What's the deal? Who? When? Details, please...
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What's the story behind the fake marshall stacks?
- Thread starter BusyFingers
- Start date
It saves the roadies backs! The days of needing three Marshall stacks for the audience to hear was over by the 70's when P.A. systems got a whole lot better, some bands just wanted the whole cool factor of a whole stage of amps without actually carrying them around.
It looks cool to 14 year old metal heads.
Its part of the show, I guess. What people expect from a rock concert. Probably because thats what the norm was during the peak days of rock. Stacks and stacks of Marshalls on the stage.
I am the same actually. When I go to see a metal band, I expect a somewhat large collection of amps on the stage.
It would look weird to see Slayer with small combo amps on the stage.
I am the same actually. When I go to see a metal band, I expect a somewhat large collection of amps on the stage.
It would look weird to see Slayer with small combo amps on the stage.
It looks cool to this 32 year old metalhead as well
At some point Rush put vending & washing machines up because the lack of speaker cabinets looked odd.
I wish they would have taken it a step further and had random people using them during the show.
I wish they would have taken it a step further and had random people using them during the show.
Would be nice to have a beverage vending machine on stage 
What's the deal? Who? When? Details, please...
If you are 40 years old or less, pretty much any concert you have ever been to that had lots of stacks on stage. In the last 30 years there has probably not been a single musician on stage who actually had more than a few cabs on stage working. The majority of them are wearing isolating in-ears so why bother with a stage rig?
It's just a back drop.
I was totally guilty of having empty cabinets on stage back in the day. It was totally an ego based deal. I cannot say exactly who set that standard, but if you came to one of my shows you would have seen several empty cabinets that came from an "adult dance club" remodel. They were huge. I thought they were so cool behind me on stage stacked around my Peavy combo amp. I thinks it's the same mindset as these kids that put those coffee can mufflers on their Honda cars that sound like an angry weed eater. Whatever we had to do to be noticed.... Aaaahhh to be young and foolish again.
Edit..... I can pinpoint the day the whole empty cabinet on stage deal went out of fashion for me.... Watching Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble play in the early 80's with nothing but personal amplifiers on that huge stage. That moved this young mans world to a new level.
Edit..... I can pinpoint the day the whole empty cabinet on stage deal went out of fashion for me.... Watching Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble play in the early 80's with nothing but personal amplifiers on that huge stage. That moved this young mans world to a new level.
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Playing through a huge wall of amps is also every guitar players dream.
I once got two old Peavey 4x12 cabs really cheap, like 150 bucks for both.
Of course the first thing I did after schlepping them to the rehearsal room was build a full stack.
Only after much protest of my drummer and bassist, I sold one of them
It just sounded so frikkin huge
I once got two old Peavey 4x12 cabs really cheap, like 150 bucks for both.
Of course the first thing I did after schlepping them to the rehearsal room was build a full stack.
Only after much protest of my drummer and bassist, I sold one of them
It just sounded so frikkin huge
Overcompensating for a small... instrument...
I saw Gwar 30 years ago and they had a backdrop of cardboard boxes painted to look like cabinets, which looked cooler than the usual Bud Lite banners hanging in bars.
I agree it looks cool.It would look weird to see Slayer with small combo amps on the stage.
It looks cool to this 32 year old metalhead as well
I saw Metallica in 1996 at Earls Court and during the intro to One their stage amps exploded (some might suggest that, along with the guy on fire falling from the lighting rig, it was planned). Their crew brought out little practice combos and they said "well this is all we've got now" and got on with the show.
You know it isn't ego - it's set. Nowadays to make the event memorable, you need visual interest, something to look at. If the budget goes up you need more to look at, and often more to justify the higher ticket prices. One tour, Status Quo did away with the white Marshall DFA guitar cabs and put lights in many of them. That looked really cool, with horizontal and vertical patterns, since then there have been all kinds of folk using light up cabs.
Neil needs an actual giant amp in order to hear himself these days:
Actually, putting a "coffee can muffler" may be part of a performance package to make the engine breath better.
My Harley has an obnoxious loud exhaust on it only because it matches the 124" engine. If my pipes were smaller, it would be choking the engine. To put it another way, try running on a treadmill as fast as you can and see how heavy your breathing is. Take 5 minutes rest so your heart rate could go back to normal and then do it again but this time breath through your nose only, nothing in or out of your mouth.
My sportbike has the stock exhaust because it is using the stock air filter. If I went to a free flowing air filter, I would need a free flowing (read: louder) exhaust. With that thing, I like to draw as little attention to myself because I am probably going 1 or 2 kilometers per hour faster than the posted speed limit.
Oh yeah... I still have header pipes and a very not quiet exhaust on my 1971 340 Dart. I blame it on my second childhood.
people like to hear with their eyes