Best way to dial in tones and rehearse at low volume

As Don pointed out hearing equalization is level-dependent.

At low level we are much more sensitive to mids (around 1 kHz, were human voice stays). If you want a tone that works well at stage/rehearsals level to translate well in your room, just increase the low end and some of the highs.

OTOH, a tone that works well at home will most probably show an excess of lows and some highs on stage (that's one of the very reasons why most home-tweaked tones disappear in the mix when acoustic level is higher).

Note this is not dependent on your gear: guitar cabs seem to work "better" in most situations mostly because their passing band is .quite narrow and naturally rich in mids.

HTH

If you like the sound of your Head/Rack in your IEMs when playing live, they may be a headphone alternative worth considering to use when Rig tweaking.

Although most people recommend tweaking sounds at high volume I would caution against this for several reasons.

First and most important - ear fatigue (which eventually becomes irreversible hearing damage). Our ears tire very quickly. After just a few minutes of listening at high volume you will not be able to make accurate informed decisions. In fact, just a few seconds of a loud enough sound can introduce “threshold shift” which will screw up you ability to make correct decisions for the rest of the day, or even days.

Next, the louder you are, the more the room influences the sound you are hearing. In a typical living room/bedroom/home studio there will be serious problems with the room itself which will cause you to make poor decisions. That’s why studios have so much bass trapping and broadband absorption.The lower the level you listen at, the less you excite the room and colour the sound letting you make informed decisions about what is coming out the speakers.

Everyone makes a big deal about Fletcher Munson (equal loudness curves) which is an important concept to grasp but way over stated in my opinion. Although our hearing does change significantly as volume increases it is flat enough by the time you reach about 80dB to make informed decisions for without tiring your ears and damaging you hearing. Listen “loud enough” rather than “gig volume”. Most recording engineers mix at around 80dB and many mix even quieter; only occasionally referencing at higher volumes for a reality check. Their mixes need to be able to be listened to at whisper quiet to bone crushing loud and everything in between.

You mentioned that you have had a rack for some time. Presumably during this period you have created some killer tones that work well for you live. This is THE KEY to getting good live tones in future.

Every good professional mix engineer (I’m NOT one unfortunately 😆) will tell you that they can achieve release quality mixes on just about any speakers in any room; although it is obviously easier and faster on great speakers in a world class room.

How do they manage this? Reference tracks.

They never go into a room or start a mix without first listening to their reference CD/playlist. They know how those tracks are supposed to sound and have the experience to be able to adjust today’s mixes to compensate. You can do exactly the same thing with a few Reference Rigs. Take your best live rigs covering different aspects - clean and bright, clean and warm, classic crunch, hi gain, wet with delay reverb etc (because our perception of how much delay and reverb we need will also change with volume). Now when setting up new sounds frequently check against an appropriate Reference Rig at the same volume. (This is important as our ears associate louder with better so you want to ensure a fair comparison) A good starting point might even be to try and recreate one of your Reference Rigs from scratch without looking at any pf the settings. How close can you get? With very little practice you should be able to get your new rigs in the ball park pretty quickly.

Even with all of this in mind, you shouldn’t expect to get perfect live rigs for a band context from home tweaking. When setting up sounds on your own you don’t have the important reference of how they will interact with the other instruments in the mix. However, if you already have some Reference Rigs that sit well with your band then you should at least get in the right ballpark. Another analogy to recording mixes is that engineers know they can’t achieve the perfect mix. Everyone will listen to their work on different systems at different levels and in different rooms/environments. What they need to know is that the mix they create will “translate” well to as many systems and environments as possible. With our own Rigs we should aim to get sounds that “translate” and gives the FOH engineer a great starting point to apply whatever tweaks necessary to make the guitar sit in the live mix properly.

Yes, tinnitus drives me crazy too. It never stops 🥺 I spend way too many years playing loud on small stages and in rehearsal rooms because it was macho to rawk!!! Then I spent too long in a 10 piece soul band with a 5 piece horn section behind me blasting straight at my head. If I could turn back time I would definitely do things differently.

Simple. Use Headphones and tweak all you want and as loud as your ears can stand before being damaged.

Most amps have Gain, Bass, Middle, Treble, Presence. What I always used to do is more or less keep the EQ and only adjust presence at the venue. Quick fix.

On Kemper I do the same with the Definition parameter in the amp or the Directivity parameter when using a Kabinet. I dial in the basic tone using backing tracks and on the venue it’s a quick fix.
I don’t do presets by song though and use a set of 3-4 sounds and varying effects. If I had presets by song, editing definition at a gig would of course be ridiculous.

Quote from Da Vinci

I currently own an Electro-Voice ZLX monitor, but it doesn’t sound great with my profiles. It’s designed to fill a room at higher volumes, not to sound good for distorted guitars at close range.

