New Gear!

We have been working on getting an in-ear monitor system up and running at Mercy for several months now and I am finally ready to make the jump. One of the challenges for un in terms of sound production is that the room that we play in is great for acoustic instruments but horrible for a full band with wedge monitors, guitar amps and such.

So, one of the adjustments that I am making is setting myself up so that I don't have to run through my Peavey Classic 30 (an amp I love, but which winds up producing a decent amount of stage noise that muddies up the sound in the room). Instead, I will now be substituting a Sans-Amp processor and Xotic Effects AC Booster distortion pedal.

The Sans-Amp does a decent job of modeling the sound you would get from an amp, but obviously isn't nearly as warm a sound as my Classic 30. It's a trade off, but one that should give the sound person more control of what it sounds like in the room. It has three amp settings (Fender, Marshall and Mesa Boogie) as well as three different mic placement simulations and three different channels (clean, distortion and overdrive) which will give me a pretty broad range of tones to choose from, so I should be able to find something that I like.

The distortion pedal was a surprise to me as I was pretty focused on getting an Ibanez Tube Screamer for a month or so, but once I sat down at the store to try pedals out, it was pretty obvious that the Xotic Effects pedal gave me a much warmer tone and broader tonal range than the Tube Screamer. I probably played for 10 minutes with some Boss pedals when I first started, another 10 with the Ibanez and Xotic AC and then another 20 with the AC and the Xotic BB before finally picking up the AC. I liked the BB as well, but felt that it was maybe a little too bright for how I play with the team and I wasn't sure that I'd be able to tone it down enough to really fit in as a second guitar player. The AC is a bit heavier on the mids and lows, but I should be able to dial it in so that it isn't too muddy for the band mix.

I can't wait for rehearsal tonight as I'm going to give the new set up a test drive even though we don't have the in-ear system yet. Hopefully, we'll have it in the next few weeks and we'll be one step closer to being able to make a really live room livable for our worship team.