Why your guitar sounds bad at church, but great at home. And how to fix it.

Have you experienced this at your church? What did you do? Let us know! 👇🏻

Our sound tech defines his role as a ministry. As such, he decided to study it like crazy to do the best possible job he could. He built a team around himself and teaches them everything he's learning, as needed. A few months ago, he spent an hour or two with each musician, building what he called a "sound profile" specific to their gear and play style. As the main electric guitar player for our praise team, and using a Walrus Audio ACS1 in place of a real amp, I can honestly say that working with our skilled sound team has been only a good experience. My sound at church is BETTER than my sound at home! He knows it too, and the whole sound team is really enjoying praise and worship. Encourage your sound team to do their homework. Help them, if need be. They are worth investing in, and the music we play for Jesus is DEFINITELY worth investing in.

The key to this is a sound person that has the vision and the heart to do things like this.

I actually just talked to the sound person, who I’m actually good friends with, and asked if we could come in one day and dial in my pedalboard for the sound system, and asked when it was convenient for her. She was totally cool with it and we worked together on making it sound good.

And I always thought it was me... Thank you for this video. Great points, all of them, lots of stuff I never considered. I have a few things to add: 1) The acoustics of the house change when it fills up with people. 2) I finally quit worrying about how I sound and started enjoying being in the worship moment. I have a lot of peace about my worship now. I think it has something to do with not focusing on me and placing the focus on God.

I love this podcast setup. 1 table, 2 mics, 3 cameras: person 1, person 2, and zoom out to catch both. And the lighting...ugh...so clear! I love this setup!

This format is outstanding! Please consider making it a permanent part of all you do for the church community! Appreciate y’all! 🙏🙌🎸

My sound guy on tour was an electric guitarist himself. Not as much of a tone junkie as me, but it gave me comfort with him behind the console.

That was very helpful; especially the part about dialing in your patch at the volume that you will use it at. Thank you!

Sound Engineer and Musician 🤘🏻 You guys are spot on. Understand your space, be proficient (not necessarily professional) with an EQ, and build relational equity with your team. Those things will yield more positive productivity. Thanks for the help you guys bring to the community!

Wow, I am so happy our church had Sweetwater install our system. I use your patches with my pod go and it sounds great.

Your story resonated with me. My son began a new role as a worship leader in Newark, UK recently, and he asked me to help him set up the sound-desk, since they have no sound guy. He was concerned his acoustic guitar was broken and might need replacing.Sure enough, when he played it sound awful. With a flash of inspiration, I realised the signal was clipping. It turned out that someone had simply cloned the guitar channel from another instruments channel and the gain was set way too high. A simple teak, and everything was fine: no new guitar needed. It took a little longer to set up the compressor and EQ though and I have yet to help with the delay, since his church is a huge stone space with masses of delay!

Informative video! I AM having this issue,; I now have some "next steps," so thanks! And Bradford, thanks for bringing up Jason Isbell!

“Leaders define reality.” The above is the most profound statement I have heard in awhile.

Thanks for all the ideas for the Prime creating patches (rigs). I agree with the problems faced by equipment not being up to the best standards, not being installed professionally and the possibility that the sound people might not be as experienced as we’d like. This add up to some pretty poor sound mixes and experiences. There may be some other variables that really add into our guitar mix. First, when I create patches for songs, I’m probably playing and practicing those using the songs recorded by the groups who made them, either in a studio setting or live. So, these professional musicians are all playing their exact parts, all mixed and blended together using an engineer who has a lot of experience with this group. I would assume those original musicians are more professional than most volunteer musicians. So, I’ve got a patch that works with that mix. When I play with a completely different set of musicians in church, they come with their own personalities and ideas of what is appropriate for the song. This includes the keyboard player who may play up and down the keyboard or maybe plays in the center. Usually, they are playing where the bass and acoustic guitar are playing. Or maybe the bass is playing all over the place. So, the mids frequencies become quickly crowed. The electric guitar player will experience their own instrument being lost in the mid frequencies, so they will feel their sound has thinned out. This can really become apparent if a piano sound or, especially a Rhodes piano is in the mix. Those instruments can consume a lot of the frequencies the guitar player would use. Second, guitar players have a tendency to over drive their sound., a lot. 😅 They may favor a scooped sound or even come from metal rock, (yes I’ve played with these players). So, we might want our sound to be harsher than is appropriate. Guitar players tend to over play the parts. Let’s admit it, most contemporary songs have parts that are fairly minimalistic for the guitar player. So, we want to add more. I’m guilty of this. Third, sometimes it’s very hard to really get the guitar parts to sound like the original. Not all volunteers have an arsenal of guitars, the ability to change guitars between songs or the desire or finances to do so. Some of us are more Fender oriented, some PRS, some Gibson, etc. The current contemporary sound seems very P90 oriented where the guitar is fairly bell sounding, not rounded but more mid thick. Bells don’t have tons of overtones, humbuckers and single coils have different harmonics. While you can try, you’re not going to get a P90 sound from those other pickups. Fourth, many times the songs we are attempting to play have been changed to a different key, possibly 4 or 5 steps away from the original. Basically, the way we play what is needed in the song changes, maybe drastically. What was written in E is now played in B or A. This means the tonality of the song changes. And what’s more, we’re trying to create a patch for a song in a key that has probably been morphed. The sound of the guitar we are trying to recreate doesn’t really even exist. The harmonics have changed. And this goes for the backing tracks as well. When backing tracks are morphed 4 or 5 steps, the harmonic structures of those backing tracks change. In fact, the backing tracks are now probably no longer in actual tune because they were based on a tempered scale which has been morphed. When we now play with the group, the patch we created doesn’t fit what others have created. Last, I’m going to state the most obvious problem we now face in a contemporary group. The drums are mixed as though they are a solo instrument. Between the kick, snare, toms, and cymbals, they have used most of the frequencies. While the mixing engineers have perfected the drums so each and every strike is perfectly audible, the rest of the band is left behind. The bass become a low frequency under tone. The guitars and keyboards are sitting somewhere in the background under pads and drums. In most contemporary music, what the keys and guitars plays 90% of the time makes almost no difference as long as it’s within the chords structure and key signature. So while guitar players are spending time, energy and money trying to get that perfect sound, for the most part , it won’t be heard over the drums and backing tracks. I’m not even sure if we should mention the poor backing vocalist. I’ve been playing bass, some keyboards , acoustic and electric guitars in contemporary bands for the past 25 years. And I’ve been writing and recording my own music for over 40 years.

thats a good topic , being a worship leader in a small church i do a bit of everything. i appreciate this talk, its helpful. ive dealt with "sound guys" that like to make the sound to their particular liking or dont have good practices. this helps me try to think of different ways to communicate. again great talk guys

Another thing to consider and maybe discuss at some point. Most pedals (I play a Helix Floor) have mono and stereo effects. If you are setting up your patch at home in stereo, but you are running mono when you get to church, your reverbs, delays, and other spatial effects are not going to sound the same at all. Though we're running everyone stereo now, we had that issue with guitar players quite a bit.

Good topic. At our previous church it took us months to figure out that the crossovers in the speakers were shot….the sound was terrible as a result but it took a professional to diagnose the problem…

This is such an underrated topic. Thanks for covering it!

Great advice! I would also add, if you can't make the patch at church, at home, use a good monitoring system that is as flat as possible. And use multiple monitoring sources even at home! Headphones, studio monitors, FRFR amps, $20 ear buds, your in ear monitors, your computer speakers, your car, whatever you can get your hands on. If it sounds good on 80% of those sources, chances are it'll translate okay on a PA system too. (with the right adjustments)