Vol/ Master Vol : Redux.

[Justin Thomas]

Chief,

I think Chuck & Steve nailed it.

" The perception that guys in videos are playing at what you would consider a manageable volume is false. Just because they're not wincing and blinking and the guitar isn't squealing uncontrollably doesn't mean it's quiet. It means that those players are much more comfortable than you are dealing with loud guitars." - Chuck H-

When I got my Prosonic, I left it on the 30W setting. My stepdad yelled at me every time I si much as plugged it in. Funny coming from a guy raised on Ted Nugent, but whatever. I cranked it on ten one day on the clean channel, and went, holy crap that hurts! But it's fun with all that tone!

A week later I did it agajn. Hmmm, not so hurty. So I tried it again... now I'm used to it. I <can> stand in the same room w. a 100W Fender with all knobs on 10 and LOVE it. It's how I know that Alex really DID get the Working Man tone with a Twin Reverb on 10. Or he certainly could have. Trust me. I wouldn't do it very often, and I don't like it when someone turns all my knobs up without telling me, but I do like the sound and do not find it painful.

Another thing - quality of sound DOES have something to do with perceived volume. If yhe tone is attractive, people are much more forgiving. My buddy lets me crank up my Concert all the time. He won't let me do it with his Crate.

An audiologist would say that the cranked 5E3s are too loud. But we're rock guitarists. Sucks to our esrdrums! And I'll bet my Champ played at any volume over 3 could still piss off apartmentmates.

Who was it on this board who said, "What is this 'volume,' and why do we need to control it?"

Justin

[JoeM]

.....
The master volume on any amp does not turn the power amp distortion up and down. It turns the signal going to the power tubes up and down. ...

Just to clarify, at 10 the master volume doesn't increase the signal, it's just letting the full signal pass. I think of the MV as being able to turn the signal down only.

[Sea Chief]

No. If there was a way of increasing the volume, Fender would have done it as it would have been a selling point even in the 1950s.

Good point- ok I can definitely rule that out.

Maybe you just can't handle the volume of a 15W amp. You seem far more sensitive to noise than the average rock musician that these amps are designed for.

Steve It wasnt just me: some guy marched 400+ yards over to the property I was on and rudely whacked the door etc. The volume was absolutley huge & so tbh I was not surprised with his reaction. Ive been to plenty of noisy old grungey gigs & the ony thing I recall as feeling louder was honestly J Mascis: it was physically uncomfortable.

Im beginning to think whether the location I was in somehow added/ amplified even (is that possible??)/ or antagonised the amp's volume say. It was in one of those large US garage types, the floor concrete, not much on the 3 long walls to absorb the soundwaves either, plus a big heavy double-door.

Chuck H thanks for that. I do take all the replies 'on board'. "Did the instructor in the video ever say that turning the master volume up allowed for lower volume power tube distortion? No? Then why do you believe that". I didnt believe that/I didn't say I thought that, that seems nonsensical. I simply mistook his diagram of the gain vol knob being at 2 so I thought mistakenly he obtained pwr tube distortion at lower volume by keeping the MV on 10 then turning the gain vol -right the way down- to 2 when it was, actually, only ~1/3rd the way down to 6. (He sort of presented the 2 egs as opposing/ back-to-back egs you see which didnt help, the 1st eg in 'reverse' he had the gain 10/ MV 2).

[Chuck H]

Right. The preamp signal has it's own control. Then the master determines how much of THAT signal is allowed to go to the power tubes. And FWIW on guitar amplifiers ALL volume controls only turn the signal down. Perhaps we should call them anti volume controls.

[Sea Chief]

Yep- got that from the clips Chuck H. (It was only the ammount of the signal that I had in question there; whether a relatively small ammount (gain 2) was enough to get the power tubes into clipping & the answer was no only a medium ammount (gain 6) minimum is enough. I didnt see the gain knob/ misread it as 2).

