Question

[As_I_Lay_Dying94]

i am forming a band with my friends and im playing vocals (screaming/growling)

right now i use a mic i bought for like 20 bucks off of the internet and i hook it up to the "return" slot on my marshall halfstack..it seems like even if i put the volume up all the way on it i still cant hear myself very well and it seems like i have to scream extra loud just to get an alright sound..its like i can sound better screaming without a mic than with a mic with the equipment i use..and the "return" slot i use on the halfstack is clean so it has like no distortion or anything and i read that with PA speakers you dont have to scream very loud to get a distorted scream sound..i was wondering if i should get different equipment and what kind of equipment i need for scream vocals..it just doesnt feel right that im using a mic on a guitar amp..i dont feel like im getting the best sound when i could be getting better with something else.

[Forlorn Hope]

Guitar amps aren't a good way to go for vocals. I would suggest buying a cheaper PA system (assuming the band isn't real serious yet). You can get ok ones anywhere from 200 to 500 bucks. Go to musiciansfriend.com and look at PA System packages. It's a good site for all musical equipment. Some of them are pretty nice for a low price (cheesy rhyme unintended)

[Seafroggys]

"playing" vocals lol

anyway, the guitar amp is just not designed for vocals. Get a cheap PA and a mic w/ XLR input.

[As_I_Lay_Dying94]

what is an XLR input?

so i just buy the PA speakers and i have to buy a special cord to plug my mic into the speakers or what?

and with pa speakers am i able to change distortion n stuff or just volume?

can you link me to a nice cheap one? thanks.

[Seafroggys]

PA can reproduce most anything you put through it. As long as you have some means of distortion in the signal chain, you're good to go.

XLR input is the standard microphone input, it has three prongs. Cheapo microphones share the 1/4" line cable that guitars use.

[As_I_Lay_Dying94]

oh, my music teacher gave me a thing that i put on the microphone that allows me to hook a cord into my amp..before i couldn't because it had that 3 prong thing u were talking about.

[TravisBarkerrules]

If you have a bass amp that would be better, a guitar amp is not ment to push out the right frequencies for a male vocals. I suggest messing with your settings and all that good stuff.

[The Chemist]

If you have a bass amp that would be better, a guitar amp is not ment to push out the right frequencies for a male vocals. I suggest messing with your settings and all that good stuff.

It's thing like this that destroy amps. And ears.

Sorry to be rude, but honestly, shut up.





As Forlorn Hope said, buy a cheapie PA system.

[Moseph]

That's something that I've always wondered about: my entire career I've heard that you can't run any signal through a bass/guitar amp other than the intended instrument without damaging it, and I've never been able to figure out why it would be an issue (other than sounding like crap).

It can't be the impedence thing, since mic->amp would be a step up, which is totally safe. The same would even be true if you took a mic pre's output into the input.

The output of a microphone is low-voltage, and unpowered (even with a mic pre supplying phantom power, you don't pass that along in the output of the pre), just like a guitar/bass.

The connectors themselves have nothing to do with anything, other than specifying balanced/unbalanced. You can in fact take a balanced line and make it unbalanced quite easily (just don't connect the cold wire) with no regard for damage to the input (provided it's designed to take a low-voltage, unbalanced cable, which a guitar/bass amp most certainly is).

The only thing I could think of is the fact that you're effectively using the amp as a pre as well as an output amp, meaning you probably need to set the volume knob to 10, which in turn means you're getting very high energy on the output from noise and unwanted frequencies. I guess that's causing a very high stress on the speaker cone in frequencies it's not particularly good at reproducing? But a little EQ should handle the extra energy in those frequencies, and I'm not aware of any professionally built amplifiers that don't at least have a 3 band graphic EQ these days.

If it's a slew rate issue in the amplifier (for solid state anyway) all you'll end up doing is getting a low-pass filtering effect in the amp stage. In tubes I think (I'm not as good with tube physics) it'll just end up acting as saturation mode distortion.

Does somebody know the actual physical/electrical reason this is supposed to damage the amp?

[The Chemist]

Transient response, plus the cones in a specific cabinet or combo are specifically designed for that instrument.

[Moseph]

Transient response, plus the cones in a specific cabinet or combo are specifically designed for that instrument.

That's wonderful and all, but that doesn't inherently equate to damage (at least not in a way that is obvious to me). Is my rationale above flawed in some way?

Transient response is pretty similar to the stress factor, at least for trying to run frequencies that are too high: The high-magnitude shifts in polarity could cause rapid deterioration of the cone, but intuitively the frequency response of the cone itself suggests that isn't anything beyond normal wear-and-tear.

What specific action is causing the damage to the amp (either the circuit or the speaker cone) and why?

PS - I'm not suggesting you'll be fine and no damage will happen. To be on the safe side, the TS should definitely get a system that is designed for that sort of frequency range (it'll also sound better).

[TravisBarkerrules]

It's thing like this that destroy amps. And ears.

Sorry to be rude, but honestly, shut up.





As Forlorn Hope said, buy a cheapie PA system.


Haha, I'm a drummer... Sadly, I'm one of those people that just jump in there and apparently break things... Sorry.

[Trev]

But Rupert's a drummer too, that's no excuse. :p

[The Chemist]

I'm also an audio engineer. :thumb:

[Seafroggys]

I'm a musician/drummer/aspiring engineer, so I win!

[Iceman-rocker]

im a guitarist/bassist/drummer/vocalist/sound tech/aspiring engineer

and im half asian.

I WIN

[The Chemist]

It's my job.

/competition

[Seafroggys]

im a guitarist/bassist/drummer/vocalist/sound tech/aspiring engineer

and im half asian.

I WIN

so you just admited that guitarist and bassists aren't musicians.

Thank you.

[Nick]

From what I've gathered the issue is that running a bass through a guitar amp tends to overdrive the preamp section a whole lot more than a guitar, which will eventually destroy solid-state amps that aren't actually meant to be overdriven (tube amps will just wear out the tubes faster)

That and the usual unverifieed stories of cheap speakers getting blown out by cranked basses

[Moseph]

From what I've gathered the issue is that running a bass through a guitar amp tends to overdrive the preamp section a whole lot more than a guitar, which will eventually destroy solid-state amps that aren't actually meant to be overdriven (tube amps will just wear out the tubes faster)

That and the usual unverifieed stories of cheap speakers getting blown out by cranked basses

That makes a bit of sense, considering a bass string's amplitude will be noticeably larger than that of a guitar string (that's something I hadn't considered). I guess the same is more or less true for strong vocal projects into a low impedence microphone.

[Iceman-rocker]

so you just admited that guitarist and bassists aren't musicians.

Thank you.

their not. :rolleyes:

musicians could be guitarists or bassists, but most guitarists and bassists actually know nothing about music whatsoever.

my personally most hated persona is the "i can shred a billion times the speed of light so you should love me because my daddy never did so i have to make up for it by impressing the world with skillz they can never have"

[fishbulb]

That's something that I've always wondered about: my entire career I've heard that you can't run any signal through a bass/guitar amp other than the intended instrument without damaging it, and I've never been able to figure out why it would be an issue (other than sounding like crap).

Reminds me of when i played a Moog theramin through my brother's DSL 2000 and the next day there was a mysterious buzzing.

Luckily the speaker was unscrewed a little bit and the cone wasn't ripped.