Don't Panic!

Jimmy Brown explains how to use the Proco Panic Button to boost your guitar volume through a pa system

- By Jimmy Brown

Fellow weekend-warrior performers and small tube amp devotees: I’d like to share a novel, “off-label” application of an existing product that gives you the capability to boost the sound of your guitar, for solos, through a PA (public address) system, without the assistance of a “sound man” (live audio engineer). The product is the Panic Button, made by ProCo, the same company that gave us the legendary Rat distortion pedal.

The Panic Button is a foot-operated “A-B box” output switcher, originally designed for a vocal microphone used on a live stage, with balanced, low-impedance XLR connections. By stepping on its button, a performer can mute the sound from his or her microphone going out to the audience through the main front-of-house (FOH) speakers and switch it to an alternate signal path that’s re-routed, via the mixing board, only to the stage monitors, headphones and/or earbuds worn by fellow musicians and the sound crew, enabling the performer to use the mic to privately communicate urgent messages.