---------- I did an out of doors festival today and because of my amp placement relative to the monitor speaker and my positioning on stage I fed back through the house at times. Much of the stationing was forced upon me as it was a quick set up with associated videotaping which necessitated cropping in pretty close to my amp, the monitor and the rest of the band......Rather than stating what I did - might there be some universal truths about monitor, a miked amp, and a players position. I play a lot, I get payed for it, and the audiences I play to enjoy my playing......Nevertheless I'm a "technical" idiot and would love the kind of shared positioning wisdom my 4 yo twins would understand. My best. d Facebook
the monitor had too much you in it and possibly the interaction between your harp mic, your amp, and the monitor caused feedback. also the vocal mic if you had one close by would have a role here. i'm no rocket scientist in this area, i am not up on how sound waves travel and what actually makes a mic feed back, but through the same sort of misadventures i have learned by trial and error. NEVER let a sound or camera crew tell you what placement you need. find it yourself whenever possible even if this means seeming to be an asshole. other band members do this all the time. to me it's better to be assertive and get what i need on stage in order to do a good show with less logistical nightmares than get stuffed in a corner and live with either low volume or feedback all night. rules of thumb to avoid or minimize feedback: avoid straight lines when it comes to mics and amps/monitors. your amp should be pointed slightly away from vocal mics. maintain at least a few feet between you harp mic and amp, and when feasible tilt the amp some and point it slightly off to one side. have the sound person keep your harp very low in your monitor since you already have your own amp as a monitor. i have not tried it yet but the holmes harp commander could go a long way to tweaking your sound. esp if you have a line out from your amp you can run to the p.a. and your amp straight to the p.a. and there are other configurations that would possibly solver the issue. there are anti feedback devices out there also but this sounds more like a soundman and amp/mic issue along with p.a. channel volume. one option would also t be to play harp straight into the p.a. but for me this is difficult since my voice and a harp have pretty much opposite requirements sound-wise. vocally i need a lot of bass out and some highs and effects in, where harp wants a lot of bass and just a bit of effects and much less gain in the mix, so i actually need 2 channels if i am going to both sing and play harp in the p.a. alone.
there's a few pieces of the puzzle you can try. ---------- http://www.reverbnation.com/jawboneandjolene
i saw the mighty flyers the other day i asked rod why don't you just mic up a champ and be done with it? he said mark werrner does that he gets a good sound he said when you do that there is always a chance to encounter feedback he likes to have control over the sound also with the 2 harp king amps you can play with the sheer power makes you play a little differently
No 1847: I sold it to Dennis G.. But I own a "mini-harpking" which is the 2 10'' speaker version which was a limited creation by J. Kinder...I was playing through a Premier with a 15'' for the outdoor event....Indeed (even though where appropriate Rod mikes his amp-s) Rod would not need a monitor with all that Olympian HK drive. I keep my Soulful at the club I play in weekly where they mike me without issue. d Thanks JB....That helps a lot. d ---------- Facebook
Speakers designed for instrument amps radiate sound as a cone, with a pronounced beam effect. You need to raise your amp off the stage and preferably tilted back and firing diagonally across the stage so it is pointing at your head rather than your ankles. This makes it easier for you to hear your amp, means you can keep the volume slightly lower and it also makes the soundman's job easier because your amp is no longer firing the same way as the front of house sound. Be careful however not to point your amp directly at a vocal mic.
Try to position yourself so that your body is between your amp and your microphone. Feedback is created when a the mic picks up its own amplified signal coming out of your speaker - the amp adds more gain and sends the signal out, the mic picks it up, the amp adds more gain etc... it is a loop. Lowering the gain in the system helps, EQ helps considerably (each venue's acoustics will created different resonances which will also contribute to feedback - less of a problem outdoors).
Reduce the amount of 'wet' effects (reverb,delay) they will exacerbate feedback and also give you less clarity in a mix. People always think they need more reverb than they do, again the exception is outdoors where natural reverb is absent.
Wedge monitors can be a big potential source of feedback - unless the PA has been properly rung out and is operated by competent crew, then they are more trouble than they are worth. Leave them for the vocalists and just make sure you can hear your amp.
As for disregarding the soundman's guidance - I don't advise that. First it makes you look like a diva and such things invariably get fed back to the event organisers (i.e. no repeat booking). Second the soundcrew know the stage and acoustics far better than you and will have little patience for it, they're more likely just to pull your channel rather than work with you if you do have sound problems.
People are always saying "but soundmen don't know about harp" well that might be true, but pro crew will be thinking about the sound, not the gear. They'll be considering the frequencies that need to be pulled back to prevent feedback and where to add sparkle to create separation. The particular bit of kit that creates that sound is largely irrelevant to them - it could just as well be a sax or a flute (both of which have their own idiosyncracies). However they do expect any musician bringing their own gear onto the stage to know how to get the sound they want out of it without acoustic nightmares.
Last Edited by on Sep 24, 2012 9:35 AM
big d that does make sense i swear i have seen him play with a mic'd up rig outdoors with a champ you would need a monitor not with 2 harp kings he does however have a monitor for his vocals wonder if that could be an issue? he played outdoors last week no mic on the amp
i saw him yesterday it was so hot outside i couldn,t get out of ny seat to say hello to him 100 degrees in the shade!
the nighthawks have been around since the early seventies the re issue bassman came out in 1990 so i suppose it was before that
i,m sure mark is no different than the rest of us who go thru every conceivable amp configuration it's a sickness isn't it?
i played a set last night thru the 4 10 harpking there were 3 loud guitars cranked all the way up no problem cutting thru the mix that was the first time i have played thru one
i may have misspoken about the sound crew or person. my point was, if you can tell the crew what you need- ie less monitor , more bass, less effects in the p.a., that's what they need to know. i have had guys run sound who buried me in the mix or had me sound like 2 cats fighting. it is in fact a good idea to be friends with the guys who run sound. but they do sometimes need your information. a lot of sound guys don't yet know what to do with a harp frequency and try to model it after the settings for guitar or keys. ---------- http://www.reverbnation.com/jawboneandjolene
