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Pub band - small PA options?


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[quote name='Gottastopbuyinggear' timestamp='1501177453' post='3343145']
To me? Sorry, I haven't seen anything - unless you're also doubling as another Basschat member who I did get a PM from last night?!
[/quote]

No I sent a PM to Phil.c60 re his spare Yamaha PA, sorry for the confusion.

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Not sure if it helps but I have a friend who is moving abroad and selling a heap of studio and pa stuff. He's open to offers on any of it and it includes a mackie pa with subs and tops. He's a top musician and a nice chap so I don't doubt the gear will be in good nick. I can easily pm you his list of gear up you want to take a look.

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[quote name='mrtcat' timestamp='1501226419' post='3343374']
Not sure if it helps but I have a friend who is moving abroad and selling a heap of studio and pa stuff. He's open to offers on any of it and it includes a mackie pa with subs and tops. He's a top musician and a nice chap so I don't doubt the gear will be in good nick. I can easily pm you his list of gear up you want to take a look.
[/quote]

Yes please!

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Yep we have the Alto 15" tops and the 15" subs. Guitarists son works in large gear supplier and highly recommended them and he was right. Good sound and great price even without his discount they are still good value for money.

Dave

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With mixers I think you have a big decision. Keeping it simple,cheap and analogue with something like the Behringers or Yamaha MG's or going digital which will give you all the monitor channels and tricks you could possibly wish for and learning to use it.

One other approach to monitoring for your backing singers are personal monitors, like the behringer B205D's [url="https://www.music-group.com/Categories/Behringer/Loudspeaker-Systems/Portable-Speakers/B205D/p/P0957"]https://www.music-gr...s/B205D/p/P0957[/url] you can plug your individual mics into these and then send it on to the PA at either mic or line level, or you could mix it with a PA feed if you preferred. They don't sound wonderful on their own but they are very mid forward and work well once the band are playing. I loved mine and upgraded to the TC version. Shouldn't have bothered, it's much better sounding but all the extra frequencies make it feedback prone. The advantage of this is that you each have to buy your own so no-one gets to walk off with the PA! you could use these with the simplest of mixers.

Edited by Phil Starr
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[quote name='mrtcat' timestamp='1501226419' post='3343374']
Not sure if it helps but I have a friend who is moving abroad and selling a heap of studio and pa stuff. He's open to offers on any of it and it includes a mackie pa with subs and tops. He's a top musician and a nice chap so I don't doubt the gear will be in good nick. I can easily pm you his list of gear up you want to take a look.
[/quote]

I'd be interested in a look at the list, and an idea of where he's located.

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[quote name='dave_bass5' timestamp='1501075945' post='3342290']
Have a read through this thread i started last year.

[url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/293613-thomanns-the-box-pa-502-a-anyone-using-these-for-live-work/page__fromsearch__1"]http://basschat.co.u...__fromsearch__1[/url]

Im very, very happy with the outcome. i just wish i had got these a few years earlier.
[/quote]

I've had a further look at the DB stuff, and I'm guessing the equivalent now is the Opera range, as the other ranges are quite a bit more pricey. Based on your thread I guess you went for 15's (?), which brings me on to:

[quote name='deepbass5' timestamp='1501237796' post='3343482']
We Use an RCF PA which is great gear but also have 3 x 10" Alto monitors which are great and have used them as a small PA at Jazz jams I quite rate their gear, but don't go less than 12" for your main speakers.
[/quote]

Setting aside any potential differences in frequency response I've been going on the principle that max SPL is a reasonably good indicator of how loud stuff will be, and if a 10", 12" or 15" speaker are all within a dB or two of each other then, subjectively, they're probably all going to be able to go roughly as loud as each other?

Is there any reason to suppose that the sound quality of a 10" speaker will deteriorate more, or more quickly, than that of a 12" or 15" as the volume goes up? Bear in mind that we are only putting vocals and keys through the PA, the keys get a HPF applied, and if we ever wanted to put drums or bass through the PA then we'd go for subs or trade up to more serious stuff like the RCF 735's.

Edited by Gottastopbuyinggear
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Yes, ours are called DB Technologies OPERA 715 DX 15" Active PA Speaker. This is the older version, more rounded than the current version. They are also very light. I carry both at the same time. We use a Behringer desk (cost about £160).

This is the 1x10 version
http://www.dv247.com/pa-systems-and-live-sound/db-technologies-opera-710-dx-10-active-pa-speaker--103440

I cant really answer what the differences would be, if all things being equal other than size. What i have foun dis when we used our old guitarists 1x10 RCF's we struggled to get a solid, clean tone. Playing the same venues with our 1x15's we had no issues. Volume wise we would have been pretty much the same. His were rated lower than ours, so i can understand the difference in clean output, but the overall tone was much more solid and tight from the DB's.

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As to the 10,12,15 argument I think you have to listen to them and maybe do a bit of homework. Not all of them automatically use the same horn driver or horn. The crossover points may be different and the 10's will be slightly less efficient all other things being equal so the horn may be padded further down.

I'll give you one example, my Yamaha Club speakers both have the same horns and drivers but the 12" S112's use the Eminence Deltas which have a huge peak in the frequency response, the 15's floor monitors don't and they sound much better especially on vocals, whereas you might expect the smaller speaker to handle the midrange better.

