Old British Black Sabbath Tube Tone

No probs either way. One guitar can run several amps, especially with pedals. One amp can handle a bunch of guitars - the mix may not come out pretty, is all.

If I went to the Guitar Center and asked whoever's working there about all that stuff... would they A) sell me the right stuff, and B) would I be able to walk out the door with all of it in one fell swoop?

Or would it be more complicated?

Also, does splitting the signal like that weaken it?

Is there such a thing as a "signal booster" that oomphs the signal when you have long cables, multiple FX boxes, or multiple amp inputs to contend with? I thought I'd heard of something like that once.

Playing one guitar through two or more amps... would the signal get weakened or muddied at all? Is it possible to get some kind of "signal booster" to give it needed oomph, if it is needed?

Also, I could use a nice short "shopping list" of gizmoes I would need to play one guitar through two amps. I'm also wondering if it's possible to get all that needed stuff in one store. I'm still quite unclear as to what it is that does the job, as I'm a moron when it comes to recognizing gadget names.

I live in Canada. You're asking me about an American franchise store. I don't hear things that give me great confidence in their staff, but really, I have no personal experience with them.

Nobody runs a half-dozen amps at once any more. There's no need for it. For two, a 'Y' cable or a 'Y' adaptor connects one signal source to two amps. If you ever get hired to do some kind of retro gig where you need to look like you have a wall of amps behind you, I guarantee that most of that stuff will be dummy cabs. The soundman will only mic one or two individual speakers.

There are lots of booster pedals on the market. They're usually intended to overdrive the input of an amp to make it distort, but the main thing is that they raise the voltage from the guitar. The amp input is usually at least 1 Megohm, so any active pedal can handle driving several amps without any trouble at all, even if it isn't meant to act as a booster.

Tony Iommi's rig was typical in this regard. If you plug a guitar straight into two or more amps, you may notice some reduction in the high frequencies, especially with low-output single-coil pickups. But you'd be loosing some high end any way, because of the long cables. You don't run multi-amp stacks through a 10-foot cable! Note the treble booster Tony used.


{Edit Note: I got tired of getting the same questions from the same guy on two different threads, so I merged them.}

Besides the Laney, Tony had custom pickups and down tuned a whole step.
That and he was the Master of darkness.
GOSH!

Originally Posted by: Blues_ManI wouldn't call that numetal, screamo, punk crap the standard of tone today. It doesn't take anything to get that tone. (gain all the way up, mid's scooped). I actually believe people have a higher standard for tone today than back then. Now they have 100's of pedals, back then they had a wah. Today they have a hugely, wider selection of amps than what was available then. back then it was, Fender, Marshall, Vox, Ampeg, hiwatt or Laney, that's about it. It just so happens that people back then had better tone because they had great vintage equipment, actually knew how to play the guitar, and actually knew how to work with their gear to get their sound.

i wouldnt pidgeon-hole all those genres of music as "crap". to say that black sabbath's playing skill is better than those of nu-metal bands, or hardcore bands, or punk bands, or whatever, is just a misjudged opinion in my book. just cause some people are stuck listening to cream and cant adjust to the changing face of music doenst mean that the only good musicians lived in the 60's and 70's. (btw, punk started in the late sixties, early seventies, its not like its some kindof radically new genre.)

wellll. "punk" nowadays is a completely different genre then oldschool punk, but you made your point.

Originally Posted by: LordathestringsYou have to understand that 35 years ago, arenas did not have the kind of PA systems that are standard fare now. If you look at pix of any band playing a large venu back then, you'll see a massive wall of amps and speakers ranged behind the band. The cable from the guitar, or bass, or keyboard went to a junction box that parallel-connected that cord to each of the amp inputs. It can get..... intense.

This really reminds me of the state of things back in the day. One of the first concerts I ever went to was the first Boston show that they headlined at the Boston Garden. The first thing I noticed was the WALL of 4x12 cabs at each side of the stage, with that massive Conn organ on a riser behind and above the drum kit. Wireless was nonexistant. Another thing I remember was that as soon as the opening act went offstage, Boston's roadies went in and started flipping on the power switches for the different amps so they could get nice and hot.

One point that hasn't been made yet is that PA systems in these big venues tended to suck. They were more suited to speech rather than music and singing. Bands carried their own gear simply because they knew that more often than not, using the house PA for anything except the announcer was an invitation to sonic disaster.

When did that all start to change? I've only ever been to one large arena show (U2 at the Staples Center in L.A.). The one time I was at a large theater type setting with room for several thousand +++ (The Wiltern in West L.A.) the sound was sh*t even though we sat, like, two feet behind the sound guys. Maybe it would've sounded better if I would have been smart enough to wear my earplugs.

