I've been on forums before about this problem, but this time a different angle (from gigs over the weekend)

I play a 69 P-bass & sing bv's / harmonies in a 6-piece covers band, all of "mature" years, with a female singer. We play mainly local venues (with occassional longer trips) at least once every weekend (twice this) & are already booked almost solid into early 2010. I also run the pa (most local venues with main guitar amps / drums not miced - only vocals / keyboards / acoustic guitar / mando / harp in the pa. For larger venues we mic or di everything.

Sound checks always end up with a good sound balance, but things don't seem to end there!

Five of the six members were unhappy with the volume increases from the lead guitarist (some audience comments as well - & concerned about our hearing damage - he now uses a Blackstar valve combo - did use an old original AC30) & a couple of months ago we confronted the issue.

After some argument (he said that he had to run the amp hard to get the sound he wanted - I said why didn't he buy a less powerful valve amp & run that as hard as he wanted??!!) he agreed to keep his volume in check, & gigs became a pleasure again (as opposed to being a real pain)

However, on Friday he got well out of hand in the 2nd set, & last night in the 2nd set things reached the stage where I could not hear my own amp, or the foldback monitor for vocals. BUT .... the audience were all on their feet & clearly having a great time (alchohol had also kicked in pretty much with the dancers) At one point I had to stop both playing & singing bv's because I had no idea what was coming out of my amp, or if I was even singing in the right key! Everything was being drowned out by the guitar.

I told the guitar player that he had got way too loud, but he simply pointed at the folks having fun & carried on. At the end of the gig a number of people came up to say thanks, & .... most importantly .... the lady paying the bill was VERY happy with the night.

However, I'm not at all happy, & neither are the other members of the band. I've had a nights sleep, & it's now gone 2pm, but my ears are still ringing. That can't be good every weekend (I've already lost 75% hearing in one ear from too much loud music over the years)

These gigs are supposed to be fun, both for the audience & the band, but it ain't for me right now, or have I got it wrong??

Fire him, and get some else. Seriously, he should control his volume. I'm a guitar player, and my band is known for having great stage volume. All the sound-techs love working with us.

And, as a guitar player, I understand his need to get a great tone out of amp. Some amp don't sound good unless pushed. I had the same volume/tone with my original tweed 4x10 Blues DeVille, it had to cranked a bit to get the singing tone.

This was back in the mid-90s, and I still had a original Ibanez Tube King -TK999US

,this worked but still wasn't great.

So I got another amp, a Fender Cyber-Twin. It has a master volume, and I could really control the volume, and still have sustain using the 'amp' volume. Also for small venues, I would run some of the single thru the PA using the CT impedance loaded XLR-out jacks.

This is NOT an ad for the CT, but just an explanation of my solution to my 'tone/volume' problem.

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Tony Houston

Your biggest problem is that guitar amps are made to project sound. They seem designed to fill a space 10-30ft infront of them. My band suffer the same problem. I stood next to my amp cant hear it, my bassist is deafend, the vocalist and drummer both say its ok they can hear both. Were not talking monster volumes here, a a 15watt amp on 3 or 4. You need some form of monitoring for yourself and your guitarist needs a speaker attenuator if he wants power section clipping. 30 watts is way too loud for miked stage volume and will be interfering with vocal mikes and all sorts. If your not using a PA with good monitors i suggest you get one. Tell your gutarist to turn his amp round the other way (so it faces the back of the room or better still the opposite direction from you) and use a attenuator. Weber make some great ones.

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No no and no

I played BRIEFLY in a band where the other guitar player was like that. Ironically, it was he who pleaded with me to join the band. Another thing with him too, he was always trying to mimic everything I played and was right up my you know what, trying to out do every phrase I did immediately after I did it while at the same time, abandoning what he should have been playing. He even duplicated the amplified settings of my guitar for his guitar. It was most apparent that he made our playing a competition where he always had to be significantly louder than me at all times and always tried to best me with my own technique. After several private, calm discussions with him, it was crystal clear that he was not going to change. I simply looked at it this way: Forget about what could be, should be, ought to be, etc; the grief was clearly outweighing the enjoyment at every juncture and I must speak up. Idiscussed all the aforementioned openly with the entire band including him. I was summarily told pretty much the same thing as you were. They readily acknowledged the situation but retorted that the audience nor the club owners have any problems with the way things are with our presentation and we are getting more and more bookings as a result. So, we shall not, "screw around with the forumla". Further, that I should be grateful for the success, lighten up and go with the flow.

I know this isn't your exact situation but firing this guitar player, I doubt they'll do it, regardless of all their complaining because of the success of the band with him.

Me? I quit, formed a new band and never looked back.

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You dig?

Is his amp down on the floor? On a stand? Tilted back? Does he know how loud it sounds from a distance, as opposed to where he's standing on top of it?

When we gig I go wireless and take a good walk around during sound check and also during the show if it's appropriate (usually quite good fun!) to check to balance. Our other guitarist is a bugger for sneaking up the levels, and I know he cheats at soundchecks by not playing the levels he knows he's goingt to deliver once the party gets going!

