Pa System advice?

[stingrayPete1977]

1 hour ago, charic said:

Maybe, but if bass, kick, guitar and vocals are going through it how many watts are you "replacing"?

Also two 735s come in at around £400 over budget new.  So secondhand might be achievable.  Extra headroom is always preferable too

You've nailed the part most people miss, in an acoustic setting you could probably ditch all the amps if you set the speakers up slightly further back than you would a vocal only pa. That's tight stage area space saved and no need to upgrade for larger gigs where you can use on stage amps along with the 735s running harder. 

Buy cheap, buy twice. 

[Gottastopbuyinggear]

If this were me then I’d definitely try putting bass through your existing PA, using both speakers, to see whether that's up to the job. 

Assuming it is but you absolutely have to have something for gigs where you need a smaller footprint then I’d definitely be thinking hard about something like the RCF 735 that others have mentioned.  There’s no reason why you can’t feed that from the main out connections on the front of your existing mixer so you wouldn’t necessarily have to buy a new mixer yet.  Then your upgrade path is another 735 in the future, and a passive mixer, which would let you get rid of the existing PA.

One other question - I’m guessing that somewhere along the line, or in your future plans, is something bigger than the acoustic duo, as your Ashdown rig is probably overkill for that?  If that’s the case then the 735's would be more appropriate for a bigger band, so would make sense from that point of view.  If not then perhaps looking at a smaller bass rig along with smaller active speakers could make some sense?

[Phil Starr]

Back to the spec of your speakers. 

300W continuous is the rating of how much power your speakers can dissipate as heat. Without getting all technical that means that you can pretty much use them forever with an amp of that power without them burning out. 

Programme means that if you play average music through the speakers they should be OK. It isn't measured in any way and is just the continuous level doubled. it's a made up thing really. Peak value is meaningless really, the speaker would be ok if the peak only lasted a fraction of a second and didn't contain any bass.

PA engineers will/should know the physics and sometimes choose to use high powered amplifiers for PA, they know if they filter the bass and have compressors and limiters on the amps they can get away with double or more of the power handling because they can control the peaks. 

Basically what you have are 300W speakers (and that is what most 12 and 15" speakers will handle of any brand despite the advertising claims) and until you understand all the technical stuff stick to an amp which will develop that power.

 

[AlexDelores]

Thanks everyone for all your advice. 

Will check out some of the higher end stuff. Ultimately it’s not just down to me though so will chat to the other half (of the group) about it. 

I think we might look at a form of monitoring sooner though whilst we’re deciding/saving 😏... NYE gig cemented the need to sort something. Awful sound on stage so we may find once we sort out that issue the others might not seem as urgent.

Just as a side note,  Our need for more power is not down to how loud of a band we are but that we play a lot of loud ‘Pre club’ type bars in town that are full of loud, lairy groups of drunkeds , cheering shots, talking and waiting for us to play Mr Brightside rather than a crowd of music lovers out to listen to a live band. Fortunately all in all the gigs are good fun and they pay well so I can get over the fact they’re talking over half our set 😂

Thanks again all. Much appreciated

Alex

[Blink]

I use 2 RCF Evox 8's with a 6 piece covers band. For your band, 1 will probably be fine as they have good sound dispersion and good feedback rejection so you might be set it up in such a way that you can hear it and use it as a monitor.

A word of warning about in-ear monitoring. Unless you have a sound person controlling the FOH sound you can be blissfully unaware of how bad you sound to the audience because you have the perfect in-ear mix. Been there, got the tee-shirt etc etc

N