PA vs Amp

[Geospectrum]

I was reading another thread and there was mention of using a portable PA system for solo gigs (Bose Compact). What would be the advantage of this over my normal amp, a DV Mark 12?

[John A.]

I was reading another thread and there was mention of using a portable PA system for solo gigs (Bose Compact). What would be the advantage of this over my normal amp, a DV Mark 12?

If you have to bring a PA anyway (or there's one at the venue) for other reasons (e.g,, vocals), it's one less thing to schlep. If you're not getting enough volume out of your amp the PA will probably be louder. The Bose PA's give a more spread out and less directional sound that's more consistent sounding in different parts of the room (whereas guitar amps are usually pretty directional, which can be difficult to manage).

OTOH, guitar amps are generally more colored sounding than PAs, which for many guitarists is a good thing. The DV Mark 12 is definitely a guitar amp that colors the sound in a guitar amp kind of way. If that's what you like about it you might not like the way the Bose (or another PA) sounds. This is a YMMV thing, and you'll see people coming down on either side of the question, as well as people talking about modelers, effects, etc., as tools for getting guitar-amp-like sounds out of a PA. I've tried it both ways, and would rather use a guitar amp, but I'm someone who uses an amp as an instrument, not just a thing that makes a guitar louder without affecting its timbre.

[garybaldy]

If you have to bring a PA anyway (or there's one at the venue) for other reasons (e.g,, vocals), it's one less thing to schlep. If you're not getting enough volume out of your amp the PA will probably be louder. The Bose PA's give a more spread out and less directional sound that's more consistent sounding in different parts of the room (whereas guitar amps are usually pretty directional, which can be difficult to manage).

OTOH, guitar amps are generally more colored sounding than PAs, which for many guitarists is a good thing. The DV Mark 12 is definitely a guitar amp that colors the sound in a guitar amp kind of way. If that's what you like about it you might not like the way the Bose (or another PA) sounds. This is a YMMV thing, and you'll see people coming down on either side of the question, as well as people talking about modelers, effects, etc., as tools for getting guitar-amp-like sounds out of a PA. I've tried it both ways, and would rather use a guitar amp, but I'm someone who uses an amp as an instrument, not just a thing that makes a guitar louder without affecting it's timbre.

My Crate Limo 50w battery amp has mic and guitar inputs. My '63 es175 sounds amazing through it.

[rpjazzguitar]

I've posted ad nauseum about my experiments using a PA instead of a guitar amp. Brief as possible summary:

1. Bose S1 is a very warm sounding little PA and can get pretty loud. I found it too bassy, as did one friend who has one. An N of 2.
The problem with the Bose S1 is that it has two band EQ with the upper band centered at 7500 iirc, which I can't hear. Meaning, it wasn't useful to me. It has some EQ presets but they aren't documented (I called Bose on that). If you find one that works in one room, but doesn't work in another, how do you pick an alternative out of the dozens of options?

2. Everse 8 might have been good, but I never tried the parametric EQ and probably should have. As it was I found the sound sterile.

3. I ended up, happy, with the JBL Eon One Compact. Small, gets pretty loud, and has a pretty full featured mixer built-in and controllable on phone or Ipad. Six bands on each channel, 8 bands on the master. Reverb, Chorus and Delay all with more parameters available for adjustment than I really want to deal with.

I've now used it a number of times for big band. I have to take out some low frequencies -- and then it's fine. Dropping the lows doesn't noticeably affect the mids or highs. I've used it for vocals and guitar for a sizeable restaurant gig, using the built-in mixer, and it sounded fine.

In my band room, I use it for vocals through a Yamaha mixer. The physical mixer is a little easier to use. Sounds great.

4. Just today, I made some recordings using the JBL for both vocals and guitar. Then some recordings with guitar using the JBL vs the Little Jazz. I generally like the warmth of the Little Jazz. Tbh, today I didn't like either one and started thinking about a new guitar. That sort of thing happens. Most likely the problem was playback. I couldn't easily figure out how to get the phone to playback through the JBL. I know there's a way -- I've done it. I think this is an artifact of how many features have to be packed in to the screen of a phone. Something needed to be clicked that wasn't in an intuitively obvious place -- the app has a learning curve.

Oh, and Heaven forbid your phone dies on a gig and you need to adjust something on the JBL panel. The few physical knobs don't permit access to most of the features of the device. And, they're hard to use even for the features, like volume, they do control.

Bottom line: I'm happy using the JBL. I need voice and guitar and it will do both. And, I can adjust EQ to fit the room or my mood or whatever is changing. It sounds fine to me, but I have bad hearing and I wasn't a cork sniffer to begin with.

