Interesting discussion with sound guy last night…

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mystixboi

mystixboi

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So my band played at a pretty high profile venue last night that hosts national and international acts. They have performers 5 nights a week.

As we were setting up for soundcheck, the sound guy and I were talking. I asked him if he saw a lot of acts going digital. He told me that the only acts he really sees using digital amps are bands that only play every few weeks and that touring acts still use tube amps.

I don’t see many major acts anymore but a lot of the bands I play shows with run HX, quad cortex, etc. I know Metallica runs Fractal.

What are you seeing out there? Just curious.
 
In the neighbor thread you can see Dave Murray is using Fractal now too
 
mystixboi said:
So my band played at a pretty high profile venue last night that hosts national and international acts. They have performers 5 nights a week.

As we were setting up for soundcheck, the sound guy and I were talking. I asked him if he saw a lot of acts going digital. He told me that the only acts he really sees using digital amps are bands that only play every few weeks and that touring acts still use tube amps.

I don’t see many major acts anymore but a lot of the bands I play shows with run HX, quad cortex, etc. I know Metallica runs Fractal.

What are you seeing out there? Just curious.
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I see about 50/50 split these days. Crowd doesn't give a shit and neither do I.

What they use is completely irrelevant if the tone is good and the show rocks.

Don't listen when your eyes!
:rock:
 
mystixboi said:
So my band played at a pretty high profile venue last night that hosts national and international acts. They have performers 5 nights a week.

As we were setting up for soundcheck, the sound guy and I were talking. I asked him if he saw a lot of acts going digital. He told me that the only acts he really sees using digital amps are bands that only play every few weeks and that touring acts still use tube amps.

I don’t see many major acts anymore but a lot of the bands I play shows with run HX, quad cortex, etc. I know Metallica runs Fractal.

What are you seeing out there? Just curious.
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where is this mythical, magical place that has live music 5 nights a week in 2023? Nashville? LA? :D

We have beach bars and dive bars mostly around here; bands usually use their amps (I see a lot of Fender combo amps, a few Mesa combos, or boutique combos) unmiked for volume, with only vocals in the PA. The few larger venues with a great house PA, they'll mic the amps or have silent stage with modelers. Mostly see Fractal, Helix when I see modelers but I don't go to many of these shows.

I did see a local band in one of the beach dive bars where the guitarist was using a small Zoom modeler (G2on IIRC) into the house PA last year, bass player had a small combo amp.
 
When I last visited Nashville, most were digital and sounded great! The rest were using small combos and small pedalboards and also sounded great!

I mostly use my PT15IR and a 1x12. I'll send the FOH an output from the IR out. This works really well for me.

Some gigs let me crank and I'll use a 4x12 on those gigs. Long gone are the days when I would use two full stacks at pant flapping volume....:cheers2:
 
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It depends on the style of music and the gig.

For most punk and metal gigs at small clubs and bars, everyone uses real amps (generally 50 and 100w half stacks) until you get to the festival/major label level. Then the modelers appear because you have higher level sound support.

For tan pants bands and P&W it's mostly small tube combos.

In the real world, modelers don't generally work unless you have excellent sound reinforcement - once you have that, they work great.
 
99% tube amp here, locally and national acts. Did stage/sound rental for a couple of national country acts a few years ago, both were all tube amps.
 
I'm a freelance live sound and broadcast A1 (audio engineer) for a living here in NY.

I'm still seeing 50/50 here in NY from big tours.

It seems like when bands are traveling a ton and need to be super efficient you will see the entire band going direct with Kempers or axe fx , total dead stage, no wedges, nothing live on stage except for drums, everyone on shure psm1000 IEM.

Generally seeing most bands roll through with an artist team. Their own consoles, cabling , pretty turn key setups on the tour side.

Local acts are a mixed bag, I see tube amps and digital.

My perspective is , you need to cater to the room and event your playing. Big rooms that are acoustically treated can take a little more Stage volume / energy.

Sometimes I have bands that have so much SPL and MUD coming off the stage from amps and screaming monitors , that it totally ruins the mix. In this situation , in ear monitors and going direct helps the final product greatly.
 
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I know Whitesnake is 100% digital. How do I know this? Years ago the P.A. cut out at a show I was at and literally everything stopped other than a snare hit and they didn't even know it had cutout because they had in ears. It was so awkward and then the sound cut back in, lol
 
mystixboi said:
So my band played at a pretty high profile venue last night that hosts national and international acts. They have performers 5 nights a week.

As we were setting up for soundcheck, the sound guy and I were talking. I asked him if he saw a lot of acts going digital. He told me that the only acts he really sees using digital amps are bands that only play every few weeks and that touring acts still use tube amps.

I don’t see many major acts anymore but a lot of the bands I play shows with run HX, quad cortex, etc. I know Metallica runs Fractal.

What are you seeing out there? Just curious.
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Literally everyone I know in Nashville from nobody’s to cairie underwood’s band, are using fractals or Kemper’s. Every metal band in the world seems to be in this boat as well. Not sure what this guy is referring to, but he’s out of touch with the times.
 
I just had maneskin here and he had 2) 50 watt 1987 plexis with 2) 4x12 , and Bassist had two ampeg svt classic heads and 8x10 cabs. All on ! With Kemper running in the back as backup.
 
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Doing between 4-6 rock band gigs per month here, varying size crowds and stages, casinos, we’re still all amps 100% of the time but could prob benefit from at least IEM use...acoustic plugged in band another 2-4 gigs per month and were all plugged into acoustic preamps into powered Yamaha monitors. Only one other local band I’ve seen that plays regularly with an AxeFx board, bass player from Everclear in that lineup, and it’s just one of the two guitar players
 
I guess it depends where you live, size of the venue??

I live in a small town and haven't seen anyone using modellers yet, mainly just small combo amps. Although, there's not much of a live scene where I live and it's been a few years since I went to the bar.
 
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