That's interesting, because with mine (ZLX 8P G2) I can do more than decent tones, even at low volume. I use FRFR and tripod mode, with a some cut in highs: -1db on the two last bands of the GEQ. It works well for low to mid volume.

On the other hand, most of my profiles have been tweaked and tested in studio and crosschecked with my day-to-day monitors and two different headphones. When playing alone sometimes it's not the most inspiring sound, until I use backing tracks or after some time playing, Then the sound is perfect.

IMO the Kabinet it's perfect for playing quiet at home.

Quote from Wheresthedug

Although most people recommend tweaking sounds at high volume I would caution against this for several reasons.

First and most important - ear fatigue (which eventually becomes irreversible hearing damage). Our ears tire very quickly. After just a few minutes of listening at high volume you will not be able to make accurate informed decisions. In fact, just a few seconds of a loud enough sound can introduce “threshold shift” which will screw up you ability to make correct decisions for the rest of the day, or even days.

Next, the louder you are, the more the room influences the sound you are hearing. In a typical living room/bedroom/home studio there will be serious problems with the room itself which will cause you to make poor decisions. That’s why studios have so much bass trapping and broadband absorption.The lower the level you listen at, the less you excite the room and colour the sound letting you make informed decisions about what is coming out the speakers.

Everyone makes a big deal about Fletcher Munson (equal loudness curves) which is an important concept to grasp but way over stated in my opinion. Although our hearing does change significantly as volume increases it is flat enough by the time you reach about 80dB to make informed decisions for without tiring your ears and damaging you hearing. Listen “loud enough” rather than “gig volume”. Most recording engineers mix at around 80dB and many mix even quieter; only occasionally referencing at higher volumes for a reality check. Their mixes need to be able to be listened to at whisper quiet to bone crushing loud and everything in between.

You mentioned that you have had a rack for some time. Presumably during this period you have created some killer tones that work well for you live. This is THE KEY to getting good live tones in future.

Every good professional mix engineer (I’m NOT one unfortunately 😆) will tell you that they can achieve release quality mixes on just about any speakers in any room; although it is obviously easier and faster on great speakers in a world class room.

How do they manage this? Reference tracks.

They never go into a room or start a mix without first listening to their reference CD/playlist. They know how those tracks are supposed to sound and have the experience to be able to adjust today’s mixes to compensate. You can do exactly the same thing with a few Reference Rigs. Take your best live rigs covering different aspects - clean and bright, clean and warm, classic crunch, hi gain, wet with delay reverb etc (because our perception of how much delay and reverb we need will also change with volume). Now when setting up new sounds frequently check against an appropriate Reference Rig at the same volume. (This is important as our ears associate louder with better so you want to ensure a fair comparison) A good starting point might even be to try and recreate one of your Reference Rigs from scratch without looking at any pf the settings. How close can you get? With very little practice you should be able to get your new rigs in the ball park pretty quickly.

Even with all of this in mind, you shouldn’t expect to get perfect live rigs for a band context from home tweaking. When setting up sounds on your own you don’t have the important reference of how they will interact with the other instruments in the mix. However, if you already have some Reference Rigs that sit well with your band then you should at least get in the right ballpark. Another analogy to recording mixes is that engineers know they can’t achieve the perfect mix. Everyone will listen to their work on different systems at different levels and in different rooms/environments. What they need to know is that the mix they create will “translate” well to as many systems and environments as possible. With our own Rigs we should aim to get sounds that “translate” and gives the FOH engineer a great starting point to apply whatever tweaks necessary to make the guitar sit in the live mix properly.

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This is GOLD.

Quote from Wheresthedug

Although most people recommend tweaking sounds at high volume I would caution against this for several reasons.

First and most important - ear fatigue (which eventually becomes irreversible hearing damage). Our ears tire very quickly. After just a few minutes of listening at high volume you will not be able to make accurate informed decisions. In fact, just a few seconds of a loud enough sound can introduce “threshold shift” which will screw up you ability to make correct decisions for the rest of the day, or even days.

Next, the louder you are, the more the room influences the sound you are hearing. In a typical living room/bedroom/home studio there will be serious problems with the room itself which will cause you to make poor decisions. That’s why studios have so much bass trapping and broadband absorption.The lower the level you listen at, the less you excite the room and colour the sound letting you make informed decisions about what is coming out the speakers.

Everyone makes a big deal about Fletcher Munson (equal loudness curves) which is an important concept to grasp but way over stated in my opinion. Although our hearing does change significantly as volume increases it is flat enough by the time you reach about 80dB to make informed decisions for without tiring your ears and damaging you hearing. Listen “loud enough” rather than “gig volume”. Most recording engineers mix at around 80dB and many mix even quieter; only occasionally referencing at higher volumes for a reality check. Their mixes need to be able to be listened to at whisper quiet to bone crushing loud and everything in between.

You mentioned that you have had a rack for some time. Presumably during this period you have created some killer tones that work well for you live. This is THE KEY to getting good live tones in future.