One last point. I always play with an ME70 multi FX pedalboard. It has a -10dbu output at 2k ohms. That's more volts than a mic, but not pro line level. I go into Ch 1 set for line level. It works for what I'm trying to do. I could add in the mic preamp and turn down the output of the pedal board. Might go louder that way, but I haven't needed to do that. Ch 3, iirc, is a hi-Z input, so that you can plug a guitar right into it. I've tried it at home and it seems to work, but I always use the pedalboard so it hasn't mattered much yet. But, I've been invited to play at a place where I'll probably run it on battery and not use the pedal board, so the features are helpful.

[nevershouldhavesoldit]

Most small sound reinforcement systems seem to have been designed for an instrumentalist or two and a vocalist. The instruments for which they're designed are usually keyboards or acoustic guitars. They're FRFR systems with fairly flat frequency response - they're designed to be as transparent as possible, with EQ that lets you add coloration if you wish. IME, any personality in such a system is a negative. I've never heard a warm, rich jazz tone from one unless it was reinforcing a mic'ed amplifier. ANd it takes a decent speaker with enough clean power behind it to reproduce a big amp'ed guitar tone.

I have little experience with using a modeler or sim into a small PA. Theoretically, this should work well since the signal going into it is already tailored to emulate the signal coming out of a guitar amp's speaker. The few I've tried did not sound convincing to me. To be fair, I'e never had a high end modeler or sim and I've never had a high end sound system of my own. Since more than a few of our icons run preamps directly into sound reinforcement systems and sound great, I know it's possible.

I have used a Reddi DI box (a $1k tube DI that really sounds great) with my archtops running into a 25 kW multicab triamped QSC system, and it's a fantastic jazz sound - warm, rich, full, and big as Montana. But this was through 18" bass bins under huge midrange towers with separate and separately amplified tweeters. I've played through several of the curent small systems, most recently a Bose S1 a few weeks ago. Even driven by the line out on my Blu 6, it sounded tubby in the bass and a bit lifeless everywhere else.

For my money, a small PA is just not a satisfactory replacement for a guitar amp. If you need it for mics and other instruments, use it for them. But if you also neeed to run your guitar through it. mic an amp.

[Spook410]

Sparing the long discussion of modeling and PA's vs amps which I deleted (your welcome)...

For a minimum investment you could try a Joyo American pedal along with an inexpensive reverb pedal into an Alto 110 speaker. Or, for more flexibility, a Mooer M2 into a Headrush FRFR. For an amp, Quilter makes great stuff. Or you could find a used Fender Tonemaster Deluxe Reverb which seem to be pretty available for good prices.

[pcjazz]

I've tried it both ways, and would rather use a guitar amp, but I'm someone who uses an amp as an instrument, not just a thing that makes a guitar louder without affecting its timbre.

It depends on context. When I’m playing rhythm guitar on an acoustic archtop in a swing band, “making the guitar louder without affecting its timbre” is exactly what I want, so while I used to use an acoustic amp in that setting I am now happier using a little Yamaha PA for sound reinforcement. And because it is battery powered there is the additional benefit of no 60-cycle hum or other unwelcome noises from the single coil pickup.

In other contexts solid bodied guitars, humbuckers, colourful amps and expression pedals are more appropriate.

[jads57]

So I’ve done gigs vocal and Archtop with my small 1x8” Quilter Aviator Combo in smaller venues. Worked just fine!

[John A.]

Sparing the long discussion of modeling and PA's vs amps which I deleted (your welcome)...

For a minimum investment you could try a Joyo American pedal along with an inexpensive reverb pedal into an Alto 110 speaker. Or, for more flexibility, a Mooer M2 into a Headrush FRFR. For an amp, Quilter makes great stuff. Or you could find a used Fender Tonemaster Deluxe Reverb which seem to be pretty available for good prices.

I have a Joyo American Sound and a TC Helicon VoiceSolo, and I have tried that combination on a gig (along with a good reverb and delay pedal). It wasn’t great. Not terrible, and better than going straight into the PA, but definitely not as good as an amp (especially the plain strings). But as I said above, this is very much a YMMV thing. Some people are happy with with this approach.

[Cunamara]

For a minimum investment you could try a Joyo American pedal along with an inexpensive reverb pedal into an Alto 110 speaker.

I did a number of gigs with an Alto 110 and a Zoom MS-100bt pedal in front of it. The Zoom did amp emulation, EQ, reverb (and a bunch of other things I didn't use). I got a lot of compliments on the tone and I thought the dispersion was a little better. But I went back to using a regular amp because it was just simpler. There are many options to put in front of an FRFR speaker (or between the guitar and a PA) such as the Joyo (very inexpensive) and many other more expensive choices.

