Grateful Dead Music Forum

I'm not sure if it's a partial loss of hearing or the tiny rooms we play or a combination of both...but it's made me wonder if there's anyway to be able to hear what I'm playing better without turning up my Fender Twin amp? I never have room enough to be more then 3-4 feet of my amp and I always put it up on a milk crate.
Could mic the amp, limiting the signal to the P.A. while increasing the signal to the monitors...but then everyone gets more guitar. What about an external speaker fed from the Twin amp...but can that volume be adjusted up/down?
Or, a floor monitor fed from the ext speaker jack of the twin amp? Are wedge monitors made with volume control?

Would love any thoughts/suggestions...thanks!

How about taking the amp off the crate and using the tilt back legs to aim the sound more toward your ears?

There's no end of possibilities. Aiming the amp even more at your head is one solution. Another would be a powered wedge monitor - some of them have multiple inputs or inputs and outputs, so you could take the mic signal from your amp mic, feed it into the wedge and then out from the wedge to the PA, that way you'd have your own variable guitar monitor - should be plenty of sound at that point.

Or of course a bigger board with more monitor mixes, then you can just say to the soundman "more guitar in my monitor please".

Angling the amp towards you or raising it to ear level will allow you to hear much better. It works great for me. However, I'm not sure how that will effect the sound for the audience.

mk

If the amp is already miked for the FOH system, put it in front of you, tilted back and aimed at you, like a vocal wedge. You'll hear yourself perfectly.

Or, have the soundman add a little of your guitar to your vocal wedge. That will help ... a little.

If it's not miked, there isn't much you can do to improve hearing yourself, especially if you are using JBL E120s, because they just project everything right past you like a death ray. Even if you crank it up, you still can't hear it that well, although you will deafen yourself and everyone else.

I find that aiming the "beam" of a speaker at your chest area is best. NEVER at the head though. Not if you want to grow old without tinnitus and major hearing damage. The 4" "beam" that shoots coherently like a laser out from the middle of the speaker should never ever be aimed at the ears, ever. You don't even really want a microphone in that beam. And never aim the "beam" at the soundguy, or else you'll never be in the PA mix. Some players over the years would even duct tape over the "beam" or use devices like the "beam blocker". JBL's have one of the most brutally powerful "beams" of any speaker anywhere. Just a bit off axis is where the tone lives. One theory is that an amp on the floor will couple with the floor and create a full bed of lows and low mids that can be felt. Raising the amp off the floor will de-couple and lose some of that body. But raising an amp to belly or chest level and aiming a bit below the head (keeping the beam safely OFF the eardrums) is a nice way to "feel" the warmth and punch of the amp. The distance you stand from the amp is everything. You can more than double the perceived loudness by simply standing closer to an amp. For a long time I liked a single 12" cab at about belly/chest height and I'd stand about 2' to 3' in front of it. My body would block the "beam" from the crowd and soundman, and I could feel the notes in my gut nicely. Sometimes if you don't "feel" it, you'll tend to turn up to "hear" it. If you can strike the balance between "feeling" and "hearing", you'll be in a nice volume zone and will be playing where it's easy to be dynamic and expressive and without blasting everyone else.

I repeat: Never point the beam at your head. You won't have a good sonic perspective and tinnitus is a real shitter.

Brad

SarnoMusicSolutions wrote:I repeat: Never point the beam at your head. You won't have a good sonic perspective and tinnitus is a real shitter.

Brad, what about at your head at low volume? Had my little Pro Jr. on 3.5/4 aimed at the back of my head last gig with good results.

Mind you I was also going direct to FOH via my ElevenRack so I just needed to hear myself clearly.

Death ray= too funny. I find that to be very true though. My 2x12 is crystal clear and LOUD but walk away from it and its a different animal. Even a few feet to either side and your hear it differently.

Word, Brad.

