Church Sound System and Church Audio
Would You Buy This For Stage Amps?
The latest newsletter from the Sweetwater store lists a new product - the Auralex GRAMMA. Here's what they say:
You've spent years crafting your tone — from the right guitar to the perfect amp to the assortment of effects you're using — but the tone is still not where you want it to be. The good news is that there's nothing wrong with your rig, and the better news is that we can fix that problem with relative ease! Placing your amp on an Auralex GRAMMA (or Great GRAMMA, if you're rocking bigger amps) acoustically decouples your amp from the floor, greatly reducing rumble and substantially tightening up the sound of your amp.
I've seen drum mats, but never something just for an amp. I'm wondering if it would really make that much of a difference? The theory is good, but I'm wondering how much rumble could really be caused by an amp that would effect the overall tone.
What do you think?
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Comments
Weird as it sounds,
It actually does work! Though in most cases (unless you're dealing with way too much guitar amp to begin with) the overall significance will vary greatly depending on many variables. Cool product though!
A sound guy at a church I used to play at loved these things. He always put them under my guitar amps and said what a difference they made. Personally, I couldn't hear anything different.
If someone gave them to me for my church, I'd try 'em out, I suppose. But I don't think I'd spend any money on them.
:)
Maybe for bass if you're miking the cab, but for guitar this shouldn't be necessary. If the low end of the guitar is rumbling, there's a problem in their rig that needs to be changed! They most likely 1) have too much bass EQed or 2) are overdriving the bass frequencies too much. The first is strait forward but let me explain what I mean by the second. All guitar rigs using overdrive (OD) have a simple chain of EQ > OD > EQ. The EQ either comes from an EQ pedal, tone knob on the OD pedal, the guitar tone knobs, or the amp's tone stack. At a minimum they will have guitar tone > OD > amp tone. With that combo you can chose which frequencies will be over driven more. If you set up the guitar tone bass heavy (and not much highs) run it through OD, then set up the amp treble heavy you'll get a tone where the bass is overdrive and the highs aren't since you gave the OD more gain on the bass. If the bass is floppy find ways to reduce the bass BEFORE the OD and then boost it back to a balanced level after the OD. Should clean it up.
Or if you and the guitarist don't want to change his or her set up, you can move the mike position on the speaker. Closer to the floor = more bass, higher off the ground = less bass, closer to the center = ice pick, closer to the edge = dull.
Skip the isolator though, there are too many free ways to change the sound :)
Generally, we don't allow amps, especially bass amps, on stage - our stage is framed, rather than poured, so the subs and everything else resonate the stage surface, and anything we can remove cleans up the low end. Our bass players run through their wedge, using either a high quality DI (like a Radial JDI) or the recording out of a head. We use a GRAMMA on their wedge, and it works like a charm. Nice and clean bass tone, so they actually ask for less bass in the wedge.
I bought one of these a few years ago for my bass amp. I don't play bass at church anymore and we are a "ears" only stage now, so I put it under our sub. Being a small church we have a single 15" Mackie powered sub. It does a good job reducing vibration and cleaning up the output of the sub. My keyboardist that sits near the sub is much happier. :-)
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