Any advice would be much appreciated.
My mostly instrumental jazz quartet got a restaurant gig. If our wives knew the money, they wouldn't let us demean ourselves like this.
I decided, in an attempt to keep the audience more engaged, to sing a couple of tunes. I brought, don't laugh dangerously hard, a mic stand, a Sennheiser 609 and a plan to plug it into a Roland JC55 guitar amp. Nothing else through that amp.
The restaurant is like a high ceiling 18x60 or so. We're wedged into the space that a table in the front window on one side of the door would take. If the bass player ate a cookie, we wouldn't have fit.
I recall hearing two pros, guitar bass and each sang, going into a 4 channel mixer and then into a guitar amp and sounding great in a very small space. So, I was thinking that we wouldn't play very loud, I can't sing well anyway, and that Roland might be enough.
I put my guitar through a DV Mark Little Jazz which was more than loud enough.
But, I think the vocals and the announcements to the audience probably had that muffled quality you associate with being wakened in a bus station.
I also have use of a Mackie 350 and I have a Yamaha MG10/2, an older one with no FX. I put a Korg PX5D set for reverb only in the FX loop and it seemed to work.
But, this is a kluge, even for me.
I could buy a small Mackie mixer for about $150, with more than enough channels and FX on board.
Or, I could buy a used Yamaha StagePas 300. I just had a gig where the venue had one and even my guitar sounded great through it (line out from the Little Jazz).
For talking to the audience, do I even want reverb? Or as much reverb as I want for singing?
Is using the JC55 really that crazy?
I know about buy once cry once and the risk of going cheap.
If I buy the mixer and go into the Mackie 350, what else am I going to end up having to buy if anything?
Thanks for reading this far and for any advice you might offer.
And, btw, the kluge sound worked and we got a regular gig at that place.
Rick