Dee Curtis Talking About Slash And Amp Placement--As Well As How To Make It Work In The Studio And Onstage

By Mark Grove

Slash isn't really really talking about amp placement, but this is just as good. This is another so important piece on amp placement and how it can help design creative new ways of getting the tone your band wants.

Music Consultant: Dee Curtis

I talked with Dee about amp placement, and the fact it isn’t talked about or written about too often in the major music magazines, or bandied about in gear talk among musicians.


I told Dee about a recent article Slash did on just that topic, and he agreed that amp placement can sometimes be more important than mike placement. Dee went into intricate detail on Slash’s amp rig and how he actually used it.

I gave Dee some details on Slash’s little blurb on amp placement and how it helped out immensely, resulting in distorted sound that was the tits. That means incredible if you haven’t guessed. But the question is, why does where you place your amp in a room have such a huge bearing on the sound you get?

Well, I can’t tell you exactly why amp placement works well, but Slash, in his recent article in Guitar World talked about some wild distorted tones he was getting on a new track for Velvet Revolver using a Marshall—JCM 800 Half-Stack and a Slash 2555SL—Signature Amp simultaneously.

Slash didn’t talk about how he actually placed them, but he had the drums and amps in another room, then decided to leave the drums in the other room and bring the amps into the main room, and use the amps at the same time. Slash said this produced some great tones he wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.

But here’s my two cents worth on the subject of amp placement. By experimentation figure out what’s best for your rig placement wise. You could move both the bass and rhythm guitar out of the room, and record your lead guitar track separately, and use your bass player’s amp and your rig at the same time by linking them together in one signal.

This may or may not work for you, but you might be able to come out with some interesting tones using Slash’s amp placement technique. I call it more of a recording technique. So, try out some different variations of placing your amps, facing each other or turned away from each other in a totally different direction. Don’t worry so much about Mic placement which most musicians and producers seem hell bent on.

The technique described above isn’t set in concrete, but don’t worry about perfection here in regard to amp placement, it’s about experimentation and recording your way. So if your producer says to go one way and forget amp placement, go the other and just do what you want. Some types of music lend themselves to more innovation with amp placement than others, like hardcore, metal, prog and blues especially, because of it’s naturally distortive properties.

Placing amps and configuring them in creative ways can force you to think differently and not rely on mic placement, or mixing board tweaks so much, and more through organic changes in getting distortion and tones you like, will give your music the edge you never knew existed . So have fun with it.

Thank you to Our Music Consultant Dee Curtis for all his knowledge on gear and how to use it in innovative ways.  Dee Curtis--CGP deecurtis@rock.com