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L1® Users Forum Musicians General Forums What Do You Think of This New Approach? Meeting with Bose Tomorrow to see the L1 & Matchless question|
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Hey folks.
Its me again. I just thought I'd let everybody know that tomorrow night Garry from Bose in Calgary is coming to my rehearsal space to demo the L1. Im playing in a 6 piece band and hes bringing 3 L1s and 3B1s. I'm excited to hear it and I'll be listening in with an open mind. Theres several factors im going go "grade" these things with. 1. Sound Quality (obviously it'll be fantastic, but i've got some nit picky things that a lot probably wouldn't have) 2. Ease of Setup. Im' sure it will be a winner. I'm sick and tired of this stupid PA we've got and all the damn cables that are all over the stage. As it is I use 3 instument cables for my guitar and my effects loop which i've got 7 pedals (for this project anyway) hooked in, lots of wires and cables. .. k well i guess thats just 2 factors but still, they're both important. I know I'll be impressed and I'm not quite so skeptical about the whole thing anymore just because I've had some time to think about it and play with our stupid rig which is pretty crappy even for the "triple system", cause its really more like a "double system" ... yeah anyway, we need a change. If we like it he'll let us use the system for our industry night on the 31st, and he'll get some exposure down here, i've got some of the sound guys from around the area coming and the news will be there covering the event. so its a win-win for everyone. Then afterwards we'll figure out a way to buy a few of them if we can. Also Gittar-Jonz About that Matchless amp you posted in my thread about tube amps and tone and such. I was wondering if you Ever played a Superchief (i think thats what they're called) I know that they've been discontinued for years so I was wondering if you've ever had the chance to play one since you're a Matchless user. The guitar idol I had in my youth used 2 Superchiefs on stage with matching matchless 4x12 cabs (thats a mouthful) Thats Jeff Martin of The Tea Party by the way. So i've always been curious about Matchless. I hear the superchiefs are expensive even if they werent a collecters item. I mean Matchless amps are expensive. My Rivera cost me just over 4K total, and my original idea was to get a Diezel VH4 but that would've put it up over 6.5K i think. But apparently the Superchief sells for that much Just for the Head. Pricey stuff. Thanks for Listening guys! |
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Hi VA,
Glad to hear that Garry's going to help you out. Just a minor clarification, for anyone else in Canada who reads this thread - Garry is one of a couple of folks in Canada (and dozens in the US) who participate in our Assisted Direct program. Garry doesn't work for/at Bose. Rather, he's an L1 owner who came to us as a strong advocate with lots of drive and good ideas for demonstrating L1s to folks in his area. We're very fortunate to have many folks like him on the team... Looking forward to reading your thoughts, after you've had a chance to try out the L1 approach... All the best, Chuck |
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VA,
I hope it all goes well. I'd love to be there to see the smile on your face the first time you hear the L1. It'll blow your mind in a really good way. I was pretty reluctant the first time I heard it, & I was amazed. Tom |
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Okay so I was super pumped all day to get through work and get trying these things out. And I'm not disappointed... BUT ... I don't think it's perfect. We had a few problems setting up and playing around before we got a good sound out of it which was expected. And then our other guitarist had problems with his amp, turns out the footswitch (it was a line6 spiderII with the fancy footswitch) went on the fritz for about half an hour.
