So damn frustrating. a drummers take on a crap sounding amp.

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rockironwebb

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Last week I was able to get a pretty good recording of band practice. I say pretty good because the main problem I was having was with one guitarist amp. I was able to work it out with software. He has an old 5150 that he seems to think is the best amp ever, but it sounds like complete mud-shit and I believe it is about five years past a tube change. Anyway, He had just gotten a line 6 pod 2.0 and the floorboard that goes with it and it sounded ok last week. This week I refused to even hit record. I have the 5150 hooked up from the preamp out to my mixer(alesis firewire 16), that sounds like complete shit now (last week it was only half shit). I had him go from the pod 2.0 straight to the mixer and it sounded great. He seems to think that he just needs to fuck around with his pod settings and that will take care of it. I tried to tell him that it is his amp. I asked him to buy a DI box a month ago and he said he would, but still hasn't. He asked me if a DI box would "fix" the problem. I guess it would clean up my recording, but he will still have a mud-shit amp. I believe it is an original 5150 probably mid 90's, I would bet that the tubes are the same ones that it left the factory with. He got it used a few years back and god only knows how many folks have played on it. Am I in the ballpark thinking that tubes could be an issue? I'm a fucking drummer, this is not my department. He is a really good guitarist and I am sick of hearing mud-shit, it almost makes me want to not play with him
WHAT DO I DO???!!!!!!?????????!!!!!!!!!!
 
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How does the 5150 sound in the room? I have never heard a line out from a guitar amp I liked. Mic the speakers.
 
It sounds like mud-shit in the room. I have been recording line out to eliminate bleed through. My other guitar guy and bassist have DI boxes and I am able to get pretty good sound from them. Down the road when we are trying to record more demo stuff I will figure a better way to mic the amps. I like recording our practices to be able to listen back and pull out the good stuff.
 
It's probably more how he's setting the amp.
It could be tubes but that depends on how much use it's gotten. I have amps with 35 year old tubes in them that sound fine since they've only been used maybe a few times a month for those 35 years.
Tubes don't age .... they get worn out by usage.
I have a Mesa that's all class A and I gig with it 4 or 5 times a week. (well ... until last year when I got my Mark V) and I have to replace the tubes every couple of years. So regardless of who's been using it ..... tubes being worn out is a matter of how many hours of use they've gotten and not how old they are.

I agree with jimmy about the line outs of amps.
And when you do that .... you're only getting the preamp sound.
So if it IS a tube then it's gonna be a pre-amp tube when using the line out because you're not 'hearing' the power tubes at all in that configuration. But pre-amp tubes basically last for decades.
However they can be bad so you might check that.

But I'm gonna go with:
'Using too much gain/distortion' ........ a super common mistake that will turn the git to mud.
 
The problem is that guitarist has that mud amp sound in his ear, he thinks that is what he should sound like. It's really more about retraining him to hear his guitar sound differently than anything with the amp itself. I wouldn't be surprised if the amp is messed up too, but what you really have to do is get the guitarist to go for a whole new sound that he is not used to. That could be hard to do.

You might want to try going cold turkey, like "you can't use that amp". Have another amp for him to use instead if possible. Or have everyone in the band use a different amp or different piece of gear, so it is "fair". Like the idea is that everyone is trying something new.
 
I wish he would just sell it and get something more reliable. Him and the bass player spent about an hour "tweaking knobs" the other day and niether one of them could get it sounding any better. The amps owner told a story about how he left the amp on for about three weeks straight one time, is this bad for an amp? I want the problem fixed. I don't want him to drop money on tubes and still have the problem. Another source of frustration is that he didn't even take the amp home with him to work on the problem, so next time we have band practice, there will probably be another hour or two of tweaking knobs hoping that a miracle will happen and good sound will come out. I may just tell everyone we are going acoustic.
 
Do you think you could record a small clip of the amp and show us? I'm a guitarist and I had the exact situation you did. I really liked my sound and my drummer didn't. It could possibly be that you just have a different take on what it should sound like. A good guitarist should have SOME idea of what a good sound is.
 
Split the signal from the Pod, one to the amp and one to recording.

He may well have the Pod set with the amp simulator on. That may be adding to the mud. But if you split that may be the tone you want, so you'd just have to live with the mud sound in the room to get a good sound from the Pod.
 
I thought that chugga chugga muddy distortion sound was the reason why people liked 5150s in the first place.
 
Here is some samples

fist is me, a drummer providing a sample, these are just the amp, he took the POD home. The first part is through the preamp out to my alesis 16 firewire, the secong part is using a mic, about a foot away.


Here is a sample of something we recorded the other day, with a real guitar player playing


After going down and recording these samples, I am wondering if his POD needs some tweaking
 
Woah......

