Quote:
Originally Posted by jdmulli
Hello,
Long story short, I've recently been put in a position where I need to purchase some PA/live sound equipment for a band. We are a four piece country, classic rock and pop cover band with drums, bass, guitar, and vocals. We tend to play bars and restaurants with maybe 100-200 people. Our drummer is on the loud side.
I know little to nothing -- closer to nothing about live sound. I have all the speaker cables/ stands and mic cables/stands that I need, but I have no idea about the speakers and mixing board.
I'm okay with buying used. Ideally, I'd like to buy a minimal setup that I can build on over time.
Should I go with powered speaker or would I be better with passive and an amp/s? How much power do I need? Any specific brands to checkout/ avoid?
Any advice is appreciated.
Thanks
|
Here's the setup my Reggae band has used for the past decade or so in many venues.
We have a powered Yamaha mixer w/ built in FX
2 powered yamaha speakers (with 15" woofers) on speaker stands
each singer has a Behringer 250D for monitoring
We made the rule that everyone has to buy their own mics. I sing through a Sennheiser e935 vocal mic (love that mic for vocals).
We don't mic instruments because w/o a soundguy you just can't get a good balance, so we go with balancing ourselves on stage (we've gotten very good at that) and the PA is simply for voices. We've never run into a situation where we've been too quiet for the PA
We do all have plenty of equipment & when we've had a proper soundguy we've mic'd up our instruments...but that's a very rare occasion. We may have done that twice in the past 10 years.
We usually run a Zoom or similar recorder in the room so we can check our balance at the breaks. Just incase someone gets a little over-excited and plays extra loud
That has to be kept in check because that's the beginning of volume creep, as everyone adjusts to meet the new "normal" and things get obnoxiously loud.
HTH