I've not played or am I familiar with your amp but I would say the amp may be the problem. Sometimes amps that offer a lot of fx built in them lack in the cutting through department. I would suggest a 40 watt all tube amp, the more simple the controls the better. Of course this is only my opinion and I' sure some of our amp gurus on the forum will be able to be more specific in helping you out. Try posting in the modern amp section. Good luck my friend!!

Hey thanks I'll try that. I'm new to this forum and havnt figured my way around yet. Basically there are no fx built in it's a digitall 150w twin 2x12. It basically copies famouse amp tones

I'd look into your amp as well. A 40 watt rated tube amp will be way louder than a 40 watt solid state amp which is something to keep in mind as well.

Fender makes some pretty sweet tube amps in that wattage range... the Peavey Classic 30 is another excellent option and may save you a few bucks. I had one of those years ago and kick myself for letting it go... these days I'm draging around a Twin Reverb RI...way more amp than I need but there's certainly no problem cutting though!

Ok...also just my $.02 worth...

Assuming the amp and the speakers are working correctly (aka putting out the wattage that it was designed for), the problem is probably not the amp specifically. I'm sorry but I have to completely disagree with the "tubes rule" crowd here...150 watts in a 2x12 combo, be it solid state or otherwise should be -more- than sufficient to work with a full volume band. I'm sorry but saying that "tubes are louder" is just lame and uneducated in this specific matter (yes, tubes -are- in fact louder but not enough to make a difference in regards to a 150 watt amp!!!). The first thing I would do is verify proper operation of the amp...at 150 watts, that sucker should be a loud muther. Make sure you don't have any kind of "power soak" built in to the amp that may be reducing your wattage. Also check the speakers...if you bought the amp used by any chance someone may have swapped out your speakers on you...speaker efficiency can make a huge difference in regards to -ANY- amp.
Your the dude!! Man that helps loads!! I'll try these. I think amp placement mite be a factore and the other is the EQ I'm sure. I've read about cranking the mid range to fatten the tone up in the mix??
If you're sure the amp itself is loud enough, the next thing I would suggest is taking a closer look at the placement of the amp. I ran in to this myself when I got my old Lab L5...I had the thing sitting on the floor right behind me and even with that sucker cranked, I simply wasn't hearing myself. Now in this case everyone was bustin' my balls because I was -WAY- too loud...but because of the amps position and my position relative to the amp, I simply could hear it! In my case, I bought an amp stand to get it up off the floor and I've moved it back further in the studio/room so I get an accurate sense of my own volume vs. the mix (and it's all about the mix brother!).

If you're absolutely sure that it's neither of those issues, the next thing I would start looking at is your setup...what pedals you are using, what order you are using them in, general tone settings, etc.. It's been my experience that in many (if not most) cases where an instrument isn't cutting through...except for the above cases...more often than not it tends to be an EQ thing. I'm not trying to be insulting here and since I don't really know you I can't say this is actually the case but...more often times than not, people just don't really know how to work with EQ in a band. Guitar frequencies, vocal frequencies and many keyboard frequencies all tend to over lap. In the case of two guitars, you may have rather similar tones or your guitar's tone is getting lost in the other guys. In this case, while the other guitar player may resist this, you may need to make adjustments to both amps to "separate them in the mix" a bit. Unfortunately...for me at least...problems such as this are easier for me to fix rather than trying to explain them. I guess it goes with having some studio and mixing experience but often I can "hear" a problem like this...twiddle a couple of dials and the problem's gone. Without the experience though, it's something that's hard to explain to someone without really hearing the problem myself.

There are in fact a number of things that can cause the problems described here...I'm sure I"m going to get flamed on this as some folks seem to think that tubes solve everything but...before you waste your money on a new amp, I'd really investigate the problem further first. Again assuming that it's working correctly, a 150 watt 2x12 combo should have more than enough "umphh" to cut through a live mix...if it's not, then I would start looking for other things instead of blaming the amp itself.

Good Luck,
Jim

I'm not a fan of Line 6 amps, yes they offer simplicity and convenience, but in my experience the trade off is a lack of nutz and tonal complexity. Try getting the amp up off the floor and that might help some just from a placement standpoint.

Standard single coil pickups will usually lose out to humbuckers in the "cut through the mix" arena too. Humbuckers, in general, are more powerful than single coil pickups. Try swapping the stock pickups for some high output single coils and that will give you an edge.

Would hotter pickups compete with humbuckers??

It depends. What kind of amp is your bandmate playing through? No use going to the extent of changing your pickups if the other guy is playing through a dimed 100 watt tube Marshall stack There is no way a pickup change can help you compete with that with your current amp.

At your next band prcatice why don't the two of you switch amps for a couple of tunes and see what happens???

I'd wager it is your amp to blame for being drowned out, no offense to your amp. It's happened to me before years ago with my old high gain solid state amp set on ten and making everyone's ears bleed, yet the other guitarist and his little vintage Fender tube combo is only set on 5 and is sitting above the mix and cutting through nicely. It must be something to do with harmonics and psychoacoustics.

That's an idea that makes some sense!!

But he uses the exact same amp as me.