I have an Ultimate 57 with a bulletizer installed and when I plug directly into the PA I dont get the tone I like. I have a Harp Gear 2 that I love the tone but sometimes its not practical to use the amp. So my question is, what do you guys use to get close to that nice crunch cool sound of a good amp when you plug into a PA head or sound board?
Sounds like he does'nt want to carry the amp around? With the Ultimate 57 he should still be able to get a nice cool crunch sound through the PA - the tone will just be different from the Harp Gear 2...
Last Edited by on Nov 14, 2012 6:29 PM
there are a few things you can do to adjust the pa if the pa has only treble and bass turning them both off will boost the mids turning the pad pot all the way up can help simulate a overdriven blues tone i some times sit in with my friend's rock band if i am too lazy to mic up my champ "how pathetic is that" that is what he does to get me pretty damn good sound
it doesnt hurt to have a good mic no reason a 57 cant handle the task
set that plug in on the P.A. at low -treble,and hi- mids&bass with a little reverb.if you have a fat natural tone on the harp then it will carry over to the P.A. most of James Cotton in the last 40 yrs. has been P.A....you can`t get much fatter tone than that.
It gets a little tiresome when people post questions about how to get a specific amplified tone, and get the answer 'technique'. Obviously it has an important part to play, but NO amount of technique is going to replicate the sound of a classic tube amp, with a classic mic, if you are playing through a solid state PA with a vocal mic. You are not going to be able to get the harmonics that a tube amp can produce.
So there are a couple of solutions that I have tried. The first is a modelling pedal. Either one of the Digitechs or a Zoom. There is loads of information including sound clips on Richard Hunter's web site. Another solution that has been discussed on here is a pedal that introduces the equivalent of pre-amp/tube break up. A popular solution seems to be the Lone Wolf Harp Attack pedal, or the Harp Break. Both of these may need a DI box.
i just got a harp Break yesterday so am still experimenting with that solution.
Thank you Libertad for this liberating post. There is a persistent myth going round the harmonica community, esp. among so called "gear heads", that "it´s all in the player" when it comes to making interesting sounds on the instrument. (The reason why the gear heads put up thousands of $ for amps, pedals, mics and what not remains inscrutable.) The only excuse for poor technique is that you haven´t aquired anything better yet, or that you simply can´t, and nobody´s going to debate that. But a good sound costs money -- even if it´s the PA: I´ve played through cheap PA systems that simply sounds bad, no matter what. Adjusting the knobs and cupping the mic properly takes you a bit along the way, but not all the way. That being said I really like the warm sound you can get from a good PA, properly set up, good player. (Though I´m not wild about James Cottens version of it, too harsh.)
Harp Commander Four or the new Harp Commander which will be released soon...And good technique. All the best on the journey for tone! Jay ---------- Music speaks where words fail.
Fellers, fellers...I never mentioned that the tone would be the same between a PA and tube amp - only that a (nice cool crunch sound) could still be acheived using the PA via >technique...I was addressing the nice crunch sound, not-the tone issue. Sorry to have twisted your knickers boys, was'nt my intentions :)
I've seen Cotton a few times through the years, his sound has not been consistent, many changes, many different PA's. I don't recall ever thinking he sounded bad though. A local guy that is friend of James uses one of the old Shure line mixers going in to the PA, I don't know if that's something he picked up from James or not. I've always done a little of both most of the time, and never expected to get an amped up sound from a PA, seems like a waste of energy to me. 57's are a wonderful mic, my favorite for many things, not a mic I would choose for "crunch" (hate that description BTW) there are several mics that I would choose over a 57 to cup and play through a PA.
@Martin--maybe you should give Cotton a few tips on tone?
Last Edited by on Nov 15, 2012 4:47 PM
I'm sure there are different ways to imagine what "crunch" is...I tend to think of it as dirtied up notes more then anything else...so those dirty notes will sound different to me depending on what I'm playing through-be it a tube amp or Pa...My preference by far is TUBE - if I have a choice!!!!!
I second trying amp modeling pedals. I still have and use an obsolete Yamaha Magic Stomp II. Very happy with it. I don't love the online sounds I hear on the Richard Hunter demos - but it's hard to judge. I'd be curious to try the zoom's... I tried the line 6 pod a while ago and liked my Yamaha sounds a lot better.
Yes , you can sound good straight through the PA with some of the settings colman suggests - but it won't give you tube amp 'crunch' ----------
Just to clarify for some folks out there- when I say dirty notes, I am referring to douple stops and such or another way to describe it is -more then one note being played at the same time.
"The term "crunch"-- I've never found a definitive description." - JD
Excelent point. I and others are quilty of using the term too loosely - with the assuption that we are all talking about the same thing. Very loosely taken - I think of it as distortion in a tube amp that we like.
But there are different types of good distortion - and other different affects on tone, - like compression. I would like to work on clarifying and standardizing this glossary - but the topic deserves it's own thread.
from Mark Burness - our esteemed 5f6h : "Crunch - Mostly evident in SE & fixed bias push-pull amps due to crossover distortion in P-P & cut-off in SE (think Piazza & Clarke mainly), but some old Silvertone & Dano's have it due to their compressed paperboard cabs - notes have a lo-fi fuzz to them, the crisp, chimey clarity is compromised." ----------
HarpCommander works A1. I have a III, which I dropped coming back from a jam once and broke a pot, but with Ron Holmes's remote guidance I repaired it myself.
