Time to upgrade the PA... to what?

[barhrecords]

In the meantime, before you updgrade, I recommend trying to play "under" your current PA.

Crank up the vocals. Sing acapella. Get the vocal level really really hot by itself.

Then add your stage amps and drum kit. But, turn down, play down until the vocals are still hot.

If you are not used to rehearsing and gigging that way, adding watts, gear and speakers will not be the solution to everything.

But, if you can at least try it, and hear what it sounds like, even if you can't gig that way, you will learn how to get the vocals on top of the mix... any mix.

Richard

[GCDEF]

These are his speakers. They need to go.

[Endr_rpm]

Originally Posted by GCDEF

These are his speakers. They need to go.

No way man, everyone knows vertically stacked drivers are the way to go....

[rokpunk]

peavey was so ahead of its time!

[dspellman]

Originally Posted by rokpunk

peavey was so ahead of its time!

I think they trailed Shure bringing these columns to market, but the price was about 2/3rds what Shure was charging, and Shure got smoked.

[hop]

Originally Posted by GCDEF

These are his speakers. They need to go.

Hmm, ours are the 1x10+1x12 version of those.
Thanks again for all the suggestions. We've tried to play "under" our PA but it's just not happening. We are not playing coffeehouse background music.

[kentronicus]

Man, if I had a dollar for every time we pulled into the $h!+hole places we'd book in my country band days, and they'd say, 'don't worry, we have house P.A.', and you'd walk in and see some of this kind of stuff. We thought we were the shit, 'cause we had homemade sugar scoops, and separate mid and high boxes, and a rack full of old CS800s....

I don't have any pics of the Voice of The Theaters, or Vocal Masters, or homemade junk that I have seen in places we went, but it would be interesting to have a thread with pics of all the P.A. gear someone thought was the shabazz, and it was stuff like this, you know, state of the art 1972... Just for the pure entertainment factor.

To think how far we've come, and to this day folks will still come in my shop with a pair of cabs like those, looking nearly brand-new, and want me to rebuild them, or even worse want to trade them in.

I actually have a customer who left his number last week who - get this- actually wanted a pair of Peavey 4030 subs.... I kid not. I quizzed him on why he would want something like those, he said they sounded better than the new stuff.....

Make no mistake though, I am not without guilt myself. IIRC my first band P.A. was a pair of Earth cabinets similar to those pictured, along with a 100 watt 4 channel head. Better than nothing, but not by much. Hell, we didn't know....

[SarasotaSlim]

Originally Posted by kentronicus

Man, if I had a dollar for every time we pulled into the $h!+hole places we'd book in my country band days, and they'd say, 'don't worry, we have house P.A.', and you'd walk in and see some of this kind of stuff. We thought we were the shit, 'cause we had homemade sugar scoops, and separate mid and high boxes, and a rack full of old CS800s....

I don't have any pics of the Voice of The Theaters, or Vocal Masters, or homemade junk that I have seen in places we went, but it would be interesting to have a thread with pics of all the P.A. gear someone thought was the shabazz, and it was stuff like this, you know, state of the art 1972... Just for the pure entertainment factor.

To think how far we've come, and to this day folks will still come in my shop with a pair of cabs like those, looking nearly brand-new, and want me to rebuild them, or even worse want to trade them in.

I actually have a customer who left his number last week who - get this- actually wanted a pair of Peavey 4030 subs.... I kid not. I quizzed him on why he would want something like those, he said they sounded better than the new stuff.....

Make no mistake though, I am not without guilt myself. IIRC my first band P.A. was a pair of Earth cabinets similar to those pictured, along with a 100 watt 4 channel head. Better than nothing, but not by much. Hell, we didn't know....

FaceBook has a page called "PA of the day" and some of the pics are oldies. My first PA was a 7 channel powered Peavey board and home made EV cabs with 15 and separate horn and separate tweeter - they were the shizzle

[loudboy]

Originally Posted by kentronicus

I don't have any pics of the Voice of The Theaters, or Vocal Masters, or homemade junk that I have seen in places we went, but it would be interesting to have a thread with pics of all the P.A. gear someone thought was the shabazz, and it was stuff like this, you know, state of the art 1972... Just for the pure entertainment factor.

[21stcenturykid]

Yamaha DXR10. They are £960 over here so will be just over a 1000$ where you are no doubt. They'll be soo much better than what you are using. Volume wise they will handle all your needs unless your needs become 200+ size audiences. Add the DSR118W sub later on and your set for a long time.

I never thought 10's would be a viable option for our live band (miking everything) but they more than cope with what I need and far exceed my expectations.

[kentronicus]

To Sarasota Slim: thanks for the link, I LOLed when I saw the first pic up on that page, a giant steaming pile of reggae/dub island system, looked like a Rastafarian cousin of our homemade rig I was referring to in my earlier post. We had the roughly the same setup, only we had horn loaded mid boxes and a single JBL driver in each horn top box...

loudboy: I can only imagine how horrible the program material coming thru the systems in pics 1 and 3 could be. Am trying to figure out if #2 is stateside here or in Jamaica or somewhere. #1 looks like it could set off IEDs....or sterilize goats or something...

Here's some pics of more old and crusty stuff, don't know who to properly credit them to but IIRC a buddy of mine that worked for Clair for many years sent me these pics. Pic #1 is supposedly the touring rig that was out with Jefferson Starship circa mid/late 70s. Pic #2 is self-explanatory...wonder how that sounded indeed??????

[rokpunk]

just to explain how much more efficient sound systems are these days, that picture above, of the Clair Bros. truck from the '70's, is a 24' box truck. notice the only gear you see is the main stacks...no monitors, cable trunks, amp racks, work boxes, mic lockers, etc.. these days, i get my system, which is close to twice the size of this one, plus all my trunks, a pair of digital consoles, backline, etc. in a 16' box truck, and i have about twice the power of that Clair system. humping gear these days is a breeze compared to the '70's. ok, enough of my rambling.

[hop]

Anyone use one of those Carvin XP1000l powered mixers? They seem to get pretty good reviews. For less than $1k I could get that, add two new speakers, use my current laughing stock Peaveys as monitors, and call it good for now.

Or keep looking?

[sdevino]

I did full time FOH for a band in the 70's in NYC. We played to typical 1000-2000 people per night. The band had 2 complete 8x12 Marshall stacks a couple of Leslies and giant Sun Colosseum for bass. Somehow the vocals were heard using 4x Altec Voice of the Theatre speakers which were bi-amped running a Crown DC300 for each bottom and a D90 for each horn.

On the other hand I was at the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square for sound check on New Years Eve a couple years back and a single Marshal guitar amp was capable of drowning out the vocals of what had to be a 10,000W + Meyer + Midas Heritage system.

The moral of the story is turn down until you can hear the vocals as was advised above, or sell your house.

Steve

[ThePitbullofLove]

Originally Posted by hop

Anyone use one of those Carvin XP1000l powered mixers? They seem to get pretty good reviews. For less than $1k I could get that, add two new speakers, use my current laughing stock Peaveys as monitors, and call it good for now.

Or keep looking?

Depends on what you want.

I had the Carvin 12 ch board in a box, and it was fine for smaller gigs and rehearsal. Didn't have any problems hearing vocals unless the guitarists would crank up their full stacks....sometimes guitarists do that....

Honestly though, the "lunchbox" style of the mixer left me kind of cold. For small or acoustic gigs, it was okay, but in larger venues, I appreciated the standard tabletop mixer layout. My current mixer is the Carvin 1648. I like it...it's quirky in it's features and layout, according to those that use A&H and Soundcraft mixers, but mine gets the job done.