Re: Effects was Re: [Harp-L] Jason's organ

[Richard Hunter <turtlehill@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Buddha wrote:
<no offense to Richard who I think is a marvelous and amazing
<musician/person but the sounds of his unit was wimpy compared to mine.
<There is a place for such units but there is no way it can stand it's
<ground vs a set up like mine or Jason's etc...
<
<by "real" pedals I mean dedicated pedals.  The RP unit have sounds
<that are trying to emulate other pedals and they are a watered down
<version of the real deal ie; Boss DM-2  The RP octave patch was
<nothing compared to the demonic death sound of my HOG.  If you're
<going to lug around gear then a pedal board is no big deal.  To me,
<the RP units are best suited to really small venues.
<
<BTW- I deny the power of a real amp and minimal pedals... MORE is MORE
<in this case. Bigger and better is the way to go for this stuff.

I'm flattered, of course, that Chris seems to think it so important to vanquish little old me and my gear choices.  It's also nice to see what Chris really thought this demo was about.   "More is more."  "Bigger is better." Are you sure this discussion is about your harmonica gear, Chris?    

Let's talk about how carefully the deck was stacked in this session, starting with the amp.  As I noted in my previous post, Chris showed up at the SPAH demo with an amp that I now see was chosen from the start to overwhelm the room--a Bassman RI with 50 watts of power and four 10" speakers.  That is massive, massive overkill for a 20'x30' room, where a 5-watt amp with an 8" speaker could easily have been loud enough to make people uncomfortable.  With the volume set to 2--the lowest we could get it without making the sound inaudible--Chris's amp was loud enough to force many people in the room to put earplugs in.  I am certain that no one reading this would ever show up for a gig in a 20'x30' room with a 50 watt amp in tow, and it's interesting to ponder the question of why Chris thought so much power was necessary.  It seems likely to me that the amp was chosen by Chris precisely because he knew it would be orders of magnitude louder than anything else at this demo, given that I had publicly asked SPAH for a small PA system or keyboard amp.  As every recording engineer knows, a louder sound is automatically perceived by any audience as a "better" sound.  That is the exact reason why every new pop or rock record has been compressed and volume-maximized to within an inch of its life--every producer wants to make sure that his or her record is the loudest record on the radio. 

To finish this point about volume, note that the Digitech, like any other amp modeler, and also like the pedals Chris brought with him, has no amplifier of its own.  Its volume depends entirely on the power of the system it's plugged into--just like Chris's pedals, which don't make a sound until they're plugged into an amp. So it's nonsense, not to mention purposely misleading, for Chris to claim that the Digitech (and other amp modelers) are only "suited to a small venue".  If you want a louder sound, you plug it into a bigger amp, just like you do with any other pedal.  Period.  I use a 65 Watt keyboard amp, with a line out to the PA, for loud gigs for precisely that reason.  

Chris was very clever to turn this effects demo into a contest based on the size of the amps in the room, to make sure that he brought an amp much bigger than the one I planned to bring, and to claim, when all is said and done, that there's only one way to get a good sound--his.  Of course, I've heard the same story from lots of other players over the years.  It's never about the same gear, of course, but that doesn't stop them from claiming that there's only one way to do it.

Nice working with you, Chris.   Looking forward to the next time.  

Sincerely, Richard Hunter

author, "Jazz Harp"
latest mp3s and harmonica blog at http://myspace.com/richardhunterharp
more mp3s at http://taxi.com/rhunter
Vids at http://www.youtube.com/user/lightninrick