Musician Forum - Band Discussion Board - BandMix

I have a 4 piece classic rock band (2 guitars, bass drums and 3 vocals)that plays 2/3 per months. Usually we play in some pretty small venues. We have been micing everything and running sound from stage (with pretty decent, but not great) results. Currently we have 24 channel Mackie board and a rack with QCS power amps for tops and subs and Carvin monitor amp for up to 4 wedges. Also 2 of us use Sure in ears for monitors.

Due to a member leaving, we are losing our transportation and storage of the equipment. Other remaining members feel that we should go with powered mixer and speakers on a stick as that's what his old band did. I'm not looking forward to this change, but due to equipment logistics amd considering trying this. We would run vocals and kick drum through the PA and run stage volume from back line amps.

I am interested in anyone opinions of this kind of setup.

Secondly, we are considering powered mixers from Mackie, Yamaha and Carvin. I am VERY interested if anyone has opinions, good or bad, regarding these mixer/amps or any of the different models available.

I personally like the amps to be seperate from mixers and speakers. Dont get Mackie Powered Speakers, they just dont hold up well and getting them fixed is a bitch.

If your system is seperate then if you lose something you can borrow another amp or speaker or mixer. Sending a piece of equipment to the shop is like waiting for the lottery in my area.

If youve been using the big system you are not going to like the little stick system.

Just my 2 cents, but I would quit the band if mine wanted to make this kind of switch.

If the venues you play in are that small, the speakers on a stick can work, but they aren't the best quality you can get, obviously.

I agree with JW on this - keep everything separate if you can. It sounds more complicated than it is.

I also wouldn't want to rely on Macke stuff on the road. It's more for sitting at home or in church & playing. It isn't real road worthy.

Do you actually mic the drums in small venues? I could never get away with that - too loud!

I"ve always had good luck with Peavey equipment. Some people look down their noses at Peavey but I can tell you that they"ve never failed me and take quite a bit of abuse. I use a powered mixer but you may have better luck with some of the other brands mentioned on this thread. You definitely don"t want to skimp on your PA. It"s much better to have more than enough power and flexibility than to have not enough. Good luck...

Carvin RX1200, solid piece of equipment for mains and monitors.
We have supplemented our sound with additional amps and speakers for the Bass and my guitar.
I feel you cant go wrong with a quality PA to run everything if you need to have a compact and portable set up.
Our Bassest utilizes a pole monitor for him, the rest of us use two 200watt Yamaha speakers for monitor coverage
The four 300w amps built into the RX1200 each have their own EQ.
It's a versitile system once you learn how to use it.

Good responses all.
I've had very good results with both Peavey and Yamaha equipment. If the venue merits, keep it simple. I seldom use monitors for small gigs. I like to run a bi amped pair of stereo power amps through a pair of Peavey International 15's on poles BEHIND us!. I also use an 18' black Widow (4 ohm) in mono for the sub lows( third amp). I generally mike the kick, and sometimes feed a line from my son's little Peavey bass amp, and run my synths in stereo direct in the P.A.. We use three vocal mics and keep the mains behind use. I love it when some wannabee super roadie comes up to us before the first set and proclaims that we are going to have severe feedback problems. Seldom ever happens. Know your equipment and its capabilities and limitations. Experience is the best teacher so don't be afraid to experiment.

Learn how to optimise the gains on your mixer to balance output and distortion.

Don't use more gear then you really need because it just makes more work and increases the potential for problems.

Keep on rockin!,
Howlin'

Try to stay away from a powered mixer you are better off with powered speakers just make sure the ones you are looking at buying have the proper amount of power usually at least 2 times what the specs of your speakers allow for especially if you play outside or large venues. Yorkvilles new stuff is awesome.I have JBL's and I like the Yorkvilles better. The most usefull component I have in my P.A. rack for front of house sound management is a driverack p.a. it is made by DBX and there are several different models for different aplications if you get one make sure you get the right one to match your p.a. and there is a significant learning curve but the benefits are well worth it, they feature any configuration of crossover you need, parametric e.q. on the imput graphic e.q. on the output (32band), time alignment for your drivers, feedback suppression, limiter, and compression for your mains this peice of equipment makes our p.a. sound fuller and punchier it also has my favorite feature auto e.q. it has a spectrum anylizer (pink noise generator) I just show up earlier in the day at a gig shoot the room. it auto e.q.'s your system and then you name the room and save it now as long as you place your speakers in the same area of the room your p.a. is tuned to that room, some of the settings I have been useing for years the learning curve is a pain but once you understand it sure makes life easier. No I am not a salesman for them you would have to spend thousands of dollars to get these features for between $299. & $499.

We just got a drive rack DBX unit, Im still learning its capabilitys but its cool. You can probably run the termites out of your house with the pink noise generator.

Very Cool piece of equipment.

Hey jw123, did you get the reference mike with it $99.00. I use that with a 50 to 100 foot mike chord extend it about 1/2 way out into where the crowd is going to be and auto eq your sound, name the room and save it. I use that for rooms we play regularly or any room for that matter because you never know when you'll be back there. Now you have an advantage over the other bands because your system is tuned to the room. Also it has the wizard set up that kind of simplifies the original setup. hopefully you are better with your understanding of computer technology than I was it took me weeks to figure that thing out and eventually I had a friend who is a wiz with that kind of stuff come in and straighten me out. One thing a sound man told me is when you auto eq watch the frequency boost because sometimes that thing will boost certain frequency's in certain rooms to much so check the eq and pull back down any boosts over 4 to 5 db and cuts of 6 to 8 db, as the boosts can be hard on you drivers.

Gee, do ya'll just beam back up after the show? (or Jim Beam)

Beam me up Scotty I'm PWI (posting while intoxicated)

Whoever bumped this thread, thanks. Helpful info that's somewhat related to my thread.

It's a good one Andrew. I am taking notes as well. Some good points made related to the down fall of powered mixers. I suppose when we get to playing out more and bigger jobs I will have to buy a back up PA JIC.

Hey MM...its too bad you have to scale down however you could get the small PA and still maintain a decent kick drum sound;

Considering there is a certain volume ratio of guitar/bass/vocals compared to the kick drum and that in most small venues the mix usually consists of the snare being too loud, the toms and cymbals being ok while the poor kick drum is almost lost -the tight smack sound that is generated from the beater hitting the head is mostly blocked by the rest of the kick drum -even without a head on the front of the kick the highs are always the first to loose intensity (distant thunder is a rumble while close thunder always has a high end smack) add to this the instruments overwhelming any residual sound.
Mic'ing the bass drum will fix much of that issue however with a small "PA on a stick" it may not be possible due to the kick drum taking most of the small powered mixers available power.

What might fix your problem while keeping the equipment to a minimum and still allowing you to maintain a powerful kick drum sound would be running a bass drum microphone into a small bass amp combo (typically a 15" driven with 100 watts or more), you can EQ the bass amp in such a way that it will deliever the meaty smack with the deep lows associated with professionally mic'd kick drums (as long as the band keeps their volume to a reasonable point this should work well).
Basically bass amps are geared to reproduce lows with mids while delievering quick attacks -it would be right at home in this situation plus this free's up the small PA system to do vocals without the added burden of a mic'd bass drum draining its power reserves -just remember to purchase an inexpensive XLR to 1/4" adapter for the mic to bass amp and it should work well (almost all mic's have XLR connecters while amp inputs are 1/4").
Either way good luck and have a great day.