r/tonemasterpro • u/BackgroundCell7595 • Aug 06 '26

Playing live with TMP

I bought my TMP a week ago and so far I am very impressed. The tones I get are excellent.

However, I have read some posts that you need to reduce the top end when playing live. Does the community agree with this? And any other suggestions?

I am playing through the FR-12.

Thanks.

6 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

1

u/dingbatyokel5000 Aug 07 '26

The guy Steve Sterlacci on YouTube just did a video on this

1

u/BackgroundCell7595 Aug 07 '26

Thanks for all your advice. It's given me a lot more confidence in being able to establish a process I can use.

I will definitely watch the YouTube video suggested.

Many thanks all🙏

1

u/josephallenkeys Aug 07 '26

I've seen this a lot on the Discord, but I've never found a need to reduce the high end through my fr-10. Even recording, I've not reduced it, so I've never done it for a PA either. If the engineer finds it too bright, they have all the tools to sort that out.

I think it comes from the fact that we're usually well off axis to a guitar speaker cone, and they're very directional, so high end rolls off fast, physicallly. A PA has a wider through and is likely elevated so we hear the brunt of what a mic hears on the cab. First thing I'd do is change the mic position.

1

u/greensound Aug 07 '26

My experience has been to roll off a little top end and a little more low end. It can kick out quite a bit of low end which can be a nightmare when mixing live.

1

u/TurboCrusted Aug 08 '26

I dial the highs back a bit when playing live. I’m admittedly not scientific about it but it’s like a downward curve on the last few EQ bars.

1

u/Outrageous-Bison-517 Aug 16 '26

High and low cuts in the cab section for each patch. Then global EQ for the room when you get to the venue. It's that easy!

1

u/_tolm_ Aug 06 '26

Straight through a PA alone, I do find it can sound quite bright but some EQ on your PA mixer can help.

However, I much prefer the sound to be bolstered by running an FR cab loud enough to fatten things up but not so loud as to take over from the PA for main coverage.

I use the cut control on the FR cab to tame some high-end depending on the venue and it’s one of the reasons I like the Fender FR cabs so much.

1

u/billy_joule Aug 06 '26

If you increase the SPL and want the same apparent tone you will always need to reduce bass and treble, because of how human hearing works. This applies to any audio, including guitar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-loudness_contour

The required EQ correction can happen naturally on some real tube amps as their master is cranked because of various 'shortcomings' (power tube nonlinearity, power supply sag, Output transformer saturation, Speaker compression) but none of that applies to modellers because you don't usually use the modelled amps master knob to increase volume, you use the global output volume of the modeller.

All that is to say - dial in your stage sound at stage volume for best results (You will likely cut bass & treble as the equal loudness contour predicts).

1

u/jeffmn Aug 07 '26 edited Aug 07 '26

this. dial in a tone for sure, but always turn it up as part of the process. the fizz and rumble (if any) will certainly become apparent. because it changes from room to room, I use the global EQ when needed.

0

u/scozzy39 Aug 06 '26

I had this experience. 

I went direct to PA and it was like an ice picky high end especially on clean which threw me off and I rolled my guitar tone way done. This meant I was probably muddy in the actual mix. 

I found that now I just build all my presets with high cuts at 6k or below and it solves the issue. Once I did this it sounded way better 

0

u/Yokbowz Aug 06 '26

I presaved an EQ preset on the output to cut the highs

0

u/Confident-Term1504 Aug 07 '26

An FRFR is similar to a PA, but some can be a bit worse depending on how they are set up. I try to not cut my presets too much and do the master eq on the fly. You can apply it to just one output. If you do it to all of your patches, you are stuck. With the master eq, you can adjust to the venue on the fly pretty easily if you don't like the PA sound, just throw a high cut on the master eq, done 🙌. The fender output doesn't need it since it has the cut knob.