Musician Gear & Tech Discussion

Hey everyone,

I am looking into purchasing a P.A. for my band.

We've been using a P.A. that our drummer bought, but he's leaving the band. I figured I might as well buy my own P.A. so I never have to worry about having one in the future.

I'm not looking to break the bank. I need something I can play small/medium venues with. Bars, clubs, the occasional outdoor festival.

Suggestions please!

Ok, at risk of being repetitive or sounding like I have stock shares.

Check out the Carvin gear. My Rx1200 has more features than I will use. And We get lots of complements on our system from other bands.

That being said if I were going to start from scratch I would go with a non powered mixer and a full rack of amps / conditioners as this is easly adapted and grown as my needs grow.

At least check out their web site. Will give you ideas and stats for comparison.

I've got an older Carvin 12 channel 1000 watt (333 left main, 333 right main and 333 monitor) powered head that I've been using for years. I run my two Bullfrog cabs (15, 12 and horn) for mains and 4 monitors, no problem. If I need more low end, I have a Samson 2500 power amp and two Behringer 18 subs. I come out of the XLR outputs on the Carvin into the Samson and it powers the subs. The Behringer subs have built in crossovers and it works great.

In recent years I upgraded my Carvin PA to JBL speakers, Crown amps, Soundcraft Mixer, Shure Beta 58 Mic's. I still think back to the Carvin's and how good they sounded. The customer care that Carvin provides is way way above any company that I know of. We were giggin' in Japan and on one of our sound checks the sound guy blew the tweeters.

Now get this; Carvin shipped us 4 replacement tweeters and a extra pair as backup and only charged us for shipping! They wanted the old tweeters back to see where they failed. A couple of years later on one of the power amps I blew a couple of output power transformers, they charged me shipping, parts and NO labor.

I love that company.

The only reason we changed PA's because the new lead singer was all about IMAGE. Harley vs Honda kinda thing.

Yes the RX1200 has four 300 watt amps L main R main L mon R mon with a 4 ohm load for each and independant EQ
Right now I am using a bass amp to supplement as a subwoofer till I can afford a proper amp and subwoofer.
The sub out jack has a crossover switch. Takes a lot of the low end stress off of the mains.

I had written poorly about their customer service once on here due to a bad experience with some dumbass in there service dept.
Since then I have spoken with them several times and they have gone that extra mile to help me understand and get the most of my system.

For my $ when I do go the seperate mixer / amps route it will be Carvin again.

I have owned Carvin PA, basses, and amps, and Carvin makes great stuff. You get a lot of bang for the buck. I highly recommend Carvin stuff if you have a limited budget and want to get a loud, high power system. Be careful with the Carvin speakers though -- after owning the Carvin PA cabs for about 2 yrs, I had problems with the speakers. We ran a moderate volume, using appropriate power for the speakers.

It may have been a one time fluke thing (which can happen with any brand of musical/PA equipment), but that's my experience. Good luck CF!

It's like a "Carvin Kicks Ass" thread.
*makes mental note: "Carvin kicks ass" *

Interesting. I talked to my local shop guru and repair guy who has never steered me wrong on any hardware before, and he totally hates Carvin. He said, "If you bring one of those in here with a problem, I won't even touch it." He said he thought they were absolute junk. He's had nothing but trouble trying to service them.

His recommendation was a Crown Macro-Tech with a Rane equilizer and a Mackie mixer. Of course, now we're talking serious dollars...

LOL, I got the same from my local shop guru as you call em.
But best I can tell. He was dead wrong about the junk part. As far as my guy goes, I bet he'd have a different opinion IF he could mark them up and sell them.
But, I dont service em, I just abuse em. So opinions vary.

I have gotten good service from my Yamaha speakers we use as monitors as well.

I keep hearing Carvin is junk so I have stayed away from it for that very reason plus I don't like buying gear I can't put my hands on and try out. I would highly advise the Allen & Heath Mixwiz 16 2 the preamps in those things are the best I have heard in small format mixers I just bought one about 3 months ago and they are phenomenal effects built in 2 processors and record out (pre-fader) to mix later for live recording for every channel. I would however strongly advise against getting a powered mixer they can be very limiting as your band grows and starts playing bigger venues if you don't want to deal with poweramps buy powered speakers the newer versions have very good processors built in with the power amps. Just be sure you use heavy guage extension chords 25' 12guage, 50' to 100' 10 guage.

Having mixed 100's of live shows with different bands and venues all over the world, I would say 99.9% of the time a PA failure is caused by the guy running the sound board.

Here are a couple of tips.

Don't mess with input EQs. Leave them zeroed. They are not for adjusting bass and treble. You will distort the sound of every single input by adjusting these. Use your output EQ's only and always subtract the other freqs first before adding more.

Keep everything on surge protectors and look for red lights on devices.

Keep all of your volume and gains in the middle ranges if you can. Operating near signal peaks can cause distortion and equipment damage.

Look for red lights on your mixers and amps! They're telling you to turn something down quick or else risk damage to equipment.

Be aware of "hot zones" where your speakers are.

Just another fact. Distortion in the high freq's will cause a PA to blow before Low freq's will. High freq distortion is brutal; more on the amp's than on the speakers.


And no PA sould be with out this bad boy!

Got one in my rack and have been using the DBX Driverack P.A. for 10 years I don't know how anyone can live without them!

RG

I gotta ask!

You said not to adjust input EQ, leave them at zero. WTF

Why the hell are they even on there if you sould not adjust your inputs?

If they dont adjust base and treble what are they adjusting.

Devil's advocate here now, dont be offended. I am real new to all this and am trying to learn as fast as I can.
I have no doubt you have the experience you claim. But this makes zero sense to me.

George, you e.q. on your output if you e.q. on the imput keep it as minimal as possible. When you e.q. the imput you are increasing d.b. and can cause distortion on that channel. Think of all e.q. as a volumn knob for those frequencies.

George, you e.q. on your output if you e.q. on the imput keep it as minimal as possible. When you e.q. the imput you are increasing d.b. and can cause distortion on that channel. Think of all e.q. as a volumn knob for those frequencies.

J-Haley, spot on man, thanks.

Here are two types of examples:

Input EQ and Output EQ

Johnny Winter was notorious for always having screaming pickup feedback coming from the coils in his guitar. The reason is because he wanted that extremely hot upper frequency sound. This sounded great coming from the guitar amp however the boosted upper frequency being sent to the mixing board was overloading the input voltage preamp. This is called input voltage overload that occurs even when your mixing board preamp gains are turned all the way down. It’s like trying to force 55,000 gallons of water per sec into a ½” water hose. Trying to compensate by EQing again on the mixing board really doesn’t help because crap going in; crap goes out in a LIVE stage. “your eq setting to make your guitar speaker sound better is a whole different animal than that PA speaker” He wouldn’t compromise either which was a total pain in the arse. What you hear on stage is not even close to what the audience hears.



2.

In the studio, go ahead, use the eq on the device, its usually main lined in anyway.

I hope this didn’t confuse you more.