Phil Starr

Really interested in people's direct experience of these. Like so much in PA there are obvious advantages and disadvantages but for every singer who has great mic technique and learned to use their mic there are a hundred who like me have poor mic technique. There's clearly a discussion to be had about the 80's fitness video look v's the 70's rock god stuck immobile to the mic too, but anyone considering this change has um.... considered it. In my case I'm strictly a backing singer just filling in the bits that need a third voice, I'm quite active on stage adding to the energy but sometimes late on the mic and I find playing and singing at the same time a stretch. If you add in running the PA and cueing in band members who don't know arrangements as well a they should and I'll sacrifice a bit of proximity effect for consistency with my vocal feed. If it's good enough for Kylie it could be good enough for the 20 punters at the Dog and Duck. there is of course the need for a profanity filter when I pink torpedo up

Yes, it's worth knowing your mic, my posts are often over long so I didn't go into this too much. the Shure Beta 58 is interesting as it sits somewhere between the cardioid response of the SM58 and most super cardioids. If memeory serves Shure put the 'dead spot' at 135deg. I used to use my own technique with a three mics on the drums. One overhead points across the kit at the snare and one above the hi-hat at the floor toms. You could adjust the height/distance fromthe hi-hat and the cymbals to balance the volumes with the toms and the same on the opposite side with the cymbals. The kick mounted toms were picked up by both mics so you could get quite a reasonable balance by careful mic positioning. There are a lot of three mic techniques out there but it depends upon the kit and knowing the exact pick up patterns of your mics. I have to say the Yamaha looks like a godsend for a pub band though. It's ages since I played a pub with enough space to put up two overheads

Hurrah

Talking about this with a mate yesterday (I'm such a boring man) and his drummer is using a Yamaha EAD 10. basically a miking system and drum brain combined tht clips onto the kick and mics the whole kit. Thankfully our drummer uses an electronic kit so I'd not come across this before.

I'm surprised you mic the snare which is generally pretty loud rather than using an overhead. Kick is often a bit lost in the mix so that is always the first drum to be miked up. I'd then go for something to pick up the reat of the kit though i's point it at the snare. I wouldn't expecting you getting too much bleed on the drum mic's just because the drums are so loud. Feedback is surprising for the same reason with loud sounds you don't need as much gain so gain before feedback should be less of an issue. Are you using compression on the drums? If so backing that off might cure your feedback, also look at moving the kick mic. The kick drum with a hole in the front skin is a big Helmholtz reaonator so poking the mic into the hole area can find a resonant point and moving it a few cm can make a difference. There's loads of stuff on mic-ing up drums on You Tube This one is fairly basic but covers quite a bit of ground to start you off Once you start watching these your evenings won't be your own though

I don't see why not, although drummers move around a lot and that could also be an issue about keeping right on top of the mic. I struggle to coordinate bv's and playing bass so I can't imagine playing drums and singing.

If turning off the vocal mic cures the feedback problem then that’s what is giving you the problem. Unsurprisingly as his voice is a lot quieter than the drums so that mic will have more gain. If you have a digital desk then you should apply a gate to his vocal mic. It switches the mic off when he isn’t using it. Find out what pattern of mic he is using. If it’s a cardioid like the SM57 then the dead spot for the mic is at the back end which should be pointed at the monitor. If it’s a super cardioid then the dead spot is at the side. Your drummer needs to get as close to the mic as possible to get his volume up so the gain can be reduced ie he needs to ‘eat the mic’.

And the added hazard that the acoustics change throughout the evening as the room fills and people stand up to dance. Do you use the upright? That's gotta be even more difficult in a skittle alley.

As Bill has said close to the drummer is a complete no-no. Close to the wall is not a major issue but you have to realise you've effectively added an 'extra' sub and turn down. Your ears should be your guide but expecting the problem means you start up expecting more bass in this situation. It can be a positive too. If you think your sub won't be enough for a big venue pushing it into a corner or against the wall gives you a free boost. In the end Sub placement has to be a bit of a compromise for a gigging band doing their own PA. If you are gigging a regular venue or settint up a permanent installation you'd do better but with an hour to set up there have to be compromises and no sub or accepting lower bass levels from it is sometimes the answer. Long narrow rooms are always tricky and a bane of the UK's often ancient pubs. Down in the West Country skittle alleys are widespread and frequently the place they put the band. The close side walls and ceilings are frequently too close and for the bass wavelenght dimensions so you have lots of resonances, multiple pathways and phase cancelling. I usually end up with an HPF filtering out a lot of the lower frequencies as the best way of dealing with this.

