Struggling to control strat volume in a band

[Pnewsom]

Set your guitar volume at about 7, and roll you tone control back a bit. Now set the amp volume to so that you have a good volume when playing chords lightly along with the rest of the band.
You should now be able to control things with the intensity of your attack and volume with slight volume and tone control adjustments on the guitar as you play.
Listening to the rest of the band and fitting in is the job.

[FrankHudson]

Originally Posted by frankhond

At the rehearsal space there are Peavey classic 30 and Fender hotrod deluxe amps. So this time I plugged straight into the hotrod, added some mids, set the volume to what I thought it should be. Then I forced myself to increase volume 20% more.

Much better! The hotrod has way more headroom and I could get a usable dynamic range by dialing down the guitar slightly and pick softer/harder. I got good funky whacka whacka on the mid pickup, rockabilly with mid and bridge, and some soft chords with mid and neck. So that problem is solved, just need to shed some more with this amp at volume.

I also totally see the problem several of you mentioned, the hotrod has great clean tone but it’s a bit sterile, and there was a bit of an ice pick issue when picking hard. I ordered a keeley compressor plus, we see how it goes.

I've not used the Keely, but many like it. Another thing that many compressors will do, even if you turn the compressor ratio down or the threshold up, is serve as "clean boost" pedal. Strats (and Teles) are usually pretty good just using the handy volume knob on the guitar for me, but some people like a simple "more, now!" floor button.

Compressors aren't hard to use once you dial them in, but you do have find the right settings. Kind of like some folks who now have mulitple gain boxes on their pedalboards in the modern era, I have two compressors on my pedalboard presently. One (the Boss) is set to moderate settings and the other (an old Janglebox) is set to really squish for Byrds-style electric 12-string and to make it easier to get into feedback range with my amps without excessive volume.