PA Recommendations

[Dan Dare]

4 hours ago, Nicko said:

In all the examples I gave the driving force isn't the frontman at all - with the possible exception of the AC/DC.

 

The frontman wasn't the driving force in AC/DC either. The Young brothers, particularly Malcolm, were. Look at any of the interviews about AC/DC (plenty on YouTube and similar) and everyone credits Malcolm with being the man who directed the band. So pete is correct about them, too.

Edited August 4, 2022 by Dan Dare

[mikel]

17 minutes ago, peteb said:

 

Funnily enough, I preferred the Coverdale / Hughes version, especially the album with Tommy Bolin! Not the same band, but certainly more to my taste (not that I didn't like the classic Gillan / Glover line-up). 

 

I was talking vocalist and drummer. Paice made the early Purple, with Gillan. After, it was just soft rock. 

[peteb]

1 minute ago, mikel said:

I was talking vocalist and drummer. Paice made the early Purple, with Gillan. After, it was just soft rock. 

 

I don't necessarily agree (Come Taste The Band is currently on my car CD player), but Paice is certainly a great rock drummer! 

 

[TimR]

10 hours ago, peteb said:

 

Thanks for that - very helpful 

I thought it illustrated the nonsense of the arguments rather succinctly. 

Edited August 5, 2022 by TimR

[blisters on my fingers]

Might be an idea to use a word that actually exists, before you berate the nonsense of lesser mortals 'arguments'.

 

 

[Dad3353]

5 minutes ago, blisters on my fingers said:

Might be an idea to use a word that actually exists, before you berate the nonsense of lesser mortals 'arguments'.

[blisters on my fingers]

Guilty as charged"

[Nicko]

9 hours ago, peteb said:

 

You're the guy who didn't think that there was a difference between a tax break for people buying a bike to ride to work and an offshore K2 tax avoidance scheme. Nuance is everything. 

 

I know that this something that you have no experience of, but FFS. The point is that it was a reply to Al about the relative importance of various members of a band i.e. the idea of the principal members and the more replaceable other members ('hired hands', sidemen or whatever you want to call them). Usually the principals tend to include the LV / frontperson, but there are exceptions. Obviously not all bands are the same, which is why I qualified my statements with terms like 'generally' and 'tends to be', etc. 

 

Anyway, enough of this nonsense - I'm sure that anyone who has a clue about (or is interested in) how bands above the pub circuit level tend to operate will be able to understand the point that I was making. 

 

Firstly I never said that there is no difference between those two tax scenarios.

 

Secondly, any view I have on tax is nothing to do with my view on what makes a good band.

 

Thirdly I'm entitled to an opinion on the importance of members of a band whether I am experienced or not - in the same way that you have views on tax when you have both no experience and no insight.  I wasn't aware that amateur musicians on this forum were restricted to commenting on certain subjects.  However since the OP is asking about PA set up in a pub perhaps it's you who are on the wrong topic here?

 

Fourth if you'd been bothered to understand the point I was making it was that a band consists of a core of members - on rare occasions there is a single member that defines the band.  In some cases the peripheral members are dispensable but this is not the majority. 

 

Lastly if you want to enter a discussion on anything I suggest you don't start a reply with "WTF are you on about"

[phil.c60]

So......Yet another thread wanders completely off the point and becomes a pointless argument, like two bald men fighting over a comb, and probably causing the OP to lose the will to live trawling through the last two pages trying to find out if there is actually any useful information to be found in them. The short answer is "No". Well done chaps.

FWIW, and YMMV, we ran our band (bass, drums, guitar/vox and harmonica)very successfully for many years in pubs and small venues with a pair of passive 12" ElectroVoice, a Yamaha EMX512SC (light as a feather, enough effects for us) and backline. No monitors, and as Happy Jack said we could all hear one another very well at the volumes needed for those types of small spaces. If you can't, you are too loud anyway in my humble opinion. We figured that we were there to entertain, not to pin the punters to the back wall. Set up in 25mins, tear down the same, utterly reliable and easy to transport. And we also used to have the speakers behind us on occasions when space demanded: while we had to be careful about checking frequencies etc. and mic placement we managed it OK on many occasions. That was just us: other folks do it different.

.

[casapete]

1 hour ago, phil.c60 said:

FWIW, and YMMV, we ran our band (bass, drums, guitar/vox and harmonica)very successfully for many years in pubs and small venues with a pair of passive 12" ElectroVoice, a Yamaha EMX512SC (light as a feather, enough effects for us) and backline.

Absolutely this. So many bands overcook it with PA and backline for smaller venues like you mention, it really

doesn't warrant it IMHO. Small guitar amps and a Fender Rumble 100 work for us in many places.

The Yamaha is a much underrated bit of kit, and we still use one for our country band and acoustic duo gigs.

Works brilliantly with most cabs - we use either Bose 802 or EV passive cabs, even sounds great with some

old Peavey HiSys cabs we occasionally utilise. 

 

[TimR]

As usual, it's the Internet isn't it. 

 

No grey only black and white.

 

Considering the centuries of experience amongst us there's a hundred ways to skin a cat. As many PA set ups as there are bands. Mostly it depends on who owns, transports, sets up and operates the PA. How much cash they had to spend, what vehicle they drive, what storage options they have at home, what size gigs they're playing, how much they're making from gigging, who is in the band...

 

Very rarely is it the best solution acoustically, quite often it's not, if the singer rides a bicycle and lives in a 1 bedroom flat, they won't own a PA, even if they're the only person using it. 

 

For someone to say- "you can't do that, it won't work", when someone is actually doing it, and it does, seems a bit ridiculous.