My amp wasn't working with its direct out because its a primitive piece of crap and my good amp isn't ready to be used yet. So i plugged in straight from my effects, which (as expected) gave me about the worst sound I could get. The other guitar had a much better tone and he was plugged in through his line6 which i find to be the big choice here in the Forum, but it was still pretty sub par, granted thats partly because his settings weren't very solid. Vocals were fantastic, we didn't mic up the drums although I'm sure that would've been great too. The Keyboards sounded wonderful. But the guitars just sounded like crap. They wouldn't cut through, and if we turned up loud enough that they did it was too loud and drowned everything else out. The tone was kind of paper thin. I'm hoping that my tube amp will be ready by next weekend and I can use the direct output on that amp to get a much better sound. The sound does disperse very nicely and its amazingly clear, not muddy at all. We could even hear it about 80% as clearly behind it as standing in front of it. In fact our Bass player had to plug back into his amp because he has a cheap yamaha guitar and it buzzed really badly and it picked up so clearly on the L1 that he had to go back because it was driving us all nuts. Now when I say this next part I want everyone to know I was rooting for the system all night and did everything I could to get the guys to choose to go with it. It does go plenty loud. Everybody is right about that... But it doesn't have the presence. Theres no THUMP and theres no GRIND... My guitar sounded very.... digital and paperthin, I know its partly because i was basically just plugged straight in, but i was going through an equalizer and had a good balanced signal, not as balanced as I'd like but it should do the trick. It kind of sounded like When i plug my guitar into my Soundcard on my computer and it plays through the computer speakers. Yeah it gets loud but theres a Difference between the volume and the presence and the feel it has to it. This system cannot replicate the sound of a good closed back guitar cabinet. That is just my opinion. The L1 is an amazing work of engeineering and its going to do wonders for our live show, but it is no replacement for a good guitar amplifier, or Bass Amplifier. After we packed it all up we went to go support another local weekend warrior band and they had all their own gear that they brought, PA and all and it sounded Thick, the levels were perfect. They had a good grind coming from their marshalls, the Bass player was playing on an Ampeg SVT and it was just thunderous and it wasn't too loud. the lyrics cut through just fine and were only hard to understand at the very end of their last set during the trashcan ending. It was a satisfying sound, So I dont know where to go with it. We decided to use the systems for our show because we've never heard anything clearer with as great clarity at the back of the room. But I didn't hear the seductive sound and feel that I keep hearing about on here. Also I had difficulty hearing others on stage. We weren't in the ideal setup because our stage is smaller than ideal and we can't have the L1 5 or 6 feet behind all of us, but as well as these things disperse the sound.. on stage it was only slightly better than it was before. standing close to my L1 i couldn't hear the other guitar ont he other side of the stage and when i walked over there I couldn't hear myself anymore and could only hear him. And much of the time I had a lot of difficulty really hearing myself even at good volumes unless i turned around and physically looked directly at the speaker. Which brings me to my last Gripe about the system. Stage Space... We have a gigantic stage. and it was being cluttered up by all these speakers and cables from our tradtional pa system and i Hated it. so we tore it all down and gained 3 feet at the front of our stage. AWESOME. But the pictures dont do the L1 much justice as far as its size is concerned. its Tall which is pretty cool but the footprint on them is very nearing 2 feet square. thats HUGE, we're still loosing a lot of space. and our stage is HUGE. its like 12 x 20 feet, If this system is supposed to be used in smaller venues like bars and such how on earth are you supposed to fit these thigns on stage, even with a 2 piece band? the really are gigantic once ou put them on the floor. Quality Lyrics. Quality Keys, Pretty good Bass Guitar, Perfect clarity in everything, cannot hide behind your mistakes. Band is in control of the sound. These are all positives, Also dispersion of the sound is phenominal. Cons (in my opinion): Hard to hear other loudspeakers when your'e standing closer to one than another. Does not produce a good guitar tone. No "THUMP" presence is very 2 dimensional Bose... if you could make this thing sound like a 4x12 cabinet and get the sound to disperse like it does.. I'd get rid of my amp. I know theres a lot more tweaking to be done and we only had about 4 hours to play around with it, But these are my impressions thus far. The Calgary Bose-guy was VERY helpful and he came down on his own dime to help out. And hes great for it. I'm hoping we can get bose some good coverage and make it worht his while and do our best to buy a couple systems from him for the band. He brought 3 L1's and 6 B1's. Please comment on this. Give me some advice. Feedback. Please don't Flame, we're all mature here. We're using this in a week and Im a little nervous we wont get it right and it will sound bad because we didn't know how to use them well. |