The last time I used the Alto, I sent the signal from the back of my amp head to it's own speaker as a monitor for me and the Alto for the audience, with a mic in the other channel for the vocalist. Worked a treat- the guitar sounded the same as through my amp and it was easy to balance with the vocalist (who had no EQing and was using my Shure SM57, and sounded really good).

[rpjazzguitar]

Guitar (first through the ME70) and vocal into the JBL. No external mixer.

In this case I ran the JBL flat. Reverb is a little from the ME70 and a little more from the JBL.

[Spook410]

I have a Joyo American Sound and a TC Helicon VoiceSolo, and I have tried that combination on a gig (along with a good reverb and delay pedal). It wasn’t great. Not terrible, and better than going straight into the PA, but definitely not as good as an amp (especially the plain strings). But as I said above, this is very much a YMMV thing. Some people are happy with with this approach.

For most players an amp is the answer. I have a Roland Artist that I keep set up which is a good combo at a weight I'm OK with. I like the sound of an open back cabinet and sometimes I just don't want to fiddle around with stuff.

As for the Joyo American.. I didn't want to respond until I went downstairs and tried it. Bypassed other pedals so it was just the Joyo and a Hall of Fame reverb into a Yamaha DZR10 powered PA speaker. The guitar is a very acoustic'y Yunzhi with an Armstrong hand wound 12 pole. I did my best to be objective. We've all given advice we should have double checked. But even with my 'objective engineer' hat on.. It was better than OK. It was actually very good. Granted it's a nice PA speaker and I'm in a closed, controlled space. But it was good. And even reasonably flexible with some nice blackface and tweed tones. Would have to try some different guitars and, of course, come back to it on a different day, but If I weren't such a gear geek, this would work for pretty much anything. As for using an Alto 110 vs my 2000 watt high end Yamaha speaker, I like the Alto's I've played through quite a bit and I think it would work well.

So.. I blame the bad PA's found in the field driving difficult acoustic spaces for many woes. Far from nuanced, they tend to be loud and durable and not much else. Did I ever mention the Peavey 1X15's with horns I once had?

[rpjazzguitar]

To answer the question about advantages.

First off, the DV is a nice sounding amp. I tried it, liked it, but kept the LJ for size/weight. If you prefer its sound, that may be the only thing you need to consider.

I'll answer the rest referring to the JBL Eon One Compact. Four channels, if you need them. A built-in mixer which has a lot of features, including things like adjusting parameters within the reverb module. It's probably louder than the DV. Very flexible multiband parametric EQ. Handy on a gig in case something goes wrong. And, if everything goes right, you might use it for announcements and playing recorded music during the breaks.

I'm using the JBL for things that the LJ doesn't do as well, specifically, to go loud enough for big band and larger gigs and sound good on vocals.

If you like the JBL sound, the main disadvantage is having to do things on your phone. Ipad is better because the screen is bigger. The user interface maybe couldn't be simpler than it is, but it does have a learning curve.

Never's opinion about the powered speaker idea is worth paying close attention to. Bear in mind, that he and I aren't trying to get the same kind of sound. I think his recordings uniformly sound great, but I'm not trying to get that sound, even though I like it. Also, I play some small gigs where I'm responsible for all or part of the PA, so I need something lightweight that can handle those situations.

[John A.]

As for the Joyo American.. I didn't want to respond until I went downstairs and tried it. Bypassed other pedals so it was just the Joyo and a Hall of Fame reverb into a Yamaha DZR10 powered PA speaker. The guitar is a very acoustic'y Yunzhi with an Armstrong hand wound 12 pole. I did my best to be objective. We've all given advice we should have double checked. But even with my 'objective engineer' hat on.. It was better than OK. It was actually very good. Granted it's a nice PA speaker and I'm in a closed, controlled space. But it was good. And even reasonably flexible with some nice blackface and tweed tones. Would have to try some different guitars and, of course, come back to it on a different day, but If I weren't such a gear geek, this would work for pretty much anything. As for using an Alto 110 vs my 2000 watt high end Yamaha speaker, I like the Alto's I've played through quite a bit and I think it would work well.

I actually tried out the Joyo + VoiceSolo combination quite a bit at home and thought I had it dialed in well, but when I used it on a gig, it sounded quite different. I tried to get it sounding better on the gig, but there are a lot of variables and I couldn't quite get it. I did another gig in the same venue a few weeks ago with an amp, and it really was a lot better. But I did work on it again at home and may try it again on a gig because I do appreciate schlepping less stuff.

