What's Your PA Situation?

[Phaedrus]

This is the most apt forum I could think of for this question. Sorry if I've misjudged that.

We bought our own PA and initially used a local sound engineer, but soon discovered that we're happier with our sound when we run it ourselves. It's tricky in new venues and usually take 4 or 5 songs to get it all sounding right.

I love learning about PA & SR so it suits me to run it for the band. We can't really afford the caliber of engineer that will truly listen to what WE want to sound like and run things so that's exactly how we sound.

I'm interested to know how you gigging bands go about it and what your set-ups are.

Mark

[john_the_bass]

we've got two - one small one for small venues where we only really require a vocal mix and a channel for a DI'd acoustic guitar and one massive bloody great 8k rig with a 24 channel desk when we have 4 vocals, 2 guitars, bass, a 15 piece (yes really) drumkit and an acoustic guitar. The drummer's brother has been running the sound on the big desk on the couple of occassions we've had to use it, but my preference to be honest would be to hire a PA and an engineer every time, purely for the convenience of not having to haul your own gear and having someone driving the desk who knows what they're doing.

My other (full time band) is playing the toilet circuit still as we make our way slowly upwards and the majority of places we go to have full house systems and a house engineer.

[jwbassman]

I own the gear and do the sound for the big band I play in - not really for volume more to give a bit of lift in some really dead venues, which usually means just adding a bit of reverb to the brass and saxes - amazing what a difference it can make - we usually di the guitar, bass and piano too just to keep them in the mix, the drums are always loud enough!! Also have a singer and they need to be loud enough to carry over the rest of us, which can be a challenge sometimes..

Bought a small desk of eBay and run it in conjunction with my Yamah mixer amp, through 2 main speakers and a couple of non-powered monitors, it's a pretty simple set up but I find it's hard to adjust when you're in the mix. We usually have a good half hour sound check to make sure everything is right, the MD knows what he wants and he's never been dissapointed (as far as I kown ) - we tried a couple of other PAs that guys in the band have but seemed that mine gave us the best sound - and I was mug enough to take on the responsibility of carting it about and setting it up, I don't mind because the end result is a better sounding gig so it's worth it.

Just need to buy a bigger car now

[lowhand_mike]

we run our own, we have a 600watt PA with a 6 channel desk 2PA speakers and 2 100watt stage monitors (could do with bigger ones or a few more). The guitarist does have a 16channel desk but is a bit lothe to use it as he doesn't have a hardcase for it, bit daft cos it would solve some of the mic'ing problems btu i can see where he's coming from, also have a graphic and effects rack which the vocals go through. Our guitarist does the sound and he really does seem to know what he's doing so we leave it to him. Bit of pain luggin it around but then at least we know what we are using.

Edited May 22, 2007 by lowhand_mike

[Alien]

Small mixer, power amp, pair of cabs on stands and a single monitor wedge. There's 3 vocal mics and an old knackered mic in the kick drum to give it a bit more definition. Just backline & acoustic drums otherwise, but there's only 3 of us and we only play pub size gigs, so plenty loud enough.

Andy

[Ant]

There was no option for me, we use the PA's of the venues.

[Merton]

Function band - have our own Macki PA and a soundman.

Originals - whatever's in the venue, unless we need to provide something in which case the drummer has a small vocal PA.

[Phaedrus]

[quote name='Ant' post='4340' date='May 22 2007, 01:59 PM']There was no option for me, we use the PA's of the venues.[/quote]

I reckon that best fits in the "hire a PA" choice.

Mark

[Ba55me15ter]

I used to own and run our own PA and lights. We now hire, including engineer, and it's worth every penny. We just turn up, plug in backline, quick sound-check, have a beer, play, bugger off. It makes the whole thing FUN again!

[MythSte]

We rely on the venues, but i think we're going to start hiring our own sound engineer as we have the following setup...

2x guitar
1x bass
2x micro korg
1x Radius synth
1x midi keyboard running off a mac with ableton
drumkit.
3x vocals...

I canny wait to see the soundguys face at the dry bar on saturday! theres nothing like crashing everything at once!

[acidbass]

[quote name='Ba55me15ter' post='4435' date='May 22 2007, 03:46 PM']I used to own and run our own PA and lights. We now hire, including engineer, and it's worth every penny. We just turn up, plug in backline, quick sound-check, have a beer, play, bugger off. It makes the whole thing FUN again![/quote]

+1000.

Maintaining a PA is an expensive and time consuming business, so our band hires both PA and soundman. We weighed up the pros and cons and decided that for transport purposes, maintenance and storage purposes, it wasn't worth our while buying a PA. If we were playing 5-7 gigs a week, then maybe we'd consider it though.

I also prefer using a soundman because it's one less thing to worry about, it lets the band concentrate more on playing. And I think a soundman will have a better idea of what it sounds like on the floor anyway, even slight tweaks throughout the set are made on the fly. The sound you hear on stage will be a lot different to what the punters hear, if your soundman has a good ear then he should do a damn good job! We use the same soundman and rig for all our gigs and from about the 3rd gig onwards, he was working from his own cues that he had written mid gig to indicate songs where the keys needed to be louder, mandolin and fiddle played etc. He does a great job and we don't worry about a thing apart from memorising pentatonic scales

[bassbluestew]

I play in a relatively busy wedding / corp function band ( 2 gigs /week ) and we run our own rig and employ a soundman as part of the band. He gets half what we get and is happy with that. The band own the gear, it just doen't make sense to hire, we'd need to pay on average £400 a gig to get a good PA to fill the venues we play, so we'd be forking out £800 / week on hire fees - just not good commercial sense. Transport and srtorage are taken care of by a HUGE LDV Convoy van ( ex Water Board - low mileage, good nick and cost us the equivalent of 18 hires to buy ) which is parked off road in my drive and touch wood has been safe so far ( This was an upgrade on a trailer we used for a year or so and sold for just about what we paid for it ) Add on insurance to the van costs and we're up to about 22-23 hires equivalent ( about 5-6 hires worth for insurance ) so again it's a no brainer. Between us we can maintain the van, but it's not doing a huge mileage, maybe 300miles / weekend average.
So for us it just made complete commercial sense to buy - and I was ALWAYS dead set against any band buying gear, but when you look at your diary and work out how much you'd be paying someone else and be left with nothing but a big pile of receipts at the end, it just doesn't take a lot of working out.
Plus 3 members of the band can travel together cutting down travel expenses.

It works for us.
Stewart