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Hi VA,
Thanks for posting your impressions in such great deatil! I can't write much now (the little guy is stirring), but I just want to give you something to think about: Yikes! I couldn't agree more! I don't think that anything will ever truly 'replace' that sound, including the direct out from your amp. If you have an amp that gives you the tone that you want, I recommend micing that amp, speaker and all, as the speaker is a vital part of that tone that you love. It's just not very effective at distributing that tone, which is where the L1 comes in... More to come. Thanks again... Chuck |
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Hi VA It's a beautiful spring morning here in Kentucky, I'm in the den with the windows open, listening to the birds, and the neighbors new puppy tied to a string and barking incessantly in their back yard. When I read this I turned around and looked out the window to see if I could hear it any better or if it was different. No. It's just the same. I think you have noticed something that all new users go through, and part of the reason that most users report a better connection with the audience. When standing with your back to the speaker it confuses the senses because the sound seems to be everywhere, but when looking at it you know exactly where it is coming from. It won't take long to get used to this, and as you do you will learn to really appreciate the phenomenon. A note of warning. Even if you mic your guitar amp it may not sound the same through the L1 as you thought it did. Hopefully Chuck or other experienced electric players will jump back in here with specific tips for amp micing. The mic will be "hearing" the amp speaker(s) from a different position than your ears have in the past. Try to allow a little tweak time before the show, the L1 will reproduce exactly what you put in it. The transition is a great ride. Enjoy. O |
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Market Representative, Western USA |
I'm going to echo Chuck and Oldghm. It was not designed to replace a backline amplifier by itself, only give your current amplier greater coverage. Micing your amp is the way to go.
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The thing with electric guitar with the L1 is that the sound is not like your amp, but more like what you hear in the audience when your amp is mic'd into the PA. This took a while to get used to for me & I didn't like it. But I appeased myself with knowing that the entire audience was hearing exactly the same tone. I've tweaked a lot over the months though, & I'm now really happy with the tone I get.
I'm an AD like Garry, & I just took one of my systems over to another guitarist's garage the other day to try with his Strat, & he was really happy with the direct sound from his pedals into the L1. We had the preset on 26 - Mic'd Guitar Amp "Rumbly". Then I plugged him into a Damage Control Womanizer & he was even happier. Next we tried a Korg ToneWorks, & he didn't like it at all. He had a POD for a while that he had sold before my demo & could never get a tone he liked. We also tried an old SansAmp which didn't cut it for him. I meant to bring a Fender Pro Junior so I could show him a small amp mic'd as well. Those are just some of the options that can be tried for getting tone. This guitarists main comment was that his amp was too loud on stage for most small bars he was playing in, & he was happy that he could get decent tone from the Bose without the volume he had to have to get the tone out of his amp - an entirely different thing to consider. So I think the lesson from my ramblings is that it may take a while to get your tone through the Bose, but in the end it will be worth it. Just spend some quality time getting your tone in practice before you get to the gig. Tom |
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Hi Voltions Advocate
Taking these two statements together we get: The L1™ faithfully amplifies the source. So if the source is "a good closed back guitar cabinet" then that's what it will faithfully amplify. Certainly try mic'ing the cabinet, but also be prepared to do some tweaking with the mic. (On axis, off axis, centred, off-centre, different microphones). You are adding something to your signal chain (the microphone) and that can be a very musical addition. |
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Hi all,
My amp has (almost) always been mic'd for as long as I've been playing gigs, some 30 years now. The difference with the L1 approach is this:
Nothing automatic here. It takes real effort, though not much time in the grand scheme of things, to get it all dialed in to the point where I LOVE the sound that I hear coming from the L1. Whether others (band mates, audience) love that sound, too, is not the point. The point is that for better or worse, because everyone in the room is now hearing my guitar from only one place (my L1), we're all essentially hearing the same tone! That, to me, is the most profound difference between what I've experienced for most of my performing life (always asking during set breaks what struck me as a really silly question - "How did it sound?") and what I'm experiencing now with the L1 approach... Man, them's some long-@## sentences.  'Hope this helps... |
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It helps a lot guys, keep it coming. im taking notes.