Does anyone know whether an amplifier can be naturally amplified? (aprt from sticking a mic > PA of course). Im thinking if light waves can be so by way of a lens.. can any physical characteristics of the room in which the device is played act as a soundwave 'lens'?

And Chuck H can you put a sausage in your man-with-the-sungalsses mouth please? he looks hungry.

[Chuck H]

Ok. I watched the video. There are a couple of wrinkles in the info but nothing to get bent about. Good tutorial for the lay player. But I will concede that the volume of the different tones was very similar on the recording. I think one reason is that the volumes were very similar He had the amp set up for a fairly loud clean tone most of the time. once an amp is putting out max clean it doesn't get a lot louder when it starts to clip. And, FWIW, the volume level in the room was about as loud as you would play with a live drummer. The reason his voice is so clearly audible is the lapel mic and the mix. It's an illusion. Like David Blaine floating.

[Sea Chief]

Yes, the perceived volumes I get due to the mics compression will have been similar. And in the room the volumes might well have been similar too. But I had no Q to do with this, with regard to the tutorial video.

It was just the distortion characteristics coupled with their relative volume controls in the tutorial I had a bugbear with: simply gain 10/ MV 2 (1st eg he shows) and the reverse gain 2 (so I thought) /MV 10.
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The volume difference of my amp at vol8 when I unfortunatley heard/felt it, to what I think a standard 5E3 is at vol8 is the other/ remaining Q. Maybe the room somehow acted as a 'magnifying lens' somehow: IE how would a 5E3 sound if placed in a very large concrete box with all of 1 of its 6 sides a thin resonant material.. louder possibly??

[Please put a ciggy in his mouth, if not a sausage-?]

[Chuck H]

Certainly room acoustics could make an amp seem louder at certain frequencies. And if it happens to be those frequencies where the amp and speaker are strongest the effect could be unnatural loudness. I've never heard the effect that pronounced, but that doesn't mean it can't be. Just that I haven't heard it.

[Steve Conner]

I guess a bare concrete room could well amplify the sound, and if the door faced your neighbour's property, he could get a good blast of it too. If the room sounded echo-y with speech and footsteps, it would also bounce the guitar sound back at you.

[Sea Chief]

Aha- I think this might be it. Yes the garage was facing that ape, and sort of a gentle hill down to his area/ few houses too. Certainly reflective and a defo small echo to it the big 2x garage too. Tbh I think the double door acted like a sort of spkr cone: I did hear that RAF Typhoo sonic boom in there 2 yrs ago.. it made me nr pee mesel.

Thanks chaps- SC

[Enzo]

Oh, just how loud can a little amp possibly be at 400 yards? It isn;t that it is intolerably loud out there, it is that he could hear it at all... and didn't want to.

A couple illustrative stories:
My shop is on the border of a residential area. My storefront faces a residence across the street. A client brought in his system rack one time early on, and we were sorting out connections. He had a drum machine in the rack, so we put on a basic pattern and left it running while we checked channels and stuff. Not at all loud, perfectly conversational in the shop area. But we were in my loading dock with the big door open. The old lady from across the street came over SCREAMING at me to turn off "all that racket." I apologized promised never to do it again, and closed my door. But the sound levels were not remotely loud, she just couldn;t handle the steady thump thump thump sound.

Back at my mom's house, I used to work in my room in the basement. I might get somewhat loud, my little stereo amp circuits were nothing like a guitar amp, but they could make some sound. But mom was upstairs, other end of the largish house, with the doors closed between rooms and in the stairway. Her table radio tuned to "beautiful music" was louder than the sound from my space drifting up. But she could tell that the music was TOO DAMN LOUD down where I was, regardless of how it sounded where she was. And she objected to that. She didn;t want to hear the rock and roll, PERIOD.


So your hound across the Baskervilles might be objecting more to your presence than your volume, so to speak. Try playing some Beethoven out in your garage one day at similar volume, and see if he comes running.

