guitar feedback

How can I keep my guitar from feedback and irritating squeaks
when I crank it way up loud (is there a certain pedal they use?)
it interferes with my tone and playing
for years I've wondered how the SRV's and Santana's, Satriani, etc, can play
so loud and yet one not hear those irritating feedback gremlins
I try to set up away from my amp
and I've tried tweaking the treble, bass, mid, reverb and so forth
can someone give me some suggestions as to what has worked
with their set up to avoid this

Try Lower volumes and less gain.

Remember that alot of the artists we hear -- though they have "screaming" distorted leads etc. -- that the final "sound" you hear is actually produced during the final mix down and the actual recording was at a lower volume.

By all means turn you r amp to full tilt but keep your volume knob at 0 when not playing and aways try to keep your GTR grounded with a hand on the strings. This should help reduce the feed back.

2 Cents

get a noise gate. they basically sstop all noises below a certain volume. so feedback doesnt start as often cos it has to start small before it grows. might also be called a noise supressor or sumit like that. it will cahnge the tone a bit, but thats better than havin overwhelmin feedback

Shield your guitar with copper tape (or copper foil), or pay someone to do it.

try not to play directly in front of the amp

And...

take your mobile phone out of your pocket
Turn your TV / CRT PC Monitor off
Consider a guitar upgrade (not sure what you have now)

My squire strat feeds back like crazy at relatively low volume, where all my better guitars resist the temptation until the volume is pretty high... cheapo electronics don't help...

also, at live concerts or shows, most artists will have their amps miced, so the loudspeakers will be cranked out towards the audience, so the guitar doesnt feedback.

True thing is, you almost never get the live sound of the amps on stage to the audience, I belive that no amp can fill an arena or venue by itself (and all musicians would be deaf if the amp could handle the volume).

All amps have mic's and are amplified by the PA so the real volume of the amp is not so high.

Zack Wylde's wall of doom are just a bunch of muck up empty cabinets with 3 "live" heads and cabs, same goes to almost any guitar player that has a big bad ass wall of speakers.

So the option bout your problem would be:

1- get your rig to run trhu the venue PA (get ready for mic headache)
2- get a louder amp (so you won't have tu crank it up all the way to get the volume you need) a tube amp I've heard are pretty loud, even the small ones.
3- some people hate this but, bottom line, is a good option, nowdays a lot of amp emulators (line 6 POD, digitech, boss GT8...blah, blah, blah), most of them pretty good and have output direct to PA, so you have lots of control over your sound and you don't have to carry a big bulky amp.

I know all this options are not always at reach but to be honest, there is not much more you can do