Every good professional mix engineer (I’m NOT one unfortunately 😆) will tell you that they can achieve release quality mixes on just about any speakers in any room; although it is obviously easier and faster on great speakers in a world class room.

How do they manage this? Reference tracks.

They never go into a room or start a mix without first listening to their reference CD/playlist. They know how those tracks are supposed to sound and have the experience to be able to adjust today’s mixes to compensate. You can do exactly the same thing with a few Reference Rigs. Take your best live rigs covering different aspects - clean and bright, clean and warm, classic crunch, hi gain, wet with delay reverb etc (because our perception of how much delay and reverb we need will also change with volume). Now when setting up new sounds frequently check against an appropriate Reference Rig at the same volume. (This is important as our ears associate louder with better so you want to ensure a fair comparison) A good starting point might even be to try and recreate one of your Reference Rigs from scratch without looking at any pf the settings. How close can you get? With very little practice you should be able to get your new rigs in the ball park pretty quickly.

Even with all of this in mind, you shouldn’t expect to get perfect live rigs for a band context from home tweaking. When setting up sounds on your own you don’t have the important reference of how they will interact with the other instruments in the mix. However, if you already have some Reference Rigs that sit well with your band then you should at least get in the right ballpark. Another analogy to recording mixes is that engineers know they can’t achieve the perfect mix. Everyone will listen to their work on different systems at different levels and in different rooms/environments. What they need to know is that the mix they create will “translate” well to as many systems and environments as possible. With our own Rigs we should aim to get sounds that “translate” and gives the FOH engineer a great starting point to apply whatever tweaks necessary to make the guitar sit in the live mix properly.

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This is very true!!! The biggest thing here for me is the sound within the context of your band. I have some live recordings of my band ( multitrack) so I can remove my sound and try any other sounds in there, all done at a low volume.

I would also suggest - when you find that sound, typically knock a bit of gain off for live as that is a compensation that generally works - you over gain at lower volumes.

Quote from Wheresthedug

Yes, tinnitus drives me crazy too. It never stops 🥺 I spend way too many years playing loud on small stages and in rehearsal rooms because it was macho to rawk!!! Then I spent too long in a 10 piece soul band with a 5 piece horn section behind me blasting straight at my head. If I could turn back time I would definitely do things differently.

Sorry to hear. I spotted several articles recently talk about helping your brain dealing with tinnitus, it’s about training your brain ‘not to hear it’ if I remember correctly.

Horns and cymbals are the *worst* with their sharp and high-frequency transients. It’s not just the dbs.

With unprotected ears? It hurts just thinking about it.

I used to stand *right* next to the drummer, with his favorite crash in one ear, and my monitor blaring in the other. Stupid.

But that’s life in your teens and twenties. You’re invincible.

But you’re right - It used to be a ‘badge’ you earned. “Don’t need no stinking ear plugs, wuss.”

I use Eargasms when I can’t use IEMs. It’s not perfect - but close enough to tolerate…and I like my hearing, and *finally* quit caring how using them is perceived.

I have had great success creating my guitar sounds in the context of recorded songs that I will be playing too. I lay down my track and listen back to how I fit in with the rest of the band. Then adjust accordingly. You might find the sound is not always ideal when played alone but you can create a simple output EQ adjustment and save it for home use and one for live.

I find if I tell the tech to leave my sound flat on the board I have better luck. Too many techs are used to mixing and tweaking amps on stage, we are a different beast to them.

Quote from Da Vinci

I pulled the trigger on a used Kemper kab and dialing it in now.
Sounds pretty decent on lower volumes and found out I could also save output settings for some eq corrections (on low volumes it tends to be bass heavy).

And is a way better option then my Engl 212 which colored the rigs way to much so this is more plug & play.

Not quite sure if I have to enable or disable the Monitor cab off. When I enable it, I have to choose a speaker imprint but I thought adapting to the cab in the profile was kind of like it’s usp.

Yeah I have been playing with this too. There are ups and downs to each way. With merged profiles and some "pure cabinet" dialed in, I prefer to leave monitor cab off UNSET. For cabs that aren't done well, you might have better luck with monitor cab off SET. Then you can basicall put whatever driver you want (as long as its in the list) in that virtual cab. The cab tweaks don't really work well in that mode though. It sounds like it is doing something but it goes away.

If you don't get a cab you like in this route you're going to need to do post stack EQ. They just sound different too. Sometimes it's a good thing but not other times.

Mostly I've not been using monitor cab off set, but I do have output presets for both. We will see how new profiling affects this part of the system but if it isn't a drastic improvement in the ability to adjust when monitor cab is off, I probably won't use it.

One last bit is with monitor/cab still on ("monitor cab off" is off) and using Kones, the monitor feed is a better representation of what you're sending to FOH (in my opinion, but I have tested this).