TimR

We kind of have. And the bottom falls out of the songs in the solos and the songs lose momentum. Yes. Space, and light and shade are important but don’t think the guitar solo is necessarily the right place for them.

Cool. No one will remember the bum note and half the audience won’t notice a guitar out of tune if your singer is running around and getting all the attention.

I think they’re some Pink and Christine Aguillera numbers. Lots of strings/keys padding the sound. Some of them need to descend to D so mean playing up the octave.

Timescale-wise. We have learned about 12 songs from scratch in about as many practices and played our first ‘full’ gig with the new singer two weeks ago. We have a 30minute slot to fill on Saturday evening with the last practice last night. Sitting down and working out arrangements doesn’t really happen, we jam through a song and improvise round it to see if it works quickly. Then develop it or scrap it depending on first impressions.

Indeed it can. However that takes time. The songs are evolving slowly. Most of them are fine. Just two or three that have no baseline other than 8th root notes.

Exactly my thoughts. Traditional power trio bands is what we’ve been covering for 5+ years and all have an arrangement already well suited for bass and guitar by their very nature Modern pop doesn’t. So having rhythm section chugging over a fairly bland solo is what we end up with. The problem is if the rhythm section is just bass and drums I can’t carry on chugging along with any real effectiveness. The risk with creating a tasteful bass lick is the “it doesn’t go like that” reaction I’m likely to encounter but I’ll see what I can come up with. It may actually go down very well. I do have a chorus pedal. I think I’ll just whack that on and see what happens for starters.

Could have done with a No, the rest are pretty reliable too. I’ve got used to singers and brass players who turn up last minute and hand you a lead to plug in. In the end it’s much better that way, having had band members like that who would otherwise turn up early and either get in the way or get drunk or both, it is the best way to manage them.

Our ‘power trio’ a started playing a lot more modern pop/rock songs. Lots of these songs are multi layered with strings, synths, rhythm guitars etc. When the guitar solo starts, everything sounds a bit weak. Any ideas on FXs etc to ‘thicken’ up the bass lines during solos, or should I come up with an interesting line to complement the solo?

@shoulderpet what happened? All the issues vaporised before the next practice? Guitatists girlfriend run off with singer? Drummers girlfriend not let him do the gig? Band implode due to musical differences? It’s been 4 weeks gig date must have passed by now.

Pubs are closing at the rate of 3 a week. Business rates are astronomical and people would rather watch XFactor with a pizza and some supermarket lager. Playing 70/80s rock isn’t going to inspire anyone to come out especially if it’s not even inspiring the musicians who are playing it. You need to up your game, there are two types of musician, those that evolve and look for opportunities and those that just give up. We have changed singers and got a girl in and learned a completely new set. No more ‘dad rock’, playing to Jeremy Clarkson nursing his pint of real ale, her mates come along and we have a good crowd of girls dancing who get the place moving. Selecting and learning 30 new songs for the entire band is hard work, won’t deny that. Not the actual mechanics of learning songs, we are musicians, that’s what we do, but selecting and working out whether a song is going to work within the first few play throughs. Some just work from the start, if a song isn’t working on the 3rd play through, we move on, but getting some members of the band to drop a song that they proposed can often be ‘difficult’.

‘a touch’?

Not even touched on off-axis, dispersion, combing...

Definitely. The GP7 that I had, had a bunch of ‘preshape’ buttons and a compression knob. I loved the sound of that amp. The problem was it was heavier than Saturn and I was losing skin off my knuckles and spindles from my banisters every gig. It started misbehaving and I found a dry joint on a resistor, but once an amp of that age starts to be unreliable it’s time for a new one. Found the Warwick PRO FET 5.1 to be a nice replacement.

If they are in properly tuned cabinets for the application. If you put them in ‘similar’ cabinets you’ll get unexpected results. You can’t for example build a cabinet for a 410 and then just replace the front baffle with one with a 15” hole in it and expect it to still work.

I’d tell the singer and the guitarist to sit down together, sort out the song and call me a couple of weeks before the gig when they’re ready to rehearse. Spending 2 hours on one song I would have lost the will to live.

I did try 115 and a 210 but they sounded very odd together. Some strange peaks in odd frequencies.

I’ve been using 2x 210s stacked vertically (all 4 speakers in a vertical line) for a few years now. Prevents combing effects and gets the speakers up near your ears so you get a lot more definition. Worth trying, you’ll probably never go back.

You’ve lost me again. You stated 410s are louder because of the surface area. That is an incorrect statement. No one disputed that 410s are louder. Anywhere. Full stop.

There you have answered your own question. Your original assertion was that it was because of surface area. I have not said 410s were not louder. I said it was simply not the case that they were louder because of surface area. Stubmandrel has provided a nice graph there for you.

Phil. I’m aware what ‘all other things remain equal means’. I don’t have a problem with that. The problem I had was the assertion that a 4x10” cab is louder than a 1x15” because of the surface area. Mainly because there are no other equal things when comparing a 410 and a 115. Absolutely everything is different. They’re different cabs. To say one is louder than the other because of the surface area is wrong. When you put two 10” cones in a cab you alter a lot more than doubling the surface area as well, so again all things don’t remain equal. Anyway, sounds like Hooky has acknowledged that now in a roundabout way. Just for completeness I have a degree in electronic and electrical engineering which included a module in acoustics. These are basic principles.

The area was the only difference I’m lost now.

Quite. No other things are equal. A 10” speaker isn’t just a smaller 15” speaker.

Nope. Ive tried to explain. I’ve given you two links. I’ve quoted specs from two cabs. Have a read of them and try and understand. Otherwise you’re simply just perpetuating one of the myths of speaker cabinets.

@hooky_lowdown the 4x10 will be able to go louder due to the design specs of the drivers and cabinet, not least as it’s a 4ohm cab, but certainly not because of the surface area of the speakers.