Okay, at least when I was defending my sound, it sounded pretty good.

You were right.... That sounds god awful!
 
rockironwebb said:
Here is some samples

fist is me, a drummer providing a sample, these are just the amp, he took the POD home. The first part is through the preamp out to my alesis 16 firewire, the secong part is using a mic, about a foot away.


Here is a sample of something we recorded the other day, with a real guitar player playing


After going down and recording these samples, I am wondering if his POD needs some tweaking
Click to expand...

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh my earrrrrrrrrrsssssssssssss!!!!!!

Yeah that's pretty god-forsaken terrible. :eek:
 
EDIT .... comments on the second sample.
First, he has too much gain for recording.

That's the POD?
Sounds like a POD to me.
I have 7 or 8 modelers and every single one of them sounds better than my POD.
PODs have this fizzy overlay to their sound and it's always present.
Very first thing I'd do is ditch the POD.

Look .... even my cheap POS bought it just to have something useless Behringer V-Amp sounds better than the POD. I've tried and tried to like it but it simply doesn't sound good. Nothing I can really put my finger on but some pedals or amps just sound better than others do even though they are similar products.
And I'm not a modeler hater either ...... I have a couple that I use a lot and like them just fine.
But that POD ...... *shudder*

And regardless he should try dialing back the gain some ....... maybe cut the low mids a tiny bit too.

Let me go listen to the first ..... well that's not very good but I don't believe we can tell much about what to do with that since it's not a guitar player playing. You're not gonna strike the strings like a git player and that makes a tremendous difference but this too has too much gain. Gonna be muddy when it's that dirty.
 
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rockironwebb said:
Here is some samples

fist is me, a drummer providing a sample, these are just the amp, he took the POD home. The first part is through the preamp out to my alesis 16 firewire, the secong part is using a mic, about a foot away.


Here is a sample of something we recorded the other day, with a real guitar player playing


After going down and recording these samples, I am wondering if his POD needs some tweaking
Click to expand...

You need to show your buddy this thread. That was awful. The second one wasn't much better IMHO. Not really my style of music but seriously that first one was hideous.
 
Thanx for the feedback. I believe I am going to schedule a day of just tech shit. I think one of our biggest problems is that when we all get together we are all so anxious to play that none of us wants to put a lot of time into dicking with the sound of an amp. I am a problem solver, so I will solve my problem. If after we spend some dedicated time to this problem we still have shit sounding amp, I will have a sit down and bounce around options for getting another amp. Sorry for the hideous drummer guitar playing, I've got huge fingers.
 
Turns out my guitarist was running his pod into the 5150 through high gain. Also distortion channel was on on the 5150. Like I have had to do with most of my band issues, I read up on the pod, got the manual and got everything hooked up as it should be. Yesterday I was able to get pretty good clean tone and distortion, both into the mixer from the pods direct out and from the amp from the amp out. I have finally learned my lesson. My bandmates seem to think that just because they have played their instruments for many years, that they automatically know everything about any gear associated with guitars, no manuals for them. For instance, my bass player was telling me all about MIDI keyboards and MIDI signals after I told him that I ordered a MIDI keyboard. After about ten minutes of him "letting me know about MIDI" I asked him if he had ever used any MIDI gear, he said he hadn't.
 
rockironwebb said:
Turns out my guitarist was running his pod into the 5150 through high gain. Also distortion channel was on on the 5150. Like I have had to do with most of my band issues, I read up on the pod, got the manual and got everything hooked up as it should be. Yesterday I was able to get pretty good clean tone and distortion, both into the mixer from the pods direct out and from the amp from the amp out. I have finally learned my lesson. My bandmates seem to think that just because they have played their instruments for many years, that they automatically know everything about any gear associated with guitars, no manuals for them. For instance, my bass player was telling me all about MIDI keyboards and MIDI signals after I told him that I ordered a MIDI keyboard. After about ten minutes of him "letting me know about MIDI" I asked him if he had ever used any MIDI gear, he said he hadn't.
Click to expand...


Lol gotta love that, I've had things like that happen plenty to me. It's frustrating to say the least.

At a show once, my vocalist (he plays guitar but not in the band) grabbed my pedals, and started putting them up on stage while I loaded my stack up. When we went to sound check I had no sound coming out. So first I unplug from the pedals and plug straight into the head...I had sound. Replugged into the pedals and started trying them one by one...until it finally hit me, because I was guilty of it the very first time I ever plugged my guitar into my first wah pedal...He had hooked everything up backwards, so the input line from my guitar was going to the output of the pedal line and the input was going to the amp:facepalm:. Luckily crisis averted, but still it just goes to show that these people with "experience" should stay away from my stuff lol.
 
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