That could have just been boundary reinforcement. Placing a sub back against a wall means the sound is all going forwards reinforcing the sound levels, in fact all the surrounding surfaces will have the same effect so if it is in a corner you have the side wall floor and rear wall all reflecting and increasing the sound levels from the sub. You need to turn the sub right down in this situation. Of course it would also be closer to the drummer (obvs) and to you if you were standing next to them.

You've pretty much worked it out. You'll soon hear bass feedback though, it isn't subtle and I'd treat the kick mic with some respect and maybe start with it a touch lower than usual. Not because it is behind as Bill has already said but because it might be closer to the mics. If you're using just one sub I quite like mine under one of the tops. It's makes at least one of the tops more audience proof. One tip is to put a cardboard pyramid on top of tha sub, it stops people putting their drinks on it

Oh goody, this is turning into a reminiscence 😂😁 I was going to say in response to @Bill Fitzmaurice that we really strugled over here in the late 60's/early 70's as the better US made speakers like EV and JBL were fearsomely expensive over here. Of the three speaker brands mentioned Fane were the budget brand at the time but 12" speakers at the affordable end were usually rated at around 25-30W as John has pointed out, and WEM's 4x10 columns were rated at under 100W. Top end response generally at the time was provided by having a second smaller cone added to the front of the voice coil former called a whizzer cone. Voice coils were short to keep the efficiency up as high as possible and the speakers literally bunt out if pushed hard as the coil was wrapped around a paper former and stuck together with a protein based glue. Replacing speakers was a regular task. There wasn't a lot of choice of ready made PA speakers around and a lot of small custom builders. To get the most out of an expensive speaker I built a lot of very big horn cabinets and I spent weeks designing a hybrid cab which came out within an inch or two in every dimension of the Altec A7. At the time they sounded really good but I do wonder how they woulkd compare now. I doubt that those 4x10 columns would compete well with todays cabs, even cheap ones. However there is nothing wrong with the theoretical advantages of a column speaker in terms of dispersion and it offers a chance to move the crossover point(s) away from the critical midrange where our hearing is most sensitive.

OK that sounds interesting. I quite like a challenge so tell us about the band, what's the theme? What is the line up and where will you be playing? Which instruments willyou be putting through this PA? Do you have a budget in mind? Technically a 'line' isn't a bad idea, hence all the 'me-too' sub and a stick systems or the touring bands true line arrays. There's absolutely no reason why something like Bill's design above couldn't work extremely well and there are other solutions which would give you the same visuals but with modern performance levels. You can hide a lot behind a speaker grille and I'm picturing something like the old WEM 4x10's, I believe you can still get the old style grille cloth and the vinyl speaker covering if you wanted to make it really authentic. A quick calculation shows it wouldn't be difficult to make a 4x8 with a response 3db down at 50Hz and 900W handling and 127dB output. That's AES ratings, Yamaha, RCF and most of the rest add an extra 6db so its 3,600W and 133db if you want to compare it with commercial cabs claims How would you be powering this speaker? Your biggest problem in the design will be the crossover.

I'm not convinced as to why you would do this either. These were built in the days when materials science hadn't caught up with PA needs and gear was very expensive. PA was still largely about getting as much sound as possible out of speakers that wouldn't handle huge amounts of power so multiple cheap drivers was the rule of the day. Plus of course th excellent dispersion patterns of vertical arrays. Using two 12's for mids is a bit odd as they already have issues in the mid-range. The truth is that these things were never great and it took all we had in those days to coax a decent sound out of them. Thre were a few 4x12 collumns with horns ( I vaguely remember WEM made some) but they were uber-expensive at the time and beyond the reach of most bands. This was Pink Floyd's touring rig in 1969

I'm not surprised you got this from the Gnome. I have one which I use with my LFSys Monaco which has a similar sound to the Monza. We actually measured the frequency response of the Gnome at the SW Bass Bash a couple of years agao and with the controls set to 12.00 they are a long way from flat. There's a pronounced mid scoop at 400 Hz, and the treble response is like the side of a hill agressively rising to way abve the upper frequencise of a bass, That will be boosting all the high frequency noise in your system and giving you the 'brittle' sound. Back the treble to around 9.00 o'clock and the treble resonse will be almost flat. Advance the mid control to 2.00 if you want to lose the scoop and 11.00 will flatten a little bass hump that exists. I'm assuming that the treble boost baked into the Gnome is to give a sort of bright hi-fi sound out of speakers that don't have a horn. The Monza is just reproducing that honestly. In fact re-eq everything and report back please. I haven't had the chance to try the Monza ( the only LFS that I haven't tried) and it does intrigue me.

