Does anybody use a Harp Attack pedal straight into the PA,is it any good? Is it possible to use a HIZ stick or bullet mic ? I would of thought with the PA been a powerful solid state amp it would need a Low Z mic.
OK, this is the semi-secret vid from the notorious Harp Attack/Antones/SXSW incident a year ago, which has been on Bobby Mack's Youtube channel awhile: I went in there cold, little dinner to speak of, and the sound guy (seen crossing the foreground a few seconds in) didn't try to EQ the pedal before the set, just took a level to make sure it wasn't brutalizing folks out front. Here is the first song I played on, sans serious PA tweaking at first. After about three minutes you can hear the effect of delay/echo and EQing by the sound guy, but what you hear the first three minutes is straight in through a DI box:
To me there is an audible difference between one gain stage of tube tone and multiple stages. One way to bridge that difference if the Harp Attack is going into a SS PA is to put delay/echo downstream of the Harp Attack, as the sound guy does in this vid. I use a Danecho in that spot myself and the HA handles the mic buffering duties, rendering the PA input impedance issues a non-issue. You do have to watch out for level issues; I carry around a passive DI box of my own in case the HA output is hot enough to make the PA input clip. Haven't had to use it, though.
As Boris suggests, putting even one tube stage into the chain via the HA makes all the difference with a big SS amp. Ain't nothin' wrong with that. Just get one & learn how to use it in your context, as Zack & Boris urge.
First try @ an embed, so let's just see how this works, shall we? I didn't promote this video a year ago because it begins with such a cavalier approach to setup (during SXSW they get bands on/offstage as rapidly as is humanly possible), but if you watch it in conjunction with the other two songs on Youtube from that occasion, you get a good sense of how delicious the Harp Attack can be. It even surprised Randall Landry, Mr. LW, a bit.
Hi My Bro went to a harp festival early this year a Harp Player IAN COLLARD did a work shop Demoing Lone WOlf Harp Pedals, he use 3 pedals Harp ATTACK,BREAK & TONE strait into the PA,
don't know what order they where in My Bro is a Pro Player he is very impressed and is getting the same set up:)
I use it direct to PA with a LW Delay (1) and an H&K Red Box. When I don't go to PA I skip the Red Box and go through a Roland keyboard amp. It's my main gigging rig now.
I remember seeing Zacks you video on his Harp Attack pedal when he put it on, I thought it sounded really good but then I read a review (I think) by Ron Sunshine maybe the other Ron & he said it was a good pedal but it did not get the affect we want going straight into the PA . I also thought maybe modern PAs would be made for Low Z mics but Im not a expert. Thanks for everybody's comments I guess I will have to try buy one & find out
Paul let me know what youi think? I would be interested in your opinion.
Can you plug the HA directly into a PA using a guitar cable like you would into your Amp or do you have to go into most Pa's with an XLR cable which would mean you need a DI Box? ---------- Oxharp
Last Edited by on Apr 10, 2010 2:18 AM
Oxharp, the output is 1/4" and uses a guitar cable; therefore it's best to carry a DI box as an XLR adapter in case there is not a Hi-Z 1/4" channel open or working on the board. If you are sitting in or going to a jam, you are at the mercy of what's open on the board and bringing your own DI box is the best way to ensure you can get in there. Best to buy a DI with an onboard padding option (mine will pad -20 or -40 dB) because sometimes people run the front end of their PA really hot and the HA may clip easily going into that unless you can pad its signal down. You can't count on a channel w/ pad option being open on the board, or any 1/4" input channels being open. It's a matter of self-reliance and being prepared for different situations.
I had to wait half an hour for the Guitar Center clerks to find one of the $30 passive DIs w/ padding, ground lifter switch and both XLR and 1/4" out that I was looking for. With that, if there's a working channel open on the PA, I can get in.
Anybody who says the Harp Attack "did not get the affect we want going straight into the PA" is mistaken. What you have to be prepared for is the zero-sag note envelope of both the HA and the PA, plus the tendency of PAs to push a lot of brassy mids via their horns. The note is going to have a lot of definition and you have to roll extra mids off the PA channel. It is oxymoronic, but the HA gives you a distorted tone with a lot of clarity, due to the note definition, somewhat akin to a Harpgear Double Trouble. I like to put a delay pedal downstream of the HA to add some softness to the note decay; you can use most any delay there because the HA will buffer the mic signal--I use a Danecho I already had around.
