The importance of room, setup, and preference

[RedJoker]

As I'm learning more and more about solo performance PAs and setup, I pay more attention when I see other musicians. I'm picking up things to do and/or not to do.

I was at a fundraiser on Saturday night and they had a very talented solo guitar player / singer. He had a nice, but simple setup with a Taylor guitar, LR Baggs Para Acoustic, Ditto looper, and a single EV powered speaker. However, the fundraiser was in a late 1800's barn with a concrete floor so the room acoustics were pretty bad. Anyway, I didn't think it sound very good at all, even though he was clearly a very good performer. Though I'll never know for sure, I think he could have done better in tuning his gear but it never would have sounded great in that room.

But in discussing it with my non-musician friends, they could hear the issues when I pointed them out but didn't notice it until I mentioned it. Otherwise, they thought he was great. In fact, one even mentioned that, what I thought was an issue, she really liked.

So the take-away for me was:

1. Do the best you can with the gear you have but you still may be stuck with a crappy environment.
2. Unless something is atrociously bad, most people won't notice it anyway. Especially on wallpaper gigs.

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by RedJoker

As I'm learning more and more about solo performance PAs and setup, I pay more attention when I see other musicians. I'm picking up things to do and/or not to do.

I was at a fundraiser on Saturday night and they had a very talented solo guitar player / singer. He had a nice, but simple setup with a Taylor guitar, LR Baggs Para Acoustic, Ditto looper, and a single EV powered speaker. However, the fundraiser was in a late 1800's barn with a concrete floor so the room acoustics were pretty bad. Anyway, I didn't think it sound very good at all, even though he was clearly a very good performer. Though I'll never know for sure, I think he could have done better in tuning his gear but it never would have sounded great in that room.

But in discussing it with my non-musician friends, they could hear the issues when I pointed them out but didn't notice it until I mentioned it. Otherwise, they thought he was great. In fact, one even mentioned that, what I thought was an issue, she really liked.

So the take-away for me was:

1. Do the best you can with the gear you have but you still may be stuck with a crappy environment.
2. Unless something is atrociously bad, most people won't notice it anyway. Especially on wallpaper gigs.

HI RJ
To cover your point, audiences (including other musicians) show up expecting to hear music…not gear. And good musicians understand if they don't have the audience's attention in the first 30 seconds, it doesn't matter how good the system is/isn't, because people are going to be scrolling their phones for the entire set, and you'll be condemned to the 'golf-clap' all concert/set long.

On to equipment…
It doesn't really matter what kind of 'RIG' you build, it's not going to fit every environment, situation or room ideally…and some systems are far less adjustable than others. I love high quality gear, but not packing, unpacking, setting up, tearing down for hours.

Back in the day when I was a control freak, we had a really expensive, huge and great sounding system. And we averaged 2 hours setup/sound check/tune the room, and 60-90minutes of tear down, then unload and load into storage when we got home. A lot of work, and nobody at concerts mentioned how good the system sounded. If we had a good night musically, they said "You sounded great!" and if we had an off night they didn't say anything.

My first assumption when I built my current system is if the venue is over 200 people my system is not going to cover it, and I designed it that way so I don't have to pack around hundreds of pounds of gear and spend hours on setup/teardown anymore. I expect the venue if it's that large to have/provide a system.

I prefer a tuned & ported pair of 12" two way cabinets with PA board with at least 8 XLR inputs and a ton of power driving them. And I prefer to run speakers from above head level and directly behind us so we don't need to carry monitors. And the board is on stage with us/me (off to the side out of the way).

I can pack my system in the trunk of my wife's Saturn sedan, and can put it on a wheeled cart and get it into the building in one trip. And I'm setup & making music in under 20 minutes.

This kind of system can work in highly reflective rooms, it can work in small venues, it works in hotel conference rooms and out of doors where reflective systems like Bose would not be ideal. And if it's a really small area, we just use a single cabinet on a steel speaker stand we can pop up to 10 feet off the ground directly behind us (if the place has a 20 foot ceiling).

I even use ONLY my acoustic amp with a mic to sing through in really tiny settings, and that works too!

My system has enough bass response to handle keys playing deep pads or even an electric bass plugged in directly, and can in up to 6 vocalists, a couple guitars, keys, bass etc without overloading/overdriving the system (that's where plenty of extra power comes in). I think my current system is 1600 Watts at 4 ohms into Community cabinets which weigh less than 25 pounds each. It's really efficient up to a crowd of 150, and starts being stretched at the 200 point if I'm using for added vocalists and instrumentalists. It handles solo or duo performances just fine.

Hope this adds to the discussion…

I'm not sure there is a perfect system. This is just one example of one guy (who occasionally gigs with another guy who also plays acoustic and bass).