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VA,
Yet another way to think of this. The L1 system is about tone delivery, not creation. It's designed to take what you give it and fill the room with that tone. An open back 2X12 is not a tone delivery system at all. Would you buy any kind of PA or home sound system with just two 12' speakers ... of course not. nearly every single 12" speaker can't make much sound above 5k Hz ... that's why we like their sound for guitar. I'm a guitar player too and the thing that I like most about playing though an L1 speaker, whether I'm miking my Deluxe Reverb or using a PODXT Live, is that what I'm hearing is what everyone else is hearing. There's no changes in tone depending on where I stand and there's no more wondering what the crowd is hearing. That's cool to me. The key thought I'm trying to share is this ... now you can seperate tone creation from tone delivery (just like in the studio). Create your tone any way you like and let the L1 system deliver it in a way no other speaker (or speakers) can. Enjoy! Steve |
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Steve makes a lot of sense. Think of the L1 as your own personal PA System. If you plugged your guitar directly into a PA, the PA speakers wouldn't be able to produce the sound you wanted. Doesn't matter if they were Behringer or Meyer speakers. You will still need to use your amp and a microphone. Forget about using the direct out on your amp. Robert L |
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That's why I love this forum. You learn more here by accident than anywhere else by design. I get so many good comments, and ways of putting things for audience members, and sound people that come up to me interested to find out what I am using for sound. |
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Bass Guitar Electrical Engineer |
VA,
There's a lot to get used to, especially when the whole band is using it for the first time. Thanks for posting such a detailed account... You mentioned: "But I didn't hear the seductive sound and feel that I keep hearing about on here." The part that trips many up is that you have to put in some time(a few practices, especially for electric guitarists) to get 'your' sound through the system, BUT, when you do, you take it with you everywhere night after night with a lot of consistency. Its not hit-and-miss like a traditional rig. As others have said, there is *no* comparison to running electric guitar direct through an L1 and running it through an amp, miced through an L1. MikeZ |
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I think your main problem with the guitars was simply the amp, and trying to replicate that sound in the L1. You only get out what you put in. My guitarist gets a very gritty rock/metal sound just by going striaght in with a pod. I use pod for my bass and it has plenty of thump. I'ts just like any sound system you have to find out how to use it the right way to get the sound you want. You might also want to consider the possibility that you might be trying to make the L1 sound like a traditional PA backline amp setup, and being dissapointed that certain apspects of the sound aren't exaggerated, like in the usual loud pa/backline amp set up. With the L1 the rule is, "what you put in is what you get out." I would like to suggest that if you want to get the most out of it ditch the amp and make some patches on your effects processor specifically geared towards the L1, and don't forget the L1 has a small eq on the remote which can make a big difference. Personally, other than nearfield blast and a slighty more crisp piercing sound, I don't see any reason to hang on to a guitar amp. We get guitar sounds out of a pod straight into an L1 that sound just as good and better than a marshall tube amp. though I'll admit it did take a lot of getting used to. Also, MY OPINION, on the whole, "It just won't replace a good guitar amp, " argument. I think thats a little silly. All a guitar amp is is an amplifier of sound. I've heard plenty of guitar players playing through traditional half and full stacks that had horrendous sound. There is nothing magical about guitar amps that make them sound good. I'd also like to suggest that next time you try one out walk away from it past ten feet while you play. This is where the real magic spot it. Up close you may think that it must be to weak for a good guitar sound coming off of using backline amps. |
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i stood about 30 feet from the front of the stage to listen actually (thats about how long my patch cord is)
The guitar amp argument isn't winning any battles with me though because having a "good" amp doesn't mean you get good sound from it and having a "bad" amp doesn't mean you get bad sound form it. I like my amp because I like the sound it gives me and I tweak it. I do get good sound from my amp because I'm psychotic when it comes to getting the sound I like. It might come down to the fact that I just dont like PODs and the sounds you get out of them, im just using that as an example. Most people dont worry so much about this kind of thing, but if i dont like my sound I'm not goign to be in the zone, im not going to be enjoying myself on stage. Yeah you've got to play to the crowd but whats the point of getting sound everybody else loves when you dont like it? and the implications that a sound I like isn't one that the crowd will is a little silly itself. If this is all about artistic control... why would I sacrifice artistic control for artistic control? My plan is to mic the amp and use the direct out and see which is better sounding. I may be young and not quite as experienced as a lot of guys on here, but I promise im not guilty of jumping in with the stereotypes and just goign out and grabbing a marshall or a mesa because its the thing to get. I would buy a ford tempo over a ferarri if I wasn't able to test drive the ferarri. |
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Bose Live Music Team Lead Rep SW U.S.A. Guitar, Vocals, Bass, Percussion, Noise  |
I have no idea where I posted a similar statement to what I'm about to say, otherwise I'd just link you there...but...
