singing thru amps

[boogiemantoo]

I am starting a band and I would like to hear about singing thru amps until a P.A. becomes necessary for practice. Any experiences or thoughts would be appreciated.

[boogiemantoo]

I am thinking of using a '65 RI twin to begin with.

[frankiestarr]

You just need a mic cord with a 1/4 inch jack....I think a old high inpedence mic would work better. Not great sounding, but good enough to practice out of....

[boogiemantoo]

I have a SM-58 and a behringer 4 channel mixer

[ezyrydr]

I did it in my first couple of bands in high school in college. We were broke and there really wasn't another alternative when a PA wasn't provided. We were just playing parties anyway.

We used a solid state peavey (Nashville 400). It was a pedal steel amp I think.

Anyway, it worked fine. I really don't think the human voice is going to do anything out of the ordinary to the amp. Just watch out for feedback. Keep the treble and bass low just to lessen the extremes you might accidently put on the speaker. Don't crank it too loud.

[Austinrocks]

normal channel on the fenders is good for a mic, that is what it is intended for I believe, used my custom vibralux as a vocal mic, no prob just get a mic to 1/4" or some mics have 1/4" plugs, ran keyboards as well, if yoiu plug in both 1 and 2 they are the same full volume on my vibralux, should be similar on your twin, just running one of the inputs, input 2 has an attenuator, ran the mic in input 1 and a keyboard on 2 of the normal channel and guitar on vibrato channel or whatever they call your channel with reverb for practices all the time.

[DanR]

At my very first gig (7th grade dance, June '66) we plugged a mic into my Vox Cambridge Reverb amp, in addition to me plugging in my Epiphone Casino. We only had one singer (whose voice had changed by then :)).

In '77 I started gigging with a wedding band. At our first gigs we used a Blackface Fender Tremolux head for a PA.

[fretless]

Back in the 80's, while in my first high school party band, we used to use a Crate solid state amp (the ones that actually were made from wooden Crates!). It worked fine in a pinch until we bought a half-assed beater PA for our practice garage. In retrospect it probably sounded like utter crap, but we could at least hear the vocals.

[pete kanaras]

hell yes! my first serious band did Many a gig with a tweed bassman doing double duty. the harp player would blow thru the normal channel and sing thru the bright channel. he'd use one of those radio shack/shure xlr to 1/4" impedance converters and away we'd go. with me playing thru a bf super reverb on 5 1/2 we were a pretty loud blues band, and yeah our "pa" worked Just Fine. had another harp player buddy who did the same thing in his band but with a bf concert and they were even louder than we were. i still really dig the concept: the entire band, vocals and all, is coming from one sonic space instead of the vocals being "separated" with pa speakers in the air on sticks, as is usually the case in a small club. haha, a true "point source" band! is it pristine? hell no and that's the beauty of it; the band really has to work together to pull it off at all. but when you can pull it off it's REALLY cool because everything is on equal footing. i've always wanted to do a live recording that way. highly recommended

[boogiemantoo]

Thanks TGPers! you folks have never failed me yet.

[kidderminster]

Hey boogiemantoo my 1956 tweed deluxe has a instrument channel and a mic channel. That's the way Leo Fender thought about your question. Just make sure the drummer keep's his volume in check. I remember in the early day's how great a twin reverb with JBL's could sound as a PA. In a pinch it could still work on some gig's.
peace,
rich

[boogiemantoo]

Hey Kidderminster, I tried it and I like it! for jams or practice I think it will work great . I played around and this is what I discovered ... you plug a mixer or into the vibrato channel on a Twin Reverb, a SM58 in to the mixer. Your pedal board into the normal channel, guitar of course into the pedal board, set the normal channel on 3 and the Vib channel on 6 and it works like a champion set both channels kinda flat add some reverb and there you go !

[rogwerks]

at home i use a fender champ and an audix mic....

the guitar and vocal sound amazing!, soo clear....

transformer on the audix of course...

as children we used to all plug in to a blond fender tremolux! All four inputs would be used!!!

Good times!

with all the inexpensive mixer's out there one cud run 1 "mono" channel for the VOX! !
proilly run 3 or 4 mics easily! (Y jack for the mono!)...

[mikem]

I remember doing this in a couple of bands I was in years ago. It was okay with low to moderate volume from everything else, but once we played something a little bit aggressive, the vocals were lost. Of course, when i first started playing, I had to try singing to my favourite Black Sabbath tunes. I wish I had a tape of that- it would be good for a laugh or two.

Mike

[Scott Miller]

I did that a few weeks ago, at a jam when the PA broke. It was pretty lousy, actually.

[StompBoxBlues]

Make sure you have an open-backed cabinet, otherwise your voice will never make it "through", but you won't be seen too well crouched down behind the amp like that.

:hide

Heh....seriously I have never had much luck with singing through a guitar amp. Feedback seems to be the biggest issue. If I had to do it, I think I would try using an EQ pedal (best if the amp had an effects loop, put it in there) to try and dial back on feedback frequencies, while raising overall level. Also, what impedance are mics? I think this might be an issue, you might need to find out and maybe get an inline matcher, like they have at radio shack.