I went along to PMT in Bristol armed with some decent vocal recordings and auditioned their range of PA speakers with a very patient assistant. If the Cardiff branch is as well stocked,,,,,,,,

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  • 1 month later...

By way of an update, we've gone for Yamaha DBR12's (based on reputation for reliability and the four year warranty) and a Soundcraft UI12 (based on having 8 mic preamps, should we need them, and ability to have up to four separate aux mixes).

Not used in anger yet, though we have used for rehearsal and I found it really easy to get a good mix. So far no problems with the built in WiFi on the UI12, though I have also got it linked to a small WiFi router via ethernet cable.

Still looking at new monitors - the Alto TS210 looks a likely candidate, although there are a lot of stories about the tweeters blowing on them.

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[quote name='phil.c60' timestamp='1501145255' post='3342764']
We have a very simple setup: a Yamaha EMX512SC powered mixer and a pair of Electrovoice SX 300's which are 12" passive speakers. We normally only put vocals through it and occasionally harmonica. I have put my bass through it via a Sansamp VT bass on a couple of occasions due to amp issues, and it coped perfectly well for that. We don't usually use monitors, but occasionally end up with one or other speaker behind the microphones and provided you tweek the speaker angles don't get any feedback issues. The speakers I bought second hand from a Basschat ad about 18 months ago, the mixer came with a pair of Peavey Hisys 15's and stands and leads for £300 via ebay. The Peaveys proved to be a bit to big for smaller venues hence I bought the EVs but we were in a similar situation to you when we bought them and needed something quickly. That was 3 years ago and the PA is still going strong, (we gig around 25 times a year) and we use the Peaveys if we play outside and want to mike up the kick drum. As it happens, I bought another Yamaha EMX 512sc desk as a spare which is in much better nick than the scuffed one we gig and have never used it.....if it's of any interest pm me!
[/quote]

Another big fan of the Yam EMX powered mixers here. Ultra reliable and tremendous value for money.

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[quote name='Gottastopbuyinggear' timestamp='1504094112' post='3362618']
By way of an update, we've gone for Yamaha DBR12's (based on reputation for reliability and the four year warranty) and a Soundcraft UI12 (based on having 8 mic preamps, should we need them, and ability to have up to four separate aux mixes).

Not used in anger yet, though we have used for rehearsal and I found it really easy to get a good mix. So far no problems with the built in WiFi on the UI12, though I have also got it linked to a small WiFi router via ethernet cable.

Still looking at new monitors - the Alto TS210 looks a likely candidate, although there are a lot of stories about the tweeters blowing on them.
[/quote]I'm sure you'll get many years of great sound from them. If you don't blame the band :)

One school of thought is to use the same speakers as your PA for monitors, then if one goes down on the PA you can swap them out. It's worth a thought if you can afford it. Having said that I like dedicated wedges with the controls available on the front. I bought a couple of cheap Behringer 1320's to try out and currently (two years later) they are still going strong and are my 'go-to' monitors, really clear but lacking in bass which is not a problem for vocal monitors of course.

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[quote name='Phil Starr' timestamp='1504136154' post='3362977']
I'm sure you'll get many years of great sound from them. If you don't blame the band :)

One school of thought is to use the same speakers as your PA for monitors, then if one goes down on the PA you can swap them out. It's worth a thought if you can afford it. Having said that I like dedicated wedges with the controls available on the front. I bought a couple of cheap Behringer 1320's to try out and currently (two years later) they are still going strong and are my 'go-to' monitors, really clear but lacking in bass which is not a problem for vocal monitors of course.
[/quote]

Actually I've just posted on your other thread, Phil, about side fills. Apart from the cost issue I think we'd like something slightly smaller for monitoring for most of us, though the singer still needs a relatively substantial wedge box - he likes to stand on it... I'm not too concerned about having controls on the front as we can control the aux levels from tablet/phone, although for a quick on the fly adjustment it is easier to just bend down and grab a knob so to speak.

On the topic of the Behringer 1320, has it got plenty of power to compete with a pretty loud drummer? Our singer currently has one of the similar Thomann boxes - MA120 I think. It's okay, but only just - the clip light is on most of the time, and it only has his vocals and keys going through it. I think they're rated 120W at 4 ohms, so I take that to mean you have to run a slave with it to get the full 120W.

I don't suppose you have any experience of the smaller Behringer one do you - the F1220D? It's a lot smaller and lighter (and quite cheap), but I'm not sure whether the quoted 250W translates into a reasonable volume. Oddly enough if you search F1220D SPL a couple of the US retailers quote it as 128dB, but that sounds unlikely to me and I know that Behringer typically don't publish that sort of metric anyway.

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Glad this came up about monitors, as i was looking at the Box monitors yesterday. We have an old 120Watt one that needs replacing and was going to go for something a bit more powerful. I came across a brand called Subzero on the Gear4music website. I assume this is their own brand, probably sold under different names by other chains (looks very much like a Behringer as well)
Anyone have any thoughts?

EDIT: This is the one i was looking at. 350watts for £149. Gotta be a bargain lol. Seriously though, im only comparing these to the 120watt Box monitors we have been using. They have been working fine but till recently, so i know this sort of power is fine. Would be nice to have a bit more clean power though.

http://www.gear4music.com/PA-DJ-and-Lighting/SubZero-350w-12-Active-Floor-Monitor/1H8Q

Edited by dave_bass5
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