Micing a guitar amp with this system is incredibly easy. It's mostly about mic choice and placement. Most guitarists don't sit right in the dead center in front of their speaker when dialing in tone. We tend to stand off to the side or above the speaker. So what we've dialed in is different than the tone at the dead center of the speaker. When I set out to find "the sound", I put my amp on it's amp stand, grabbed a Sennheiser e609, and plugged those into my L1. I kept the remote handy and got one of my devices to do a loop of chords and single line stuff so I had a constant source of audio through the amp. After that, I would just put the mic in different places in front of the amp speaker and then just turn up the L1. I just waited until the tone I heard coming out of the L1 was simply a louder version of the tone my amp produced from where I stood. That was it. Once I found it, I just marked the spot (tape works) so that when I get to a gig, I just drop the mic there and I'm ready to go. For the record, the mic was 1/2 way between the speaker dust cap and surround almost exactly, and I found preset 27 did the trick for me. This works as a great starting point, because as I go around working with bands and retailers, if I mic an amp I just start with what I used (1/2 way, 27, e609), then "boom" there's the tone of that amp coming through. Oh, and the L1 EQ knobs are flat (all straight up). The best part is, the sound I pulled up on my amp and spent hours tweaking and sweating over is EXACTLY what my audience gets when I play. I also get to know where I am in the mix and can change pedals, boosts, tone adjustments very quickly and be right where I want to be. |
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VA,
Good tone is good tone - no matter what age you are. You just need a little time with the system to dial it in. Tom |
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I think I didn't make my points right about amps. What I was trying to get at is that both the L1 and guitar amps do the same thing, but spread it in different ways... They both amplify sound, and can be tweaked and can be made to sound really good or not so good. It is not the fault of the L1 if the guitar sound doesn't sound good. I know this from experience.
Nothing wrong with being psychotic about getting the sound you want. Not unusual at all for a guitarist. Many here have had great results with micing small amps. Myself, after hearing the sound pods get, I don't see the point. An amp is just one more thing in the chain to go wrong and another thing to carry. When we first started with the L1 the guitarist first simply used a couple of pedals straight in. A distortion pedal, and a chorus, and delay for leads. It wasn't the greatest guitar sound. But, it still sounded better than a lot I've heard in the past. The pox xt live really brought it to a new level. I'm not trying to sell you on the pod. I'm sure there are a few other effects units that would sound good. I got it because of ease of use. The thing about the pod though is that most of the stock patches, especially the bass pod, are poop. So, we really had to sit and customize the sound. We enjoy our sound both up close and further away. I usually stand about 4'-8' feet in front of mine, but have walked 24' away to see how it sounds. I said the 10' thing because usuallly this is the sweet spot, as the system sounds just somewhat better out front after the sound spreads. Although, set up right on stage, you can hear the mix, you hear a more CD quality mix out front. Although the L1 doesn't have much of near field blast, it does have a slight near field effect if you are playing loud. Which we do because we play rock. This is the compliments I have got several times, "Holy cow your guys mix and clarity sounds like a CD is playing, but loud," or something to that effect. Or, "wow it's loud but I can stand up front without going deaf." Or, my favorite, "I can hear the vocals, usually rock bands singers are buried by the guitars at a club, I understand every word you say/sing." I wasn't trying to put you in a sterotype catagory, I was just trying to help. I think you'll find if you give the L1 more of chance and get it to sound pleaseing to you, you will grow to like it more than your amp. I am constantly pleased with our sound through the L1's P.S. where the heck did you get a 30' guitar cord? |
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L1® Users Forum Musicians General Forums What Do You Think of This New Approach? Meeting with Bose Tomorrow to see the L1 & Matchless question|
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