[Harp-L] loud bands

[SONNYTONE@xxxxxxx]

I agree with Stephen S. that the bass player sets the tone for the volume.
Mitch Kashmar has played more gigs than many will play in their lifetime,
and  always told me how he will always us an upright bass player due to this.
The  bass drives the drummer to be louder, then the guitar player is trying
to keep  up with them, and the harp player is left with whatever volume you
are at. I  could not even control my own band as I struggled with on stage
volume to the  point where I just had to quit. There are not a lot of good
players in CT that  really know how to play the blues, and no one is saying
you will sound like  Bharath and the Rhythm Four, which IS a bit too laid
back for me, even though he  is one of THE best Little Walter style players on
the planet. I believe that  somewhere in between that and the crazy super
loud, harpking wide open or  two big amps for harp is a good fit. The audience
are the ones you  are playing for, not AT. Many have called it just being a
high energy band.  Well, I don't want my ears blown off, not be able to
talk with the person I am  with, due to some harp player trying to keep with
the rest of the band. And if  the player is only intermediate and playing the
same things over and over,  it is rough on the ears. You can only grow as a
player by  having the amp interactive with your playing, and will be led
into a  sense of falseness about what is actually making the overall sound if
you have  a tricked out volume first, tone second amp.  You may think you are
 blowing so hard it is you, but I have heard first hand from many harp
players  who I asked to play over the phone who could hardly play a note yet
owned  a feedback resistant amp and they were dead in the water. Dynamics are
the key, you can play high energy and not annoy people, that should not be
an  excuse for a player to be so loud people leave the club. When you listen
to  Charlie Musselwhite's band, or Pierre Lacocque of Mississippi Heat, 
Sugar Ray and the Bluetones, this is great energy, high energy bands  that play
at a PROFESSIONAL level, aware of their volume and loud enough to  really
engage the audience. There is nothing worse than a very loud harp  player who
really can't play well enough to keep it interesting and just goes  for
more volume.
    If you do have an electric bass player, it is  so important to start
off the night at the right volume as they will only  get louder as the night
goes on, usually. I had my own band, Sonny Jr and  Code Blue that was a high
energy band, playing most of Cotton's High  Compression, standard LW and BW,
with lots of R & B mixed in where  the harp plays horn lines. Takes away
from just guitar solo, harp solo every  song with no structure. Throw in a
couple of War tunes that again have  specific lines the harp and guitar play
together, that to me keeps it  interesting for the audience and they have
songs they know. If you say  here's a Little Walter song called...........,
maybe a few harp players in the  house will know what it is.
    With all that said, I have made some changes to my  410 to give 25%
more overall volume without losing any of the tone, which from  the close to
300 owners, is the best tone they have achieved with all their  amps. I will
be done with testing in a few weeks, due to the amount of variables  when
working with Weber speakers, it makes the process expensive and time
consuming. The H dust cap is not something I may use, but one has to try H  dustcap
versus standard dome dustcap just to find the perfect harmony of tones.  I
started speaker blending over 10 years ago, documented, and there is now it
seems every harp amp company is using some blending technique in their own
way. Contact me in a few weeks if you want to hear one, I will get sound
bites  up and have to completely reconstruct the website. So all of the current
410  customers will ask if they can buy whatever it is I have made the
change to, I  must see what the final tally would be before offering a
modification kit. I  tried Ron Holmes harp mods and found my chassis with the paper in
oil capacitors  is the best sound there is. This was after another engineer
went for maximum  volume, it just sounded unnatural, so I will hold my
ground there, as the  speaker changes and acoustical changes will do all the
work I want.
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