[Chuck H]

Oh, just how loud can a little amp possibly be at 400 yards? It isn;t that it is intolerably loud out there, it is that he could hear it at all... and didn't want to.

That's it n a nutshell. Some people just like to bitch. It makes them feel better about their own indiscretions. They know they can't ever be as big as they want to be so the only way to even things out is to make others smaller.

I've found that asking in advance makes an enormous difference. If you tell neighbors that you will be playing loud within a certain time frame and ask if that will be alright the answer is nearly always yes. Being the stodgy douche that can't hang would only make them smaller than they already are... "And the Grinch's heart grew three sizes that day."

[Enzo]

And if your ball went into his yard, he wouldn;t let you have it back...

[Sea Chief]

Oh, just how loud can a little amp possibly be at 400 yards? It isn;t that it is intolerably loud out there, it is that he could hear it at all... and didn't want to.

A couple illustrative stories:
My shop is on the border of a residential area. My storefront faces a residence across the street. A client brought in his system rack one time early on, and we were sorting out connections. He had a drum machine in the rack, so we put on a basic pattern and left it running while we checked channels and stuff. Not at all loud, perfectly conversational in the shop area. But we were in my loading dock with the big door open. The old lady from across the street came over SCREAMING at me to turn off "all that racket." I apologized promised never to do it again, and closed my door. But the sound levels were not remotely loud, she just couldn;t handle the steady thump thump thump sound.

Back at my mom's house, I used to work in my room in the basement. I might get somewhat loud, my little stereo amp circuits were nothing like a guitar amp, but they could make some sound. But mom was upstairs, other end of the largish house, with the doors closed between rooms and in the stairway. Her table radio tuned to "beautiful music" was louder than the sound from my space drifting up. But she could tell that the music was TOO DAMN LOUD down where I was, regardless of how it sounded where she was. And she objected to that. She didn;t want to hear the rock and roll, PERIOD.


So your hound across the Baskervilles might be objecting more to your presence than your volume, so to speak. Try playing some Beethoven out in your garage one day at similar volume, and see if he comes running.

Hi Enzo- points taken, perfectly reasonable eg's. But I used to get my mother hollering at me when my 30w hifi amp was on 3, and old lady's well they are by instinct seemingly at odds with anything loud.

This guy was a chunky 45 yr old (youd point at 1st for being a rock-listener by his attitude alone), the GTR was enormously loud. Although he was rude, I understood totally/ I was on his side tbh!

I really am coming to the conclusion the room characteristics played a big part in amplifying (& projecting) the sound. Anplifying due to the square nature and reflective 'glassy' concrete floor & walls, and projecting (both in & out/ adding to the amplified sound waves bouncing horendously all around me inside- throwing the whole thing down twds the hill) via the huge thin-metal double-door having a speaker-like 'bouncy/ springy' nature to it & as it was, covering nr the -whole- of one side of the huge 'box'.

This is a theory only- I really want to see what any acoustic engineers make of it. It might be total BS, but I do kind of feel it has merit: and therefore my amp --was-- louder than a std 5e3 in more usual space/ surroundings that absorb alot of the soundwaves instead of (enhancing?) them.

[Enzo]

I live in totally rural area. Actual farmland, not the suburbs. I used to raise hogs even. Two miles down my road is an interstate highway, trucks driving along at 60 miles an hour. I can easily hear the trucks from my home. And in fact on quiet evenings when i am out looking at stars and listening for night bird sounds, that sound from 2 miles away is actually annoying, because it catches my ear, and I cannot hear small wildlife sounds. Are they loud? Not in the slightest. If you are driving beside them on the highway, yes, the tire noise is very loud, but not at my home. But I don;t want to hear it nonetheless.

Two miles farther down that road, so about 4 miles from my home, is a railroad track. I can hear the train horn honking for the road crossing. Again, not loud, but potentially annoying if I want to listen to something.


Yes, old ladies are more sensitive to loud, and even when it isn;t loud where they are. If they can tell it is "too loud" where people are listening to it, they object.