I feel your pain, one of my drummers was also trained as a sound engineer and a gear head. Drummers by nature seem to be sound heads too. One cymbal sounds like another to me but they can be very particular about their kit. Eventually that band which was so full of promise broke up because partly because the rest of the band got fed up with time wasted at rehearsals. Equally the two things that take time with every band at gigs are the kit and the PA. I do PA for my bands and drummist and I are always first to arrive and last to leave. In this case I don't think it makes things more complex. Hopefully you'll end up with a 'stagebox' type mixer run with a laptop or tablet. From the bands point of view this is like the business end of an old fashioned 'snake' and they can all just plug in whatever they use. I've labelled up the sockets for my lot to plug in to. As people plug in you can see what they've done and if it is all working on screen so no need for any more one-two's and broken leads/hum loops etc show up straight away. At the end of the gig you can save the settings and after a couple of gigs use the same set up every time. Most/some of these mixers will even do the room eq for you. The band furthest down the line/early adopters now sort out their own in-ears, again labelled sockets on the mixer but they can (and do) all use their phones to adjust their own mixes without affecting anyone elses. There will be a few gigs getting used to it but eventually it will be simpler/quicker IME. Funnily enough I also have a semi-acoustic duo. I must admit that so far we don't use in ears, I sing more in the duo and it's quite nice to keep the noise levels down and listen to the 'air' I keep having to stop my singer/guitarist from upping his own volume though. Honestly it's worth the journey though, let them sort out the in-ears for themselves then I suggest you try them for yourself. It'll save your hearing and improve your playing (nothing like me hearing every mistake I make to help me up my game). It is the future and I'd never go back to the average band's volume wars. Good luck with your band

I think it's OK not to want to pay for something you don't really understand so the problem is who pays for it. You also need to ask yourself what you are demanding of them. Then maybe you can discuss the real issue which is money. Technically you need a new desk to improve your monitoring. Until maybe 10 years ago this was almost impossible within a pub band budget but now digital desks are as cheap as similar quality analogue desks and a lot more capable. The big advance is the availability of 6+ aux outputs so everyone who wants can have a separately mixed monitoring channel. You can put these separate mixes through monitor speakers but most pub bands never play on stages big enough to get a separation of sound. Ear plugs don't really work as they always block some frequencies more than others and if your guys are talking about tinnitus the probability is that they already have some hearing loss. The further probability is that it is your band that is causing that loss. If you resist this then you are asking them to continue to lose their hearing so you can stick to what you know. That is a huge ask. It is perfectly reasonable for you to say you can't afford it or to say you don't want in-ears yourself (though in the end your hearing will be damaged too). Your band need a grown up discussion about money and I think you need to accept the decision to make the change. It will be all the better for you too in the end, you are pretty lucky to have people in the band with the expertise and energy to make this change. In-ear monitors will improve their playing and singing and the new mixer will improve your FOH sound for the audience and hopefully more and better gigs as a result. I'm sure that thinking about this you won't feel you can ask them to suffer further hearing damage. If it helps I sold my old analogue desk and got 60% of the cost of my digital desk back from the sale. Maybe as a band give the drummer a fee from one of your gigs to go towards his purchase. Once you realise you are just dicussing how to fund it things should move along a bit better.

Hi @martthebass so I don't know if you are working on this yet? If you have some headphones then you need to try out some things at rehearsal, though you can work on getting the best seal possible at home by swapping out the ear tips until you get the best fit which should cut out as much outside sound as possible and not keep falling out. If you have some good closed back over ear headphones though it is quite useful to start with those. It doesn't matter about how you look at rehearsal and it will protect your ears and is much more comfortable to work with initially. And you can pull them off easily when you need to talk with the rest of the band. I don't think we've talked about what monitors you are currently using but you can just use the aux channel to drive your headphones if it isn't already being used. If not the headphone channel or the monitor out willl do. If however the monitoring is good but just too loud then there is an altermative and that is to use 'ambient' monitoring. Use an extra mic to pick up the band's sound feed that to a headphone amp and into your in-ears, the bonus of this method is you get to hear the audience noise and everything your band members say. A hack that works is to use a mini recorder to do this, it has the mic and headphone amp built into a single case. I've tried this with a Zoom H4N mounted on my mic stand and a little Olympus dictaphone type thing strung round my neck on a cord. Both worked brilliantly. You could probably use your 'phone if it has a jack socket. I found all of these work better than anything but the very best floor monitors and I could hear better than I could at 90% of the gigs I played. The ultimate though is to have your own mix

These were a staple of the pub band for years and the fact that so many are still going a credit to Yamaha, somebody (Peavey?) used to do a three amplifier version too. Yamaha didn't really overstate their specs in those days, I think they were 300W into 8 ohms whch matched their Club series SM112 speakers.

