Did you ever play all of your gear in a day and still hate your tone?

  • Thread starter Thread starter marshallmel
  • Start date Start date
Happens to me as well. Can't stand how it sounds and tomorrow the same gear/settings sounds great. Maybe it's my electricity? Or my ears.
 
It happens. Just a “bad tone day”. Sometimes my ears are just not having it and it’s better to pick it back up tomorrow rather than bother with it.
 
i bet your tone isn't as bad as you perceive it to be

i cant count how many times i was in tears at gigs. then I hear the recording a few days later and say, oh that was pretty good after all.
 
This would drastically happen with my amps since I’d bought my house about 4 years ago. Finally got around to monitoring my wall voltage and realized it would swing about +/- 10 volts through the course of a day. 116-127V. That actually makes a huge difference in the way tube amps sound and feel under the fingers. I ran an isolated circuit to my studio and bought a quality power supply with a voltage regulated output of 120V at all times, and now my tone is completely consistent every time I plug in. Might be worth looking into!

Also worth noting that distorted guitars are one of the harshest sounds you can subject your ears to for extended periods. Especially anything over 85dB. So after a length of playing, your ears are fried and you’re dialing it in to sound good while you’re not hearing properly. Then you come back after your ears have rested and it sounds like shit. Any mix engineer will attest to this.
 
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I had a KILLER tone day yesterday with absolutely no changes from a few days ago when I hated it. Sucks. Lol
 
and again!
but not really because it was just the guitar
 
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70 Mach 1 said:
i bet your tone isn't as bad as you perceive it to be

i cant count how many times i was in tears at gigs. then I hear the recording a few days later and say, oh that was pretty good after all.
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I thought my tone sucked with a strat and a 100 watt Plexi and GB 4x12. Then on the playback it sounded huge, killer, classic Marshall clang. I would mess with the knobs trying to dial it in but more or less it didn't need a whole lot of tweaking to sound great. This is why I love the Twin Reverbs too. Set it and forget it and it sounds the same all the time.

If there is backline or borrowed gear and I see multi channels, countour knobs, pre and post gain knobs or anything like that my hands get all weird and clammy and my pits start sweating nasty nervous sweat just thinking about trying to dial that in on the fly. I can feel the ulcers starting in my gut and my sticky hands geek up all my licks. Those are like waking up in a cold sweat nightmares I have about getting a dream gig only to be given a worst case amp scenario.
 
Von bon — just tip your sound man better and your FOH will sound awesome. Ask me how I know!!
 
Panhead5 said:
Von bon — just tip your sound man better and your FOH will sound awesome. Ask me how I know!!
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I'll second that!

If the sound man doesn't bitch about my guitar volume, sets my vocal monitor up hot and I make good tips I always take care of my sound man. If he bitches or tries to pull rank on me with management he doesn't even get a kiss goodnight, lol.
 
I was just messing with you but one time years ago we were playing this low ceiling shit hole and my rig sounded like crap. I mean I couldn't stand it . My friends who had some live music street cred were sitting in the audience and said it sounded fine. Actually the more I think about it the whole live sound thing pisses me off !!
 
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