The problem I have found is that people my age, 70-ish, still think it's the late 50s and early 60s when there were no PA systems and your amp had to fill the room. I constantly had to tell people to turn their stage down when I did sound. One guy yelled back "Just turn me down in the fronts then!" I just shook my head and asked him "Do you even grasp the concept of house PA? If I turn you down out front because you are so oud on stage then only the first 30 feet of room are going to hear you. Are you even vaguely familiar with the concept of mixing? You have to be in the PA system or the back of the room won't hear you. Let ME control the sound. You just do what I tell you to do. Now turn your stage down to half of what it is. If you want to hear yourself louder, well, I can't adjust your ego. You pay me to do sound. Let me do sound." I never had a problem with him again. Turning somebody down out front doesn't fix the problem. It doesn't even mask it. The last time I went to one of those "bring your guitar out to the picnic and play along" things I took the little Line6 practice amp. They hung a mic in front of it and it was fine. I am standing 3 feet from it so I can hear it. If the PA is properly controlled, the stage should be quiet enough to talk to each other. Sadly I have only been able to convert 2 drummers in my whole life to play in a plexiglass cage so their sound stays back there with them. If the drums weren't so loud the guitars wouldn't want to turn up.

So... little, high quality amps. Wattage stopped being important years ago.

I once opened for Alvin Lee. He had 8 Marshalls on stage. 1 head actually had guts in it, and 7 of the cabinets were empty. I watched a roadie carry 2 of those speaker cabs at the same time during setup. There was a photo once of some relatively big time act with literally a painted plywood amp stack that stood on stage next to the real amp. I wish I could find that pic. I looked.

I found one pic but it wasn't the one I wanted.


Last edited by eddie1261; 04/23/21 03:44 AM.