Members pbone Posted March 7, 2013 Members Share Posted March 7, 2013 I need to buy a graphic EQ for my practice PA but I'm not sure which one and how to use it in the set up. The goal is to tune the room a little bit, but most importantly to ring out the monitors and reduce feedback. The set up going into the mixer is as such: only one mic (!!!) and a few keyboards heading into a small mixer, which, in stereo, feeds a 300w power amp heading into two 150w 310 tower speakers. So I'm not sure if I need to buy a single channel EQ to tune JUST the one mic for feedback or a dual channel to ring the monitors in stereo or what. I'm a little lost and am definitely trying to cut down on cost as well so any recommendations would be helpful. Was looking at the dbx 131s if all I need is a single channel. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Mutha Goose Posted March 7, 2013 Members Share Posted March 7, 2013 If all you have is 1 mic, than all you need is a single channel EQ to tame just that mic (the keyboards won't feedback). But, if there is any chance in the future that you will have another mic, or that you will use this for any other use, do yourself a favor and just by a dual channel EQ. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members wesg Posted March 7, 2013 Members Share Posted March 7, 2013 Graphic EQs are great. But, given the equipment you've listed, assuming you're playing in a basement or something, I bet you can get rid of feedback without EQing. Where are the speakers in relation to the microphone? Is it a good microphone? Are the singer's lips less than an inch away from it? These factors are much much much more important than ringing out the basement IME.... We practice with our practice PA's wedge-shaped speakers behind the microphones, sideways, on the ground, with a hunk of wood underneath to point them up more towards the singer's head -- like proper stage monitors. One singer uses a mic-stand monitor. We EQ with our board to sound good and don't worry about feed. We use cardioid or super-cardioid microphones, and we play loud and feedback-free. (Until that infernal vocal pedal kicks in ) Another trick is to make sure you don't have parallel hard flat walls enclosing you in (I moved a couch to help this - hanging a carpet is even better), and also, you must make sure that the singer is not pointing his microphone at the corner between the wall and the ceiling. I don't know why people do that, but it's a great way to get honky ringing and feedback. Again IME; I am not a pro sound guy but I have played a lot of basements! Wes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members pbone Posted March 7, 2013 Author Members Share Posted March 7, 2013 wesg wrote: Graphic EQs are great. But, given the equipment you've listed, assuming you're playing in a basement or something, I bet you can get rid of feedback without EQing. Where are the speakers in relation to the microphone? Is it a good microphone? Are the singer's lips less than an inch away from it? These factors are much much much more important than ringing out the basement IME.... We practice with our practice PA's wedge-shaped speakers behind the microphones, sideways, on the ground, with a hunk of wood underneath to point them up more towards the singer's head -- like proper stage monitors. One singer uses a mic-stand monitor. We EQ with our board to sound good and don't worry about feed. We use cardioid or super-cardioid microphones, and we play loud and feedback-free. (Until that infernal vocal pedal kicks in ) Another trick is to make sure you don't have parallel hard flat walls enclosing you in (I moved a couch to help this - hanging a carpet is even better), and also, you must make sure that the singer is not pointing his microphone at the corner between the wall and the ceiling. I don't know why people do that, but it's a great way to get honky ringing and feedback. Again IME; I am not a pro sound guy but I have played a lot of basements! Wes Thanks, Wes. We're playing in a big space rented to us by a cabinet manufacturer. We have quite a bit of space to move about. Either way, here's the physical set up: I'm using an SM58 for vocals. The speakers are on either side and just slightly behind the drum kit, focused at me, and about 12 +/- feet away from me. So me and the drummer are facing each other straight on. We got a pretty good sound last night with that, but it would've been nice to get it a bit louder without feedback. Is there a better way to be doing that speaker placement? I only have two towers and they can be a bit precarious to use. And yes I have a vocal reverb pedal! That's another part of this, haha. I do like that pedal for reverb and delay, but would it just be better to return that pedal and use the funds towards an EQ? My bandmate has a little {censored}ty lexicon reverb rack unit that we could throw in as an insert to the mix. But in response to the space thing: we are essentially in a little island. The nearest wall to me is to my back, and it's probably 25 feet behind me. I'm gonna hang some carpet between me and that wall as well, though. There's a wall 5 feet behind the drummer, but to the left and right of us is hundreds of feet of space. My mixer is a Behringer 1002b, by the way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members pbone Posted March 7, 2013 Author Members Share Posted March 7, 2013 I think a store near me is selling a little Peavey monitor for pretty cheap, would that be my best bet for right up there monitoring? It's the PR10N. Im really lookin for a quick solution so if I can skip the bull{censored} with eq'ing and all sorts of other {censored} just with my own monitor I'll do it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members dboomer Posted March 8, 2013 Members Share Posted March 8, 2013 How big is your room?How loud is your sound? So if you turn WAY down you'll stop having feedback. If you go outside and set up in the middle of a football field you'll stop having feedback. Everything in between will be incremental. If your room is too small and your desire for too much volume too big there is nothing that will make that happen. There is a hard limit to all of this. There are some small changes that will improve it and you could go about them in a methodical way. But buying the perfect monitor (which a cheap Peavey isn't) probably won't help much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members pbone Posted March 8, 2013 Author Members Share Posted March 8, 2013 Room is very large and our sound can be turned down. What we did at the last practice is to max out the vocal levels to as far as we can get before feedback and then turned down and played to that. That seemed to work for everybody but me, the singer. Hence the individual monitor. Now I think I'm just gonna use that monitor exclusively as a close-field one and turn the main monitors around and shoot that {censored} to the rest of the band instead, taking those out of the mic range directly and dealing rather with just one monitor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members stangconv Posted March 10, 2013 Members Share Posted March 10, 2013 This is for jam space? Get a Behringer B212D place at the bottom on of their stand pointing up. $299. A compressor is the wrong tool. Either sell the other speakers or use them for the people who aren't singing to hear with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members pbone Posted March 10, 2013 Author Members Share Posted March 10, 2013 Okay I'm thinking of just doing a complete over haul here. Here's what I'm thinking. Replace the tower speakers as is with Carvin 832s, which are 400w 115s. I can bridge my PA to provide 300w in mono, which might be kinda nice. Then I'll just go ahead and buy a KC-300 and use that for the Moog and DSI, leaving me to mic just the vocals and bass drums. Good solution? Then hopefully everyone gets to hear me and i can hear myself too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members stangconv Posted March 10, 2013 Members Share Posted March 10, 2013 Can you draw out your rehearsal space? Sounds weird Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members pbone Posted March 10, 2013 Author Members Share Posted March 10, 2013 stangconv wrote: Can you draw out your rehearsal space? Sounds weird yeah lemme whip something up real quick. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members stangconv Posted March 11, 2013 Members Share Posted March 11, 2013 Where are your speakers? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members pbone Posted March 11, 2013 Author Members Share Posted March 11, 2013 stangconv wrote: Where are your speakers? Speakers are set right next to the drum set, on either side, facing me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members stangconv Posted March 11, 2013 Members Share Posted March 11, 2013 And which way are you looking? Like you're on stage with back to drums? Or looking in towards the drummer? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members pbone Posted March 11, 2013 Author Members Share Posted March 11, 2013 Looking in at the drummer, and you can imagine the consequential mic positioning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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