Choosing an Amp for Vocals

[Samwolffh]

Hi all,

I am relatively inexperienced in sound equipment and have been trying to figure out how to set up a couple different pieces of musical equipment so that everything works together to produce vocal loops and harmonies. Following is a list of what I have:

BOSS RC-3 Loop Station
TC Helicon Voicetone H1 Intelligent Harmony Pedal
Behringer XM8500 Microphone

I have been using a Fender Mini Deluxe Electric Guitar Amp, which worked fine for a while, but I believe it got blown out because I've either been using the wrong kind of amp or have been missing something in the setup. I was reading online about microphone preamps, which seem to have something to do with it, but I really don't know enough to make an intelligent purchase. If you want pictures or more details, I'd be more than happy to provide that!

I'm not looking for anything too fancy, but I would like an amp that could handle mostly vocals, but also a guitar is I wanted to plug that into the harmonizer. I asked someone at the guitar center and they suggested Marshall MG10CF Guitar Amp, but I don't want to drop $80 on an amp that's also going to break if the reason is because of incorrect setup.

Thanks for reading this mess and I would really appreciate any advice! Happy Holidays!

 

[8len8]

Guitar amps are voiced for midrange tones. Vocals require full range tones. You should get a dedicated PA for vocals.

BTW, you'll get more replies in the Live Sound forum than here for this kind of topic.

 

[ThePitbullofLove]

There really isn't a good guitar amp for vocals, unless you look at something like an acoustic amp with a mic input, like a Fender Acoustisonic, or a Fishman Loudbox.

Plugging a vocal mic into an amp designed for electric guitar is always a cut rate compromise. Consider instead a powered speaker, or even a keyboard amp with a mic input.

 

[Samwolffh]

Guitar amps are voiced for midrange tones. Vocals require full range tones. You should get a dedicated PA for vocals.

BTW, you'll get more replies in the Live Sound forum than here for this kind of topic.

Thanks for the advice! I'll cross post it now!

 

[Multicellular]

Hi all,

I am relatively inexperienced in sound equipment and have been trying to figure out how to set up a couple different pieces of musical equipment so that everything works together to produce vocal loops and harmonies. Following is a list of what I have:

BOSS RC-3 Loop Station
TC Helicon Voicetone H1 Intelligent Harmony Pedal
Behringer XM8500 Microphone

I have been using a Fender Mini Deluxe Electric Guitar Amp, which worked fine for a while, but I believe it got blown out because I've either been using the wrong kind of amp or have been missing something in the setup. I was reading online about microphone preamps, which seem to have something to do with it, but I really don't know enough to make an intelligent purchase. If you want pictures or more details, I'd be more than happy to provide that!

I'm not looking for anything too fancy, but I would like an amp that could handle mostly vocals, but also a guitar is I wanted to plug that into the harmonizer. I asked someone at the guitar center and they suggested Marshall MG10CF Guitar Amp, but I don't want to drop $80 on an amp that's also going to break if the reason is because of incorrect setup.

Thanks for reading this mess and I would really appreciate any advice! Happy Holidays!

If you want clean nice vocals (more on that below), you want either a PA or keyboard amp, these are made to be full frequency.

Keyboard amps have really been ignored in recent years and arent keeping up with the competition of Powered PA speakers.

The pro of a keyboard amp is it will have more mixer inputs. The con, to elaborate on my above statement, is that for the same price and size, a powered PA will give you more power.

A powered PA speaker will usually just have two inputs. They are basically meant to be used with an outboard mixer, but thats not absolutely needed.

A mixer will usually have mic preamps if those would be helpful with that mic, im not familiar with that mic.

For more general use PA, most people are going to get at least a 12 inch speaker, or 10s and a sub. Or 15s. But those larger speakers are for bass frequencies. For vocals mainly, id ask you, are you doing beat boxing? I.e. do you need similar bass as a kick drum. Then you might be in a similar boat. If it is more regular singing, those big speakers may be overkill. Im a bass singer and in the practice space we have little line arrays with 5 inch speakers and they have plenty of lows for vocals. But ive run a synth into them when my other amp was in another studio and they did not produce the lows they needed.

But that is all assuming you want to do something normally!

If you like the sound of your vocals thru a guitar amp...again I have no idea what style youre talking about...theres no reason a mic into the harmonizer, into the Boss rc3, will blow a guitar amp any worse than lots of guitar pedals would. Nothing you can do with that that is any crazier, frequency wise, than a Whammy or what people do with their extended range guitars. In other words, your buggest risk of amp damage is still low frequencies. But thats to the speaker more than amp.

 

[brbadg]

An acoustic amp with the mic input for vocals will work just fine.I think you need to spend
more than $80 bucks though.That''mini Deluxe''is actually more of a toy than any kind of serious amp.