New Outboard & EQ racks

[a1dl]

Hi

I'm new to this forum so please be gentle!

I'm in the process of specing an FX rack and EQ rack, for general wet hire use - live sound reinforcement and conference work. Budget is circa £5k trade ex vat including flightcases, and must be rider friendly.

For FX, I'm thinking:
12U rack
1 x TC D-Two Delay
1 x SPX2000 Reverb/Multi FX
3 x Drawmer DS201 (giving 6 channels of gating)
3 x dbx1066 (giving 6 channels of comps)
rack light

For EQ, I'm thinking:
12U rack
1 x DN360 (for FOH)
2 x Opal 966 (4 channels of EQ for Mons)
rack light

alternative EQs I am considering:
1 x XTA GQ600 for FOH
2 x KT Square One for Mons


To set the scene, the desk is a Venice 320 and the live FOH is Void Stasys (8 boxes)

I can see from my brief look through the posts here that there's a lot of very knowledgable and experienced members, so any thoughts, comments, better ideas etc to what I've listed above would be very welcomed.

Best regards

Tony

[Rick Sarson]

What about a Yamaha M7CL? EQ and reverbs for days and two sets of dynamics on every channel. Also delays all over the place on the outputs. Much less front of house and truck space needed too. Just a thought.

[a1dl]

Thanks for the reply Rick, a few problems with taking that route though:

- IIRC, an MC7L is around three times the OB budget I have mentioned
- a digital desk can pose problems to visiting band engineers who have never used one, whereas an analogue desk and analogue outboard is easy and most importantly quick to use
- plus we already have the Venice and love that desk!

[Simon Ryder]

Looks fine to me,

1066s are ok (I really like them on drums) but I prefer Klark Teknik for general all round compression - much cleaner sounding, also check out the SQ1 dynamics, they are pretty good.

If it was my money I would go for Square 1 graphics all round. They use the same filters as the DN370 without the additional features. My other choice for mons qould be BSS FCS960s because they can notch much more tightly, though they are a little more expensve than the SQ1s.

I do agree with Rick though, an M7 or an LS9 may be a better way forward. Easy to use, simple to learn and if an engineer can't figure out how to use one within half an hour.....

The world is going digital at a ferocious rate, many hire companies only carry 1 analogue board these days - the H3000. The reason is that digital makes far more economic sense.