Sound Advice | Controlling stage volume - Mic the guitar amps

Controlling stage volume can be helpful for many reasons including minimizing the chance of feedback as well as delivering a clearer mix for the audience.

Updated at May 24th, 2024

Today's Lesson


Keeping the overall stage volume down is very helpful when controlling your monitor volume. One thing we can do here is to keep any guitar cabinets on stage at low volume. The cabinet itself should only serve to produce the sound of the guitar. It should not be the source that the audience or the band members hear the guitar from, at least not in total. By keeping the cabinet low and miking it you, can better control the sound of the guitar in the front of house mix as well as the monitor mixes.

If someone needs more of the guitar, you have the power to provide that right in the stage monitors. The guitar player does not need to turn up the amp. Just because the amp is low on stage doesn't mean it's going to be low in the house. You can crank that thing up as much as you need to in the house or in the monitors, and you can keep it controlled which will better serve the performance as a whole.



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