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This electric guitar lesson has to do with guitar amp placement on stage. If you are like most guitarists, you have your amp onstage. Although I do see a trending towards amps being put offstage, this still doesn’t seem to be the norm as of yet. I will address offstage amps in a later lesson, but for now we will talk about onstage guitar amps.

I have a peavey classic 50 212 combo amp which fits nicely onstage with little fuss. Years ago I decided to customize my amp by carefully installing a pair of Fender tilt-back legs, which work nicely. For those of you who are wondering why I didn’t just get an amp stand, at the time, price was the biggest factor. To be completely honest, I also didn’t want the hassle of lugging another piece of gear around. But I digress. So as you can guess, I like my amp to be facing up at me with it positioned so I am getting the most direct sound possible. This gives me the most accurate perception of my sound with as little tonal-coloring as possible. This is very important.

Let’s say your amp sits flat on the stage and is about 5 feet away from you. Well, all your direct sound is below your knees. This causes natural filtering, effectively creating a high-cut (or low-pass) filter. Your tone seems too dark or maybe your amp isn’t loud enough. So you crank it up a few notches, this helps a little but your tone is still too dark. So you add a little bit of highs, or maybe some presence. Sounds acceptable to you, so you’re happy. Here’s what you just accomplished.

First, by turning up your amp, it is probably louder than it needs to be. Now don’t get me wrong, I like it loud. But ultimately I want it to sound the best it can sound out in the house, in other words, I want it efficiently loud. I want it to be as loud as I need it and not a decibel more. Why? For several reasons. I want to be part of the solution and not part of the problem of creating overbearing stage volume and undesired feedback (not the good kind that we guitarists like). Stage volume is great for on stage, but to an audience it sounds extremely muddy, very little clarity. If your stage volume is competing with the house volume, this will result in a poor mix and makes life very difficult for the sound engineer. Now you are also making life difficult for the rest of the band, especially the vocalists. So they will probably all ask for their monitors to be turned up which only perpetuates the stage volume problem. Also, the sound engineer will probably turn you down in the house to compensate for your loud stage volume. This is only going to affect your tone in a negative way.

Speaking of tone. Remember that you cranked up the highs so your amp wouldn’t sound so dark on stage. Sounds fine to you, but now that microphone that is placed right in front of your amp is getting a significantly different sound than you are. So in the house, your tone now sounds thin or brittle. The sound engineer can fix that right? Well, maybe. But why wouldn’t you want his source to be the most accurate representation of your tone the way you like it. Then all he has to do is a few tweaks to compensate for the house system and the room acoustics. You don’t want him creating your sound, you want him optimizing it for the listening environment.

This is why you want your head (ears) in the most direct path of your amp’s speakers. That way it is only as loud as you really need it to be, and like I said earlier, you hear your tone as accurately as possible with the least amount of unwanted coloring as possible. Now speaking of your ears and direct path. The best way for you to hear something (especially when its loud and constant) is from directly in front of you. If you have the amp behind you, the design of your ears is actually filtering the highs, a similiar result to having the amp flat on the stage. The amp is also throwing sound out towards the audience and is now competing with the house system. How about off to the side of the stage. This causes ear-fatigue and can cause hearing damage. The sound is constantly bombarding that one ear and overtime (much like a shotgun) will have a negative affect on the hearing in that one ear. Having your amp as directly in front of you as possible will distribute the sound evenly to both your ears. Also, the natural turning of your head left and right gives each ear a small yet significant break when being exposed to high decibel levels.

So give this electric guitar lesson technique a try and see if it doesn’t improve your onstage experience and ultimately improve your playing. The rest of the band and especially the sound engineer will thank you as well.

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