Fans have complained that they couldn’t hear guitar solo by Kirk Hammett during Metallica’s recent concert. They said that they could hear James Hetfield’s guitar completely but none of Kirk’s solo performance.
Kirk Hammett has guitar issues
Kirk has been having a lot of guitar issues this tour it seems. One fan pointed out the I/O setup and believes that Hammett was definitely hearing his solo in his In-Ear Monitor, given his facial expressions. It seems that the sound technician might have messed up.
When you unplug your brothers Guitar Hero remote and he thinks he’s ripping Through the Fire and Flames
byu/brinstar126 inMetallica
The Metallica guitarist has said that amps plugged into the mains in the UK sound “better” than when they’re plugged into the mains in the US. He feels that it’s to do with the voltage supplied.
“About five years ago I figured out that Marshalls sound the best in Britain,” he says in a new interview with Total Guitar.
“You plug a Marshall straight into the wall in London and it will sound 30 per cent better than the same Marshall hooked up to the wall in America. It’s everything to do with the voltage. And it would drive me crazy because it would sound different from show to show!”
Hammett’s theory checks out. guitar amplifiers, like any other electrical device, are configured for a specific voltage range. Voltage is the measure of the difference in electric potential between two points, so a higher voltage means more electrical pressure placed on the unit itself.
The UK and US have different voltage ratings as standard; in the UK, mains sockets supply an alternating current at 50 Hz (cycles per second) and 230 volts, while US sockets supply between 110 and 120 volts at 60 Hz.
Therefore, Kirk Hammett claims that “Marshalls sound the best in Britain”, as Marshall amps are manufactured in the UK, and would be optimized to take the 230v voltage supplied by UK mains sockets.
A guitarist running a Marshall amp in the US could, indeed, use a step-up transformer to ramp up the US mains voltage to that of the UK’s. However, Kirk is right that using straight mains power, the same amp would sound different across the pond.