Disclaimer: I'm an endorsee of HarpCommander but I've been using it solid for 4 years+ for both online and offline gigs and would not say it if I didn't think it works.
I have always gotten great tone plugging my Electrovoice RE-10 (stick mic) replacing the vocal mic on the mic stand, (if I am not miking another amp). I warn the sound man first in case the settings cause feedback for some reason. If I need dirt in the tone, I use cupping and mouth-on-harp techniques.
I just think, with all due respect, that there is on this site an overemphasis on a "perfect" tone, and we are getting caught up in the maze of equipment and what to use. Yes, all P.A. systems are not alike, no amps are alike, and all mics are not alike. But when I see that the great players sound fairly uniform every where they go, no matter what they are blowing through, and they sound great, it causes me at least to pause and re-examine priorities. I think that the emphasis should be begin with getting as much clarity in the sounds coming from the instrument, and then worry about distortion. If that means having a cleaner sound before all of the mud, so be it. I don't know if I am on track, or whether I don't know what I am saying here, but that's my take on all of this.
Then again, I am a fan of a cleaner sound, not a manufactured alleged "Chicago" style tone. But tone is in the ear of the harp player, and if you don't think you sound good unless it is just so, or sounds like this or that classic recording, then knock yourself out.
Last Edited by on Nov 16, 2012 5:15 AM
@JD Hoskins: "@Martin--maybe you should give Cotton a few tips on tone?"
Sure JD, that would really prick up his ears: "Now James, I´ve come oll the vay from Sveeden so pay very careful attention to this ..." and I would put on my most severe look.
But in fact it´s not so much poor tone that bothers me on that clip, it´s more the "sound" -- and I think quite a lot of it has to do with PA settings here (but for safety´s sake, let me add that I´m no expert on PA´s), and that was the original topic.
Do you yourself think that he really sounds good here, with those clipping treble notes, no warmth?
Even if JC has been playing the harmonica longer than ... Bob Dylan ... it must be permitted to have a critical opinion of him. I´ve said it elsewhere that I´m not bowled over by a lot of his playing, so I won´t go into that again.
Can you just lineout from the HG2? It is just as easy to carry as a pedal board.
Otherwise, the LoneWolf or Tech 21 pedals would work just fine for tweed-like tones. The Behringer knock-offs are usually pretty solid regarding Tech 21. The exception is the Para DI clone, which does not have a drive control.
Martin, JC gets his lifetime tone tour card for Hard Again. That said, a 58 over the pa I don't do, unless the music fits. Atty1, I agree with your points on an over emphasis generally but the suggestions raised here are helpful - part settings, mic choice, a pedal etc. When we can sit in with a band it would be nice to have a quick option to optimize what a harp can do. My current 1 minute option is to drop the highs and levels and add a few clicks on the gain. Then I replace the vocal with my 57 (bulletized). Good enough, the rest is on me.
@littoral: interesting you should say that: "Hard again" is one of the Muddy W records I appreciate the least, both in general as blues, and in particular in terms of JC´s harp sound. (Let me say in all fairness that I liked it immensely when it came out, but I was so much younger then and hadn´t really listened carefully to MW´s stuff from the 50´s and LW´s superior playing and sound on those records.)
We just have to live with some diversity of opinion in various matters, it´s no life and death issue. Cheers /M
I second the Harp Commander ... just plug it in and go, with EQ and gain/volume/lineout controls at hand. Dynamic, crystal or what ever works fine. The Commander doesn't neccesary give you better tone than a 57 straight in ... nothing beats a very good PA with time to sound check... but it gives you instant plug 'n play through the PA's xlr or line inputs without having to bother to much about the PA's volume/gain and EQ settings. Extra perfect when jumping in with no time to set things up. A bad PA is a bad PA, the Commander won't help much there, other than some extra EQ-control and some tone improvement, (a bit more warmth and bottom. )
---------- The tone, the tone ... and the Tone
Last Edited by on Nov 16, 2012 6:48 AM
Here is an example of how (dirty notes)...aka > adding some 5 draw to the 4 draw, 4 to the 3 etc.- 2-5 octave etc. you get the picture, to create a nice "crunchy" sound...And of course the crunch from using those combination playing techniques are going to have a different effect "tone wise" according to the equipment being used at the moment.
@ shakey - I have one of those Behringer pedals. It works really well as a guitar pedal into a tube amp for a variety of overdrive tones, probably ok to PA from guitar too though I never tried it.. I'm not sure what's inside, - but it has a nice analog sound. I don't believe it's a digital modeling device.
Never tried it for direct to PA because It's gain slope is way too steep for a harp. ----------
@Martin, I'm with you on the Hard Again album. No I don't think the above video is the best sound, but I think a lot happens to the sound of a video that is that old, between the recording, a few decades back, and ending up here on my computer. I can be critical of musician's sound and tone, I've heard lots of musicians (not just harp) sound really bad live, some of them great players and even famous. I just never heard Cotton sound bad over the course of seeing him a number of times in 4 different decades. Different from show to show, but always able to put his music across well. Because of that I am inclined to put the blame on the recording, whether I'm right or wrong I suppose.
Last Edited by on Nov 16, 2012 8:49 AM
