Stage monitor desk and other sundry questions!

[soundmanjim]

Hi everyone.

Hope your all enjoying our typically crazy weather.

I've finally received our old Behringer Mx9000 desk back from the menders (minus a knob which got busted off when it was delivered back! : and we find ourselves with two 24 channel desks.

I'm thinking of putting one of them on-stage as a monitor desk, but which one would be better for the job?
or am i better off (as someone has already suggested) getting shot of it and part exchanging it for a decent fold-back desk or dual purpose desk?
Dual purpose would be better as we do a lot of outdoor gigs and it would be nice to have a desk to cover these gigs without unbolting the desk in the FOH.

The desk we use at the moment is a Soundcraft GB4 which is switchable to enable the group faders to become monitor sends, so maybe it would be better to stick the behringer in the booth and use the GB4 onstage?
Or should i get another desk? (remember I'm trying to save cash here!)

If i use the soundcraft, it has balanced jack-outs on every channel so i was thinking of making (or getting someone to make me) a 24 channel loom to hook the fb desk into the wall multi-core. Stereo jacks one end, xlrs the other. Will that do? I cant afford a splitter really.

Also, just for your info, we only use 4 monitor mixes on the stage as its a bit small, so we have 3 pairs of wedges at the front and two hk stacks linked together at the back for the drummers aural pleasure. The behringer has 6 aux outs and the GB4 8.

any ideas?

[LT]

Put the behringer thing in the bin. Invest in an Allen and grief GL? and use that as a monitor board, but it can then also be used as a FOH board when needed and the GB4 can then revert to doing both FOH and MONS. But never use a Behringer board at FOH, or i'll have to slap you! and i know your quite big. I mean i know its a cost thing, hence why i say allen and grief but for christs sake put the behringer thing in the bin or give it to your local school, or maybe oxfam.

LT

[jim the soundman]

;D not keen on the mx9000 then eh?

heh!

It actually sounded quite nice as an foh desk but i fear its more suited to studio use really. I would rather sell it than dumop it; but point taken old bean; anyone got a gl2200 for sale???

[regor]

picked up a studiomaster 16into 8 monitor desk (in flightcase)for £175 inclusive of postage of ebay,so have a look there dude.Still prefer my hill 'j' series though,every send is on a coloured fader(rather than a rotary) and very user friendly,but it makes it a big board.

[regor]

also,if you are going to dedicate a desk for monitors ,get one that has 'xlrs' that are parelled for in and out so in effectiveness it becomes another stagebox ,.

[jim the soundman]

yeah im looking at those right now; quite a few big old soundcrafts about with parallel xlrs+ split. however, the allen and heath and soundcraft 'dual-purpose' desks have balanced jack-outs on every channel; i'll just have to build a 24 stereo jack to 24 xlr loom otherwise!!

[soundmanjim]

ok, i have another question;
after looking thru quite a lot of manuals and online resources, i'm thinking of building my own stage splitter rather than buy one as the prices seem quite prohibitive from our small venue point of view; what i'd like to know is this:

can i just build a rack full of male and female xlrs, one input and two outputs per channel and just wire them in parallell, or should i use balance transformers to prevent unwanted gain reductions at the foh desk end? Ive looked at quite a few foldback desks and the schematics show just a simple parallel feed out from the balanced input to send to the foh desk; but i thought doing that reduced impeadance and mucked up the gain on the individual channels?

Or, as its only a small venue, would it really matter?

also, im worried about zapping the desk used for foldback with 48v phantom from the foh desk, how can i prevent accidental clashes here? (apart from totally disconnecting the phantom at the foh end, i can supply condenser mikes phantom power from the monitor desk obviously)

any help here would be appreciated.

also, if anyone has a foldback desk for sale that wou :ld also be good!!!!! ;D

[ian hasell]

Yes you can just do a a passive split, besst to establish a 48v protocol like only power of FoH desk.
Transformer very good but expensive and do not forget that the split off is transformered and the main passive to pass
48v.
Also good thing to put eath lifts in which ever system you chose.


Ian