Scott Henderson Discussion

[guitarplayer]

Hi Scott,
When moving from a stereo rig to a mono setup, was this a challenge after hearing the stereo image onstage for so many years? I find that the sound gets a little worse when I move to mono, but I would like to start playing in mono for the obvious reasons. Does it feel like a compromise? For the audience it does not matter as much, but your you as a player standing next to your gear?
Thanks!

[guitarplayer]

typo, I meant to type:
"For the audience it does not matter as much, but for you as a player standing next to your gear?"

[Scott Henderson]

I'm not implying that it's the case for you, but for me playing in stereo was a band-aid which hid the fact that my tone wasn't that good. My real tone was lost in the processing - split in half by milliseconds from L to R, and by stereo delay and reverb. If you wanna know what you really sound like, play completely dry in mono - that's a man's tone! ha ha Just kidding, I use delay and reverb, but one thing I learned is that one 4x12 sounds much better than two 2x12's in stereo. It didn't take me long to get used to playing in mono.

I remember way back in the 80's when an engineer told me that my stereo sound was wasted on the audience unless they were sitting directly in the middle, and the people on the left and right were only getting half of my sound. I was like, OK I'm pretty dumb for not realizing that... Anyway, I'm glad those stereo days are over.

[guitarplayer]

Thanks so much for your comments.