I wonder often about how players in known bands can stand the volume of their amps onstage. I have a Blackstar 20 watt tube amp and when it’s cranked to about noon, it’s reached it’s ultimate saturation and volume point and it is LOUD. REALLY LOUD. And this is in my apartment.
How do guys stand in front of a 150w Boogie Triple Rectifier Head with two 4x12" cabs and survive the volume? I understand that onstage volume is one thing, and that isolation rooms, etc come into play when recording, but damn…If I had a 100w Marshall cab in my bedroom cranked up to six there’s NO WAY I could be anywhere NEAR it without my ears bleeding, and I LIKE loud music.
They destroyed their hearing. If gaffa is available, he’ll discuss how stage volumes have drastically reduced as room/arena/festival amplification has become more sophisticated. Big amps are simply no longer needed.
Except for fun. Controlling a stack a big volumes is fun. But I haven’t done it years, decades. It’s loud.
well it used to be you had to be loud to get the distortion. Then they invented master volume controls which means you can push the amp into distortion and keep the volume low.
It’s a bit more complicated than that. A Marshall was designed for large venues, and yes, to overdrive at that loud of a volume. But a person could play a smaller amp overdriven to get their sound. Clapton famously played a 5 watt Fender Champ for Layla.
The point is that if you are playing a venue that warrants a 100w Marshall stack or three, if you are in that environment, it is louder than bombs. These days, you can play the same venue with whatever size backline (i.e., with amps of whatever wattage that suits your tone).
I guess you mean the PA that is what puts out the sound for the crowd. You don’t need the amps at high volume when you have a PA and now even small places have a PA system.
With regard to the OP: If you have to run it at that volume in a small practice room (sometimes yes, drum kits don’t have a volume control), you use earplugs or you just suffer some if you forget them. At an actual venue that can hold 500-1000 folks, there’s room for the volume to use up its energy before it’s reflected back at you. I’ve seen people use a power attenuator (hot plate) to be able to use a full 100W stack in a smaller venue. The warm bodies in the audience absorb a lot, too.
WRT to whether you need the larger amps. It’s better to have it and not need it…yadda yadda yadda. Yes, you can get away with having 5-20W practice amps…when the PA is worth a shit. The house mix is easier for the sound guy to get right, and if they have more than one mix for the stage monitors, you might actually hear yourself. When it works out, it’s really nice. However, sound men are sometimes very, very stupid, or have incredibly shitty PAs.
I recently played a show where the sound man wanted to run a show that way, but had no fucking stage monitors. He also plugged me in direct, despite my warnings that he’d be better off micing my amp. I even pointed at the octave fuzz pedal to explain why he didn’t want to do that. I run my speakers hard just in regard to the frequencies I ask of them before you even get into volume, and am willing to switch out speakers and cabs as they die and get rebuilt. Sound guys aren’t really into that. So, I can hear myself when the main mix bounces off the back wall…until I step on the fuzz pedal and get totally taken out of the mix in the span of a measure to save the speakers. I hear the first note, kind of hear the second and third, and then nuttin. Well, 300W through 6X10s can solve that, run the master back up from 0.5 to 4 (practice level), and everyone can hear me now. The bass player for the second act on the bill humored him, but came to the same solution I did. The third bass player just said, “You can take me out of the mix, I don’t need to be there”.