BeZo
Well-known member
Make Marshall Great Again!
Simon Dorn
Well-known member
NowYou'rePlayingWithPower
Well-known member
I always have my camera ready for those times when I need a viral video.
BeZo
Well-known member
Been saying this shit for 15 years now!
Dan Gleesak
Well-known member
Most boomer guitarists I know practically beat off to stories of Marshalls catching fire on stage back in the good old days. seems like it’s nothing new
Floyd Eye
Well-known member
The golden age of tube amplifiers is waaaay over. If you would have told me 30 years ago that one day I would witness people obsessing over the tonal subtleties of current production Chinese tubes and selling them second hand I would have laughed in your face. Marshalls made in China ? Fuck that. Tubes made in China, fuck that too.
Dan Gleesak
Well-known member
I still love tube amps and all that crap, but at this point I can’t imagine ever getting rid of my Kemper. It’s just too good and too easy
Floyd Eye
Well-known member
I know a few respected old boomer tube amp guys who are running Kempers now too. I suppose if I was a boomer guitarist and performed regularly I might be enticed by the ease and weight. Ten years ago when I quit gigging though I was thoroughly in the " Never sacrifice tone for weight" camp and gigged exclusively with full SVT/810 rigs. At this point I just enjoy playing with myself, so old ass tube amps loaded with old ass tubes it is.
DanTravis62
Moderator
They're great for recording, or if you play in a boomer cover band where you need a million tones. Not so great for normal band type stuff, usable, but not great. Mostly because people lie on the internet about their gigging practices and pretend every venue has really good sound reinforcement.
In most cases, you'll need to schlep around a power amp and cabinet of some kind - either a guitar centric power/cab with IRs off, or a IR centric clean power with FRFR.
In the actual trenches where people actually play gigs? People still use tube amps almost exclusively. It's only situations where you're supplying your own sound reinforcement, or you are playing high dollar venues where the sound reinforcement is guaranteed, that Kemper/axe/quad rigs are common.
I love the kemper for its recording utility, but I have no illusions about its strengths and weaknesses. Generally speaking, depending on what side of the argument you fall on, you exaggerate the positives or negatives.
Dan Gleesak
Well-known member
I got to check out the back lines of some pretty cool bands when I worked at a casino and was surprised by how many bands I saw tour with Kempers. I think it was seeing (and hearing) blue oyster cult using Kemper that finally sold me on one.
It seemed like almost every band playing the smaller stages were using Helix floor units too. Killer FOH sound
Floyd Eye
Well-known member
The guy I am thinking about is a professional touring musician. He's Cyndi Lauper's bassist/music director.
DanTravis62
Moderator
In those types of situations, the kemper/axe/quads are fantastic - especially if you have your own sound guy, or the venues you play provide them
If you can have someone (besides yourself) running damage control and putting out any technical fires, they almost always sound excellent - and consistent from gig to gig - which is the really important thing for higher level bands.
This is almost always the case for big cover bands or original bands that can play theaters - in the clubs, dive bars, and small venues, this is almost never the case.
That's why the arguments about digital vs tube amps are almost always disingenuous. Someone's experience is entirely informed by variables around them that are going to be wildly fucking different depending on the music/gig.
cobrahead1030
Well-known member
This is more relevant than many of us would like to admit.
I've played rock & roll dive bars in the southeast for 20+ years, almost exclusively. Occasionally we'll play a bigger venue or get to open for someone, but it's essentially the same environment on a larger scale. I always show up with a 4x12 and whatever 50-100w head suits the band. Keep the gain & feedback under control, have enough mids, & don't crank it stupidly loud.
I never really have issues with venues or sound guys, occasionally I'll have one who insists on me turning down a little lower than I'd like. In those cases, I just suck it up & deal with it. I'd say 90% of the bands I see are running a comparable setup, some of them are using 2x12's, occasionally I'll see a 1x12 or 4x10 setup. Maybe 10% of the bands I see playing out in that realm are using modelers & running direct.
There's a hundred other scenarios though, where guys are playing out just as much; church gigs, theater shows, more 'professional' corporate venues, etc. where they do things completely different. I've got buddies that play in those circles, but zero real life experience, so I honestly couldn't tell you the first thing about what people run there or how.
DanTravis62
Moderator
I've done everything from high paying original gigs, high paying/profile cover/tribute gigs, to playing the scummiest, trashiest punk rock clubs and dive bars imaginable. I understand that most people don't have that sort of wide variety of experience, so they don't have the perspective to be able to recognize how wildly different your rig needs can be based on that.
Most of the time, with the bands i'm in now, it's either cover gigs with really high quality/self provided PA, or down and dirty dive bars and clubs with my original punk band... and if I tried to run the opposite rig with the other band it would be literally impossible.
How do I know this? I've tried before, LOL
Like I had two shows in one night in the same city, and tried to use my kemper rig that I used for the cover band at a dive bar punk show later in the night. It didn't go well. I could certainly run the kempers IR outs into the mains, but the "sound guy" had literally never done that before, and didn't know how to get that into the monitors... which there were only 3 - and one was for the drummer. So apparently the kemper was coming out of the mains but no one in the band could hear me through the monitors. It was a nightmare, and why I run the exact type of rig you run for those types of shows. 4x12 and a hundred watt head.
I can always turn down the halfstack, can't turn up a modeler when you're limited by the monitors and sound guy's experience with direct rigs.
With my cover band though? Never had a problem. Not once. Either we were supplying the PA and could take as much time as we needed to set up, or there were professionals running sound who know exactly what to do with a direct/digital rig.
People say this all encompassing shit like "You can literally do any gig with a modeler!" or the opposite "A modeler would never work at any gig" and it's always both completely right, completely wrong, and completely dependent on the context.
Generally speaking, it follows those guidelines though.
Big cover bands, tribute bands, P&W, and high level pros all swear by modelers, and people who try to use them for club and small theatre gigs end up running them with a power amp and a cabinet because otherwise they couldn't use them at all - which of course defeats the purpose and "convenience" of using a modeler in the first place.
MadAsAHatter
Well-known member
I'm not sure why we're talking 50/100 watt heads, 4x12's and modelers. You don't need any of those things to play live. We all know that a 15 watt lunchbox combo will cover any gig you could possibly think of.
311boogieman
Well-known member
I've played brutal metalz in Madison Square Basement with my 1 watt Blackheart Killer Ant 
So to stay on topic.....
So to stay on topic.....
BeZo
Well-known member
I've seen a string of bands shit the bed lately trying that. One was a big club and good sound system, but the lunchbox did not fill the room right. The other was a small bar where there wasn't PA support. They ran IEMs, but they matched stage volume. The 5150 was quiet and neutered just to match the 6506MH. It sucks to see a good band and struggle to hear the guitars.
In theory, the PA should cover the inadequacies of a low wattage head. In practice, the only way to truly sound good is to sound balanced before the PA gets involved. You need 50+ watts to keep up with a hard hitting drummer.
Maybe if you play jazz or some shit, that would work though.
RaceU4her
Well-known member
this is one of those guitarist things.. its like a badge of rock and roll honor if your Marshall catches on fire mid gig, any other amp that happens to though and we are basically blacklisting them lol