Hi Russ, As far as I know you can plug the Harp Attack straight into the PA . The pedal has a jack out so long as the PA has a Jack in it you should be fine. You could always carry a XLR to Jack just in case. When I walk into my local Jam night with a 4x10 amp I get looked at liked iv walked in with two heads. They say why don't you just use our mic & amp trying to explain is a waste of time, then they start getting silly by turning all there amps up full wack so I can compete with even a 4x10.Its a shame there's no Blues scene here, its all Rock cover nightmares. If I win the lottery tonight I'm getting out of here & moving to the San Francisco bay . I would like to try the Harp attack with a AFB+ to Delay to HA
@strawwoodclaw - You wouldn't like it in the SF Bay Area.
Quite often, I will bring a nice amp and mic to a jam and I will end up playing through the vocal mic and house PA.
All kidding aside, the weather is nice here and the Blues scene is very good, but I'll tell you this, jams here are pretty similar to jams elsewhere. There are going to be days when you don't get to play and there will be days when you do play and wish you hadn't.
At some jams, if a harp player shows up toting a pedal board, people will tease you and make fun of you no matter how well you play. It's better to travel light. Harps, microphone, cable and amp or just use what the house provides.
I know some guys that have played Blues for 40 years and loathe harp players. They have no patience for guys toting in a 4x10 amp and say they need it to "get their tone." There response is something like, "if you need that to get you tone, you didn't have any to begin with." Ouch.
The world is a tough place.
Last Edited by on Apr 13, 2010 7:38 PM
Hi htownfess. I must be thick but could you explain what you mean by putting the Delay downstream. Do you mean Mic - HA - Del - DI - PA? or Mic - Del - HA - DI - PA? and if you had a 1/4 input to the PA available what would you do then? Mic - Del - HA - PA? Mic - HA - Del - PA?
What brand of DI box did you get?
Sorry for being so braindead
cheers
Russ Oxharp
Last Edited by on Apr 13, 2010 11:52 PM
Russ, your first version is what I mean by downstream of the HA: Mic-HA-Del-DI-PA. That way the mic buffer circuit on the HA's input isolates the harp mic from the delay pedal, meaning no input impedance issues with whatever delay pedal you use, and true bypass if your delay's got a bypass mode. Hence something like a stock Danecho can sound fabulous in that chain instead of eviscerated.
I'm using a Livewire Solutions direct box, model SPDI. It's passive, no battery needed, and has a weight added so it stays put onstage better (mine does duty as a doorstop sometimes at home). There are two 1/4" jacks in parallel on the input side and a single XLR on the output side; I'm usually using just one input jack, chain going in as described above.
However, one could use the second input jack like the second jack on a guitar amp channel: plug a guitar cord into it and run the HA signal over to an amp onstage as well as into the PA, use that amp as a personal monitor, for example. That may sound confusing but it's a cool extra feature on this DI box. Buy a little SS keyboard or bass amp and get yourself some stage volume under your personal control, or run into a big clean amp and blast the HA out of that as well as the PA. Monitors can be squirrelly and sometimes the other players are squirrelly about having harp in the monitor, hence the possible wisdom of toting a little amp as a personal monitor. When I'm running the HA into the PA, I'm usually listening for it out front by staying near the front edge of the stage, rather than depending on the monitors to hear myself, but a little stage volume is useful in getting the other players to react favorably if you play cool things, so one might take some control of one's destiny as outlined in this paragraph.
That Antone's clip I embedded, I didn't have the DI then and the separate PA for the monitors was clipping so badly on the front end that it was just phart-o-rama out of the monitors; my own little amp could have given me something better, or I could have insisted on using my DI to pad my signal down going in so as not to offend the monitor PA's sensibilities. Plus, the ground lift switch on the Livewire DI means that if there's a ground loop hum due to my chain, I can lift my own ground & break the loop.
Guitar players may make fun of your pedal board, but if you sound good, they're giving you a hard time because they're green with envy at how little you have to carry around to sound that good. The proper sort of noise has a tendency to silence critics--
H&K re Box As D.I.? JoshNat mentioned running an H&K Red Box as a D.I. after his Harp Attack pedal... JOSH, do you run the pedal into the "Line In" input on the Red Box?
In an earlier post I mentioned using a pedalboard with a Harp Break straight to PA...do I run the risk of having too hot a signal? Interesting thread! ---------- Mike Quicksilver Custom Harmonicas Updated 2/1/11
