Musician Gear & Tech Discussion

Okay I have a 16 channel carvin unpowered mixer, one 1400 mackie power amp, two 18" subs and two mainspeakers(two 15's and horn), sonic maximizer and three monitors(one powered) Need to know proper way to hook this system up, any help would be greatly appreciated! p.s. I have no snake.

Your Carvin mixer should have come with diagrams, mine did.
If not, they have them on pdf on their website.
A simple signal to your powered monitor should do the trick there.
As far as hooking the rest up to just one amp?
I dont know.
If all else fails talk to your Carvin rep.
If you get the right one ( the one that does not sound like a F,n stoner) they can and will walk you through the process over the phone.

To get started you probably need a crossover and another power amp. You have way more cabinets than you have power for in my opinion.

If I get some time I will revisit this and try to give you some ideas.

Good Luck

Sounds like the Amp should be good enough to power the main speakers, depends on the speakers and Ohm rating, the Mackie 1400 is
1400 watts @ 4 ohms bridged
1000 watts @ 8 ohms bridged
700 + 700 watts @ 2 ohms stereo
500 + 500 watts @ 4 ohms stereo
300 + 300 watts @ 8 ohms stereo

But you'll need a separate amp to power the monitors. A monitor mix with just the same sound as the PA will be a nightmare on stage for the musicians.
Just get a good used Crown on Craigslist or something at a good price that will power the monitors you have.
You'll want to feed the monitors through a monitor or separate channel that you can adjust and mix the monitor sound different (so you can raise the vocals when someone keep asking for more vocals in the monitors)

Haven't used a carven board... Model #??
does it have phantom power in case the drummer's cymbal mics need it?

Carven should have a PDF on their site of the manual, they usually show typical setups and how to use it.

If he has the board I am thinking he does he should have 4 monitor sends and phantom power. 16 is cutting it close fora band IMO.
We have already outgrown my 12 channel.
Next one will be 24 at least. I'd like to have a 57 and a condenser mic on each of my two speakers.

George how loud do you guys play? 4 mics for your amp would be way overkill in my book. We stick one 57 into the fabric of the grill on my amp when I use an amp. You can wind up with all kinds of phasing problems with multiple mics. Also the more mics you have in a live situation the more places for feedback.

We mic our drums: Kick, Snare, Hi Hat and 2 overhead condensors(phantom power)

Bass straight into board

Gtr 1 57

4 vocal mics

10 mics and one direct

Not trying to get off subject, but one guitar mic can get a really fat sound.

If you had a 2 amp setup I could see micing with 2 mics.

The idea was to take the Amp on one side and a cab on the other, mic for all the highs and lows, throw a little effect on just one side and play with the pan.
Yea, it would probably be overkill. But fun to experiment with.
At this point I just have the amp, the matching cab will give me my own monitors basiclly so when I wander over to jam with Eric I can still hear myself clearly. I "line in" for the mains, and put very little of my guitar into the monitor mix.

Thanks to all 4 the info. We have purchased another power amp 4 our subs so they will b kicking 4 sure. Yea, it sucks when u don't have seperate volume control 4 the monitors. But we have redirected a few things and our overall sound was pretty sweet last nite. Can't wait to throw in the other power amp 4 the subs. Thanks again Dan from the Grovehill Band.

Glad to hear it's working for you Dan.
Which Carvin board are you using?