Latest Gig

[Phil]

Hey people just wanted to tell everyone about what I have been up to recently.
I engineered and played in a gig with 7 acts on. Using my new 32 ch behringer desk (great for the price), and all the rest of the usual gear. 30 metre 16/4 multicore All ch. used!!- with two xlrs taped on the side lol.
3 old sm58s on vocals
3 behringer mics on amps(which i have found have a good pickup on the higher freq.)
DI out of a bass amp

---I had to work with what i had for drums so..---
sm58 beta on kick
sennheiser on snare/ toms and another overhead.

all going into 2 JBL tops and 2 Peavey bins FoH giving 1.6K
2 passive monitors. 400w each - from 2 mon sends
1 active monitor 100w - from mono out

----------

The band are getting 2 more monitor wedges, 2 side fills and 2 power amps. - 1 for bins other for side fills.

any suggestions?
Thinking JBL or Yamaha for speakers
Behringer power amps any good for the price or Yamaha?
Need about 2x 1K for bins
2x 4/500 w for sidefills

Ihave about £1000 for the lot roughly

Thanks
Phil

[pasounds]

i dont mean to divert traffic away from this site (apologies mod), but for technical questions on amplification, processing and speakers, you would be best coming to this forum.

www.speakerplans.com/forum/

there are thousands of members, and all newbie questions such as what amps to buy and if they are any good have been answered thousands of times!! searching will result in many posts answering every minute detail u could ever need!


however to briefly answer your question, for speakers, your best bet is used JBLs (or other quality brand) from ebay or similar, their older stuff kicks ass to cheap yamahas ect...

amps, behringer ep2500 are a great inexpensive amp, great sound (ripoff of the QSC's), but do have a somewhat ropey service life and are likely to die! worth it for a quick fix however. they also only have a 1200w transformer which leads to lots of power sag when used on bass duties (the transformer cannot supply the current the power rails require so the output drops), and with its crap cooling they get seriously hot!! same circuit design as QSC's, but 1000w smaller transformer, half the heatsink size and poor ventilation layout.

the yamaha amps are good quality, with much better build quality, mechanically and component wise. got to be careful as the caps tend to be cheap leading to them popping when driven hard! ive never heard/used one however so cannot comment any more than this.

dont forget to use quality speaker cables, nice thick 4mm2 minimum on bass, and 2.5mm2 on midtops. you would be surprised how much difference this makes and is regularily overlooked!

neways, cheers, Pat.A (ps: happy new year!)

[Simon Ryder]

I wouldn't worry too much about side fills if I were you. They only become useful on a larger stage than your system is really suitable for.

To make your life easier you would do well to consolidate your stage monitor types. Make sure all your wedges are the same.

You can do most medium / small stages with a 4 way monitor mix on 4 or 5 wedges.

Wedge at Stage Left
Wedge or pair of wedges in centre (single amp channel)
Wedge at Stage Right
Wedge for drummer

Keep your active wedge for any keyboard players you come across.

Yes the Behringer amps are fine for monitor duty. OK sound and probably some of the best build quality Behringer have produced (not many of them come back for repair)

Next step would be some graphic EQs. Check out the Alesis DEQ830 which offers 8 channels of GEQ in 1u otherwise for budget stuff look at the DBX231. Stay clear of Behringer, Samson or Alesis analogue offerings. They are not worth the paper they are printed on.

A proper mic for kick drum would help the low end of your system out no end. Look at the Audix D6.

You should be able to find this lot for around a £1000.

[Phil]

Thanks people.

I already have a alesis 2x 32 graf. but its a 1U fiddly bugger though lol. I am using it for the monitors to take the bass and the and to reduce feedback on the higher freq. It is stuck in the amp rack on stage.

The band were wanting side fills to give a more dispersed sound on satge aswell as the monitors infront of them. I might just give them 2 new monitors each so 4 in total. (the ones they use are horrid 45 degree ones rather than tilted back abit more. But they were just bodged together by a handy man i guess lol.

What would people reccomend for monitors and what amp/rating would you recomend.

any specific amp I should consider using for the bins?

Thanks

Phil

[shepz]

Amp-wise I'm a converted QSC plx user, much easier to lift a rack case of those babys... their sound is pretty hi-fi aswell!

If you're on a severe budget for monitoring... a company called class-d sell 250W 12"/1" horn monitors for around £80 a pop new. Replace the HF drivers in them with proper compression drivers and they're alrite for most purposes aslong as you get the crossover frequency right, failing that... go take the bi-amped approach.

[muppet]

i wouldnt recommend using side fills, they are great when you have a big space that you need to fill but in a small venue they will probably just increase the noise off the stage and make you fight alot harder to maintain a good mix.

[gingerbiscuit69]

i agree, side fills seem overkill for those bands! i do gig with my own rig up to 1000 people, and have never used sidefills. as long as every bandmember is near a decent wedge i see no point.

i use el cheapo JBL JRX112M monitors (bands seem to love to see the JBL badge haha!), about £175 a piece, 350w rms cab, amp 550w rms a cab. they are VERY compact, light and easy to transport but have a lot of grunt for what they are. one easily cut the mustard over a 200w head 8x12" guitar amp playing metal, and also have pole mounts, making them suitable for small gigs up to 80peeps. I have four of these on stage front on 3 mixes (left, double centre and right) and a dual 15" and 2" JBL for drums on a fourth mix. been times where the stage mix was more powerful than the FOH!

so yeah, went of on a tangent there. .. basicly sort yourself out with a nice set of half decent loud punchy wedges on amps with tons of headroom and rip their heads off!!

cheers, Pat