If your guitarist is outnumbered 5:1 he'll have to shape up or ship out. Or at least trade in his amp for something more manageable, or else learn to use it better!

Thanks for the comments folks, by the way, I'm 61 years old & been playing in bands since I was 15 years old, but never come across a situation like this before!

Questions / comments :-

Amp is on a stand & tilted back

Says that he has to be at least a few yards away from it otherwise he can't hear himself

I do have wireless gear - that's a thought - but as I'm running the pa as well, I can't go out front & be twiddling the settings as well?

I am indeed very happy with the success of the band, but if it ain't fun, it ain't fun!

I have a top quality PA system & run at least 3 monitors with different mixes (& sometimes more)

What's so frustrating, is that we have played some great gigs where his volume has been fine, & because everybody can hear themselves, we have been very tight, & some of the guys & girls who follow us around have commented on this.

IS the guitarist much younger than most members of the band.I must admit most us guitarist have the same problem of liking it loud.Do any members wear ear plugs.I have seen a lot of the greatest bands that ever that graced a stage and the louder the better for me but a lot of people on the way out complained it was to loud.I mean this can be viewed so many ways,you guys are having success and it seems the crowd is digging your guitarist but he just cant be selfish and disregard the feelings of everyone else in the group.I would call a group meeting and get this fixed as soon as possible.There has to be a way to reach a happy medium,and as a last resort if you feel he is just being selfish and is only worried about how bright his star is shining and not being a team player replace him.But I would use that as a last resort after all measures of compromise have been exhausted.

Easy answer.

Put the guitarist amp offstage. Tell him to get used to hearing himself through the monitor. Its actualy a better way of hearing yourself onstage as your hearing roughly what the audience hears. I used to run two 100watt marshalls onstage. Since i got sick of tinitus and discovered that my name was a curse word among soundpeople.

Theres absolutely no need for more than 10 watts per instrument onstage to hear yourself over the drummer and get a good miked up sound. Also tilting his amp back isnt doing him any favours when miked to a PA. It simply moves the 10-30ft spread up at an angle rather than out.

If he wont comply sack him, guitarists are 10 a penny.

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No no and no

Maulden, is this a problem caused by the new amp or is it a general development?

(I mentioned tilting the amp back as although it won't do anything for the audience it generally does mean you can hear more of yourself and so don't play as loud. It has worked for me and for many others I know.)

Also if there's room and his amp is miced up there's kno need to point it out at the crowd or at the band particularly. Have you tried experimenting with the position and direction of his amp?

And of course no two rooms are the same anyway...! God, isn't it complicated. We should all go back to acoustic instruments!

I'm with thouston. Can him if it's your band, quit if it's his.

This is why all that amateur crap about a musical group being some kind of Band Of Brothers and all democratic and equal, and not being run like a business because "that takes all the fun out of it, " and "it's supposed to be about the MUSIC, maaaaaan," is a load of hooey.

It's no fun when one or more members disrupt your performance, whether the audience (which is drunk, BTW, and just want the band as a backdrop for their own mating rituals) or the boss lady (who doesn't care what you sound like, she's just counting the bar tab) thinks it's awesome or not. In a band of brothers, this kind of behavior leads to 100's of hours of secret conversations over warm beers, political alliances made between warring factions, and finally a lot of bad blood and lost gigs when the band finally just falls apart.

But when someone is the leader, with full executive power, then that person can just say, "You're ruining my vision of this band. See ya."

Is this band all about your guitar player? Should everybody else have a lousy time so he can pretend to be a rock star? No. Get rid of him. Maybe he'll figure it out four or five bands from now.

Sounds a bit like a situation I have gone through, but the opposite. It wasn't that the other guitarist was too loud, he's just wasn't loud enough....er, he was probably loud enough, but he had a jacked up EQ, bass 9-10, mids ZERO, treble 9-10, so all we could hear from his 150 watt 4x12 half stack was speaker cone farts and breathing. He keeps thinking he needs a bigger amp...why is it then that the bass player and I run less watts and speakers and are always heard? Anyways, he won't tweak his EQ because he believes his idol Dimebag didn't use mids in his EQ, and while he Dimebag didn't use much, he probably used some....I try to explain the difference between volume and frequency, explaining that you could blow a dog whistle through the worlds largest PA, but most people would not hear it...then I get looked worse than if I grabbed his girlfriends butt because,"How dare I tell him how his Dimebag worship is false."

Anyways, the moral of my rant is, if he cannot take, listen to, and follow valid constructive observations and criticisms from fellow band members, be prepared to move on or replace him, because this "not listening" issue will possibly manifest itself in other annoying ways...

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RAMA LAMA FA FA FA

It sounds like the problem is largely to do with the kind of person this guitarist is, and wiser posters than I have already offered plenty of advice and commiseration...but if his Blackstar is one of the convertible combos, you could try surreptitiously flicking the toggle at the back from 30W to 10W and he could hit that sweet spot at a more reasonable volume. He should still have enough headroom with that to be able to clean up with his guitar volume knob... uh, if he ever does that... heh.