90% of the time I go to these low-down holes-in-the-wall... where these dudes are blasting half stacks (and oftentimes full stacks, just because they can) in a place where the opposing wall is twenty feet from the stage and there's thirty people standing around on the floor. You pretty much have to wear earplugs to even be able to hear anything decently (or else your eardrums rattle so violently that it's almost like standing next to a jet plane taking off)... the PA system is usually drowned out totally (only for vocals... usually a pair of '12 speakers), you can't hear the bass drum hardly at all, etc. Well, some places are a little better than that... but much of the time....

I think if I get this musical project I've got in the works off the ground I'll maintain my own PA system... i.e. 1,000 amp powering a pair of '15 woofers and an '18 subwoofer. That way they could hear every foul word of my rantings and mumblings over the half stacks, at an extremely high volume... and become afraid.

Originally Posted by: Vegas WierdoWhen did that all start to change? .......

.....................
90% of the time I go to these low-down holes-in-the-wall... where these dudes are blasting half stacks (and oftentimes full stacks, just because they can) in a place where the opposing wall is twenty feet from the stage and there's thirty people standing around on the floor. ........

Personally I'd blame that on the musicians going overkill for the setting they are in. Not that they have much choice, amps tend to come in two flavors IMHO.... practice & blow your face out. I've been to arena shows where the guitars & vocals get drowned in the drums....major acts. Lots of times you might get a no name local act doing a gig at a small club. So they show up with 100W Marshall tube stacks for the guitars. The **** is just way too loud for the venue because they can't get the right tone unless they run the amp at 12. Nothing totally wrong with it, that's the way of rock & roll.

When I saw U2 at the Staples Center, we were way way up in the nosebleeds. I got the sense that what we were hearing up there was different from what everyone else was hearing, even though the PA speakers were suspended from the ceiling like titanic bunches of black grapes as opposed to being stacked up on the stage.

It was almost like a "power curve" (if you're familiar with statistical jargon)... flat... flat... flat... until it hits the stands and then "whoooooooop!" Up, up, up it goes in a sharp upward curve... getting all broken-up/fragmented and tinny as it goes.

If/when I'm in a small hole-in-the-wall club, attempting to frighten and offend the punkers... instead of a half stack I'd get a pair of 2x12 cabs, side-by-side as opposed to one-atop-the-other... equally powerful (if not more so) but nice and evenly dispersed as opposed to being a bazooka blast of sound. So... like buckshot from a sawed-off as opposed to a deer slug. The slug can kill a grizzly or a moose, and it'll blow a big-@$$ hole in a human being's chest cavity... but the buckshot out of the sawed-off will kill the human just as dead... along with four or five of their friends.

Saturday night, 4/15, I went to see Gary Hoey at a medium sized club close to home. The show was fabulous, I was close enough to the stage that I could put my hands on his monitors. Most of the show I was checking out his pedalboard & fingers, got some nice lessons. FYI, look for a new CD from him this summer, and also look for Peavey to be a major sponsor of his.

The reason I bring this up is that this guy has played in all sorts of venues, and he uses that experience to his advantage. He had one of his new Peavey's onstage, and the tone was there. I got to talk with him for a few minutes after the show and asked him about it. He said that he couldn't get into specifics, he said Peavey would be doing a public announcement sometime soon. (see the link below) What he did tell me was rather interesting though. I'd thought about this thread a bit and asked him why he was running a small stack of 2- 4x12 cabs in a medium sized club. I woulda thought that a single 4 x 12 would get the job done. He said ''for the tone and the punch.'' He went on to explain that just because you have that big 100W head, there may be no need at all to run it at full tilt. He said that when you wire it up right, the extra cab spreads the load, freeing up the speakers to reproduce the tone without distorting themselves.

http://www.peavey.com/news/article.cfm/action/view/id/193/20061704.cfm

Originally Posted by: parrotheada1a... He said ''for the tone and the punch.'' He went on to explain that just because you have that big 100W head, there may be no need at all to run it at full tilt. He said that when you wire it up right, the extra cab spreads the load, freeing up the speakers to reproduce the tone without distorting themselves.

The problem isn't too many speakers, its too many Watts. By the time you crank a 100 Watt tube amp into the 'sweet spot' you're blowing the walls out of any small or medium venue. Even with a 2x12" combo like my Ampeg VT-22.

If your sound is based on pedal effects and front-end distortion in the preamp, then you can roll back the power amp and still get your sound. If you push your amp to the edge, and then dance back and forth across the distortion threshold of the power section, that approach doesn't work.

hey sorry my question may seem a little of the topic but i want to know. I was wondering wether you all think i should upgrade from my 100watt solid state. The amp i was thinking about was an Orange 30-watt head and 4x12 cab. The amp is a full tube as expected from Orange. Any tips?
Thanks.