2 or more amps on stage? Why?

[11miles]

Can someone please tell me how come that bends like metallica have 16 triple rectifiers and 24 boxes on stage?
Just for the eye,
or in case something goes wrong with one i have another 13 to go?
or for the fact that '' we are metallica, and we must look nasty onstage...''

And these really are decoy-s right?
I doubt that kirk or james both ply on a regular mesa boogie amp head?
Or rob for that matter with 8 ampeg heads?
C-mon...

And not that i have anything against metallica!

i've seen bryan adams with a pair of fender bass rig!
And heard that John5 of Marylin Manson had on their oozfest tour some 2 years ago, 4 laney 4x12 boxes, when 3 were actually producing sound, while the 4th were there just for the symetry!

So what's the case with this plurality of equipment on stage?
a pretty eye-sight or.....

[Newc]

Re: 2 or more amps on stage? Why?

Most just use them as eye-candy, to give you something to look at and go "WWWWWWOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW!"
Brian May of Queen had a wall of empty Vox AC30 cabs, and one real amp with a mic in front of it. That's pretty much how everyone does it. I've also wondered for years how you see these live rigs of stars and see a cable running from one head into another into another into another [img]graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]
What's THAT supposed to be? [img]graemlins/scratchhead.gif[/img]

I suppose you could use the preamp of one head and the power amp of another. Even identical heads can sound different/better if you're only using one part of each one. Then again, if you've got 3 or more heads dedicated for each sound, it's easier and less noisy to switch between them than to switch channels on one head.
Add to that the fact that most tube heads may only have one EQ, or at least don't allow you to set one EQ for each tone (Clean, Crunch, Lead), without some signal degradation.

But generally yeah the wall of cabinets is usually a front. There might be two that actually have speakers in them - one miked for the pa and the other for a side-of-stage monitor, but the days of having to use a big wall like that to get the sound out there are long gone.

Newc

[Chuckracer]

Re: 2 or more amps on stage? Why?

Back in New York in the mid to late eighties in my band Below Zero, the other guitarist and I each had 6 Marshall 4x12 straight front cabs (three stacks), and three Marshall 1959s mounted in a rack that sat right next to the cabs. Yeah, we had roadies!
We were each using one head and two bottom cabs, the far left and far right cabs. All three heads were on, but two were on standby. In this case however, old modded Marshall heads would blow often so the two backups were used a lot. The tech would just yank the speaker cables out of the blown head, stuff them into the next one, and knock it off standby.
In this day and age though, it's just eye candy, and ya gotta admit it does look cool as hell!

[little0x]

Re: 2 or more amps on stage? Why?

The old bass Ampeg heads used to catch fire. It used to be common too. Now you don't need all the amps on stage. It does look cool though.


Ox

[Black Mariah]

Re: 2 or more amps on stage? Why?

Newc: On some older amps you can use the inputs on the channel that's not being used as outputs. It's a way to use multiple amps without a splitter box. Hendrix did this a lot. I remember one picture (can't recall where I saw it) where Hendrix was using something like 6 Marshall and 6 Sunn full stacks in tandem. Billy Cox was using (IIRC) 8 Sunn bass stacks. They were all hooked up like that.

[Boxcar Willie 84]

Re: 2 or more amps on stage? Why?

Zakk Wylde has a wall of his signature Marshall stacks onstage, but none of the heads are plugged in...his "real" amps are in a rack behind the backline...

[Black Mariah]

Re: 2 or more amps on stage? Why?

AC/DC does the same thing. None of the stack of amps they have out front are real. Angus and Malcolm both get their sounds from (IIRC, again) JTM45's that are housed in isolation cabs under the stage.

[Banjowarrior]

Re: 2 or more amps on stage? Why?

Usually, as the guys say it is mostly for show with a couple for redundancy. Brian May has (or used to have) three on at a time, with three on standby, and three more behind just in case as spares, giving 9 AC-30's. [img]graemlins/headbang.gif[/img]

[Ace]

Re: 2 or more amps on stage? Why?

When my friend was interning with KISS he said that the cabinet stacks were all fake, and that they didn't weigh anything, so you would see one guy carrying three 4X12's over one shoulder. Also, I've seen plenty of guys use one or two 4X12's on either side of the stage to get a stereo field.

[the_drip]

Re: 2 or more amps on stage? Why?

Laney Heads can be daisy chained together I guess. AT least the valve heads can be.

[Fragle]

Re: 2 or more amps on stage? Why?

i saw yngwie malmsteen a couple of months ago and well....it was a small gig, only 200 people i think, but he had 6 (4 on his side, 2 on the other) marshall fullstacks on stage. AND, to me it sounded like they were all plugged in with volume up to 10 [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]
well, if you put your head right in front of the pa monitors (you do crazy sh*t like this when you are drunk [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img] ) you really just heared the vocals, keys and drums through it, maybe some bass. but imo really all the guitar noise came from the stage....i think thats why malmsteen taped "PLAY LOUD" on his favourite strat ^^

fragle

[Boxcar Willie 84]

Re: 2 or more amps on stage? Why?

Thats how it was when I saw him too...like 8 heads with a cabinet for each one! [img]images/icons/shocked.gif[/img]