So.. I blame the bad PA's found in the field driving difficult acoustic spaces for many woes. Far from nuanced, they tend to be loud and durable and not much else. Did I ever mention the Peavey 1X15's with horns I once had?

Even good sounding PA's are voiced to be FR/FR and use drivers that don't behave the same way as guitar speakers. I know it's possible to get really good guitar sounds out of modelers+FR/FR amplification because I know people who do it, but it takes effort and experimentation..

[John A.]

It depends on context. When I’m playing rhythm guitar on an acoustic archtop in a swing band, “making the guitar louder without affecting its timbre” is exactly what I want, so while I used to use an acoustic amp in that setting I am now happier using a little Yamaha PA for sound reinforcement. And because it is battery powered there is the additional benefit of no 60-cycle hum or other unwelcome noises from the single coil pickup.

In other contexts solid bodied guitars, humbuckers, colourful amps and expression pedals are more appropriate.

Parenthetically, a battery powered amp could mitigate buzzing caused by ground loops, but not hum from single coil pickups (which is typically caused by things like light dimmers, computer monitors, or other devices in the environment emitting electro-magnetic interference). I know from experience that you definitely can experience single coil buzz with battery powered amps.

[SierraTango]

I've used this Shertler Unico for 20+ years. It's never let me down, and always sounds great. about 28 lbs. It's been used to backup a singer (vocals), horn player, another guitar player with it's 4 channel options. Guitar plugged straight into the magnetic side is rather sterile, so I do use a Joyo American pedal to warm things up.

[pcjazz]

Parenthetically, a battery powered amp could mitigate buzzing caused by ground loops, but not hum from single coil pickups (which is typically caused by things like light dimmers, computer monitors, or other devices in the environment emitting electro-magnetic interference). I know from experience that you definitely can experience single coil buzz with battery powered amps.

Interesting. I haven’t experienced it despite regularly playing in a room with fluorescent lighting and with a vocalist using a wireless mic.

[John A.]

Interesting. I haven’t experienced it despite regularly playing in a room with fluorescent lighting and with a vocalist using a wireless mic.

My experience is that it all depends on the specific room and what specific devices are in it. Some dimmers, fluorescent lights, etc., are OK, and some are not (I've read a little about the specific electronic reasons why, but I don't think I could explain it). I've played in places where even humbuckers buzzed, and in other places where single coils were fine.

[Spook410]

I've used this Shertler Unico for 20+ years.

I'm a huge Schertler fan. I have a Schertler Roy, some Jam 150 extension speakers, and an Acus 350. Got started amplifying flat tops many years ago but turns out they make really good FRFR setups as well. Shame their gear is so expensive. Especially in the US.

If you want to expand on your American, the Joyo Cab Box (around $150) adds and array of speaker IR's, mic choices, power tube models, and really good EQ.

[pauln]

My experience is that it all depends on the specific room and what specific devices are in it. Some dimmers, fluorescent lights, etc., are OK, and some are not (I've read a little about the specific electronic reasons why, but I don't think I could explain it). I've played in places where even humbuckers buzzed, and in other places where single coils were fine.

Light dimmers produce a high frequency whine, unfortunately pretty popular for stage lighting.
The original LED lights were horrible; any one of them on within about a 50 foot radius would make a whine, even if it was your neighbor's light. They were made to last a very long time (dammit!)
One that people overlook is unterminated coax cable (unterminated means no device connected to the jack in the wall). Those produce a very loud roaring rushing sound if you get within about 8 ft of them; very unfortunately lots of venues have a lot of coax cable installed and not all of it is connected to something - that something does not have to be powered on to silence the coax, just connected.
In your own place the incoming coax goes to a splitter (usually in your attic).

Disconnecting unused coax drops from the splitter will silence them. Apartment dwellers may need to make friends with their neighbors first.

[nevershouldhavesoldit]

In your own place the incoming coax goes to a splitter (usually in your attic).

Disconnecting unused coax drops from the splitter will silence them. Apartment dwellers may need to make friends with their neighbors first.

The unused connectors on the splitter are also "unterminated". You need to put a terminator on each unused fitting. Coax lines are usually either 50 or 75 Ohm, and you can buy screw on terminators in either impedance. But the noise caused by unterminated lines is in the device(s) to which the unerminated lines are connected at the other end. The cable acts as an antenna, picking up electromagnetic energy that then travels up the cable to the device. Simply having unterminated coax lines hanging from a nearby device will not induce noise in a guitar amplifier sitting in the same room.

You should also use shorting plugs in unused audio inputs to eliminate noise entering through this route. I do on the high gain preamp inputs in my audio systems, but I don't on my guitar amps.