Not only that, but the collateral damage to your hearing is amazing. When I ran the 2X12 with the E120s, I used to let it sit on the road case tray, but put the front edge of the cabinet on the lip, so it was tilted back a few degrees (Garcia did that with his 3X12, it sat on a little piece of wood). If the band was loud onstage, I'd have to crank it up more, but I'd never really hear any better. Except I would notice by the second set a lot of the highs would be attentuated in my right ear. I used to wear a plug in one ear sometimes if it was really loud up there. The next morning, I'd have a pounding headache, my ears would still be ringing. Terrible.

That's the biggest reason I went to the fullrange monitors, and it's night and day now. I hear perfectly, never have a headache, etc. etc. I can only imagine the damage Garcia did to his ears with those speakers running that hot behind him. And poor Mickey, he wears hearing aids today because that 3X12 was firing right at him every night out the open back.

Poor Mickey="the blast shield" He always said it was because of Garcia's Pal Mal addiction but I think it was that Trucker cab!

SarnoMusicSolutions wrote: One theory is that an amp on the floor will couple with the floor and create a full bed of lows and low mids that can be felt. Raising the amp off the floor will de-couple and lose some of that body.
Brad

This is true in my experience but varies greatly by how the stage and room are constructed. Some resonate, some don't.

Rusty the Scoob wrote:

SarnoMusicSolutions wrote: One theory is that an amp on the floor will couple with the floor and create a full bed of lows and low mids that can be felt. Raising the amp off the floor will de-couple and lose some of that body.
Brad

This is true in my experience but varies greatly by how the stage and room are constructed. Some resonate, some don't.

Also, it can be a very useful trick for a guitarist who wants more low mids without adding mud or stepping, incorrectly into the bassist's zone.

playingdead wrote:If it's not miked, there isn't much you can do to improve hearing yourself, especially if you are using JBL E120s, because they just project everything right past you like a death ray. Even if you crank it up, you still can't hear it that well, although you will deafen yourself and everyone else.

LOL. How true. Back in 1979-1980 I had a JG style cabinet with 2 E120s powered by a Crown DC150 strapped mono, IVP Preamp and Furman Reverb. We were playing in a pretty good size joint and my cab was aimed diagonally across the room and right at a guy at the corner of the bar. The sound level was just about right for me on the stage, but I remember hitting a high note and see his eyes turn to "X"s like in the cartoons! He came up to me on the break and said something to the effect of "My God man you play loud". LASER BEAM/DEATH RAY indeed. After about 10-15 feet that unit REALLY opened up.

I don't think any guitar speaker cone should ever, ever point at a human's head. I think the sound and tone we need to hear is the same tone that we want conveyed into the mic and to the audience. That means keeping your head within maybe 30 degrees or so of on-axis but not directly in the beam (on axis). Somewhere in that cone is the zone. If we can't hear it, then maybe it's a distance issue. But seriously, directly aiming the beam at the eardrum is real world, serious injury that can be permanent or can take years to repair, and won't likely ever repair 100%. We should be hearing the fullness of the tone balanced throughout, not the treble that slices thru the band and stage noise. If we gig too often with that battle of trying to slice thru, then it's all downhill, and even playing dynamics and blending with the band will suffer. The closest to my eardrums that I'll ever aim my guitar speakers is at the chest. I also find that if you can get the tone to where you feel the warmth and body of it, then your gut and lung cavity can be used as a major part of the hearing mechanism, and you won't rely so much on the eardrums alone. I know a lot of ex-musicians who played for years aiming their amp at their head, and now in their 40's or '50s they can no longer gig due to the hyper-acusis (the pain felt from sound) and tinnitus (the ringing). These are guys who loved music and always dreamed of playing till they were old and grey. Now they get to grow old semi heartbroken because of the damage they did by aiming their amp at their head.

Brad

Even at lower volumes, Brad? I know most of the guys in this thread are pushing 2 JBL E120s with 200W amps.
My example was 1 10" speaker being pushed by a 15W amp with lots of clean headroom left on the dial.