.

If the event is used to handling multiple bands, they know to have a dedicated monitor mix. In fact last festival I played, although I had access to a Cab for my powered rack, I ran purely with the PA monitors and it worked better than any backline as its automatically spread across the stage...even the drummer could hear me...poor him

My worry for the OP is that the event and band don't seem to be accounting for another band. In that case I agree with Finally, I'd just use their guitar amp and not use the KPA because it will cause more issues potentially. as long as you have the basic sounds you need....few people are going to go "oh that song is missing that spring reverb"...