@thebrig you should feel frustrated at the ridiculous power ratings as well as the almost as ridiculous maximum sound levels. It makes rational choice almost impossible and is probably illegal in the UK but who has the power (no pun intended) or time to take legal action over false advertising. Power ratings are a moderately complex subject to negotiate/understand. The best advice is to ignore all the claims. Not least is that each speaker will have two power limits and the ratings for amplifiers are measured in a completely different way to speakers. Another is that to keep costs down people like Alto use the same amps in all their speakers in a range which is why they claim 2,000W in their 8,10,12 and 15" cabs. The reality is that the 8" speaker will handle around 100W (and not at all frequencies) the 10 around 200W and the 12 around 300W. The manufacturers build these cabs with digital processing that limits the amp power so the speakers never get near their limits and remain reliably in one piece. Remember that we are talking about budget level kit here compared with the £000's+ touring bands use. Even the best RCF/Yamaha gear pub bands use is more family car than formula 1. Performance at this level is clustered around a sweet spot of value for money. The idea that a £250 8" speaker is 2,000W is like saying your base level VW Lupo will go 0-60 in just over a second and has a maxumum speed of 900mph. 10 times reality. It's so ridiculous that it is laughable. Having said that since 2-300W will drive a 12" speaker to it's full potential and a lot of budget gear is really good there is no fear involved. I had the chance to compare a 10"Alto TS10 with my RCF ART310 on Tues and they are both really good speakers, I wouldn't have any trouble using either as vocal only PA. Alto make great kit for the money and Yamaha et al are all at it in selling with over-inflated claims. Incidentally it is very hard to get much more than 122dB out of a midrange 12" mid/bass driver so 132db SPL is a lie too. It's based upon the 2000W that doesn't exist. 132dB would almost instantaneously cause permanent hearing loss and be loud enough to be heard over a Boeing 747 20m away. So go away and have a look at decent used 12" active cabs from Yamaha, RCF, JBL, EV etc which will do you a job for a long while. Alto, Wharfedale, HH are cheaper but still good remembering you get what you pay for Alt TX's won't match the TS range for example and the Mackie Thumps aren't up to the Mackie SRM's. Don't worry about power

It's like so many things completely subjective. Old school thump, heft clean and so on mean different things to different people. No doubt people will come on to this thread and describe something as hi-fi when it is well know to add a colouring of it's own to your sound.Generally speaking it'll be as opposed to 'old-school' sound which in turn depends upon how old the person talking (typing?) is. Old school is usually boosted at 100Hz with little real bass scooped mids aroung 400Hz and without a lot of top end. Hi-fi then will generally be brighter sounding with less or no mid scoop and a lot more top end, but not everyone will agree of course. For me it's the sound of my bass but louder, and I practice at home with a Zoom and headphones or straight through the desk with studio monitors so that sound. I'd describe it as FRFR though (full range flat response) and it does me as a sound as it shows up all my mistakes which is what you want for a practice. Just like taste sound doesn't have very good adjectives. Try describing the difference between one curry and another, all different and there's a whole industry of food critics trying to describe food. We just don't have the words to accurately describe sound.

That's a monster set up. I used to own a Marshall 200W amp with four KT88's. It's crazy isn't it, I can't be bothered to take my Hartke 3500 to gigs because of the weight and don't use back linbe at all at most gigs but still hanker after stuff like this. Just typing KT88 makes me go all weak

Good man

I'm in a four piece covers band and like so many bassists I own and run the PA. Drummer and I arrive first and set up and are always last out at the end. Just like @Dan Dare I'm please don't try and help. The last thing I want is to sort out the mess they make. I've done everything I can to cut down set up and break down times. Mains leads are run first and are 6-way sockets wired on cables just long enough to run three sides of the stage (two 5m for the sides and a 10m across the back) leaving a 6-way in each corner. Any audio cables that need to run to the far side are run after that. The drummer has a mat the exact size of her kit and the cables are run just behind that. I have spares of everything incuding most of the things that band members forget and it all packs into a single storage box. Leads are all wound 'properly' and all have cable ties. I play with other bands and each band has it's own box with counted and checked leads. Our new guitarist had me down as obsessive/OCD but in everything else I'm quite chilled and relaxed but after 50 years of knocking down a stage you just realise having a system and all the right bits in all the right places saves you so much time and hassle and somebody helping by 'saving' you 30secs of lead winding and costing you 5 mins of untangling at the next gig or when you get home isn't a good deal. On the plus side all the band help out with the carrying and lifting I just don't let them pack the van any more than I let my wife pack the dish washer. Maybe I am a little bonkers