Guitars Need Amps…

In my opinion there is no substitution for a professional guitar amplifier.  In order to keep our stage look clean(and the stage volume down), we keep amplifiers in isolation boxes backstage where the amp is mic’ed.  The challenge, however, has been in getting a proper signal from the guitar on stage to the amplifier in the box since it has to run through all of our cable harnessing.  We have been using a small tube-preamp on the stage that the guitarist plugs his output into.  In the iso box, the signal hits a Radial X-Amp to knock the signal down from line level before it hits the guitar amp.  This was working pretty good, but not all of our guitarists were digging it.  So this week we’re trying something new.

Late last year, one of our guitarists mentioned that Radial had a new box out designed for exactly what we’re doing.  It’s called the Radial SGI.  It’s designed for studios where they like to put the amp out in a room and then sit in the control room and play.  The SGI will let you do 300′ cable runs over XLR cable.  There are two boxes for the system:  TX (transmit) and RX (receive).  You get both of them when you purchase it.  We have the TX sitting on stage and the RX sits in the cabinet.  I had one of them going in my auditorium and the response from the guitarist using it this week was very positive.  I’m going to pick up a couple more of them and see if it turns into a final solution or another option. 

If you’re looking for a way to make use of guitar amps offstage, check out the Radial SGI.