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Bob O'Brian

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    Isle of Lewis, Scotland

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  1. Alas the Hisys cabs belonged to our ex-drummer so are no longer an option. Interesting to hear that they might have sounded better had our amp not been so crappy! We literally had no headroom at all and it showed. If buying new I would have got the wedge Yammies, but since I went 2nd hand couldn't be that fussy; and yes, I did have eventual monitor use in mind- although for now they'll be my FOH rig. Chocks of wood for me, then. I suppose I've been lucky that I didn't have to spend much on these crappy systems I've been using; now that I'm building my own, though, I'm trying hard ot do the best I can with a very small budget. Well, isn't everybody?
  2. Very interesting thread, in part because it lets me see the wide variety of people using this board... and that I am probably in the minority, since I don't run a sound company (or even work in IT ) but am in fact a piano teacher who also plays bass and sings in a bar band. Anyway, my band has used two PA systems since we formed, and, just to give you pros a good laugh, here we go: System One: (owned by the drummer) Peavey XR800D powered mixer. It was in very bad condition with the onboard FX dead and almost all the faders missing, hence every channel was set to max and we could only use gain to control levels. Ouch! I eventually stumped up the cash to get it repaired but at 2x200w max output it would clip away merrily though all but the smallest gigs. Carlsbro Marlin 150 mixer amp; used to power monitors. Virtually useless at this because it was underpowered and had only a 'high' and 'low' EQ section so no dialling out of feedback for me... Peavey Hisys mains hard to say what these were like cos the rest of the system was so poor. But they weren't very good. Skytec monitor wedge. Hmmm. That was the system, to start with. The drummer also used a guitar practise amp as a monitor and we had feedback aplenty. He also insisted on running unbalanced leads tot he mics which I think contributed to the problem. Thank god we weren't gigging at this stage. Before we got to first gig, I had upgraded the system by adding: Peavey Hisys subs 15" subs matching the tops; mainly bought cos it let us drop the system to 4-ohms a side and get more than 200w out of the powered mixer. They're bad, but were a big improvement... because now people could actually hear us... Laney monitor Fairly solid piece of kit, it's not all that good but about good enough for what I spent on it. This first PA was, basically, terrible. But in retrospect I think I did my best with it; I added XLR cables, proper speaker leads, and the subs, and got rid of that bloody guitar-amp-cum-monitor. It was a poor system but it got us gigging through most of last summer, and it was comparable to what a lot of other bands here gig with. System Two: (owned by the new guitarist) Behringer PMH1000 powered mixer with dead power amps. Onboard FX, but other than that not much functionality. Peavey CS900 power amp. I guess it did the job OK, but we had clipping problems whenever we tried putting more than just vocals through this system. Peavey Pro speakers 12" tops, 15" subs. No worse than the Hisys ones had been, but I found them a bit harsh and cheap sounding. Not surprising, since they are very cheap speakers. Monitor system as before. Despite having played in bands for several years, the guitarist hadn't used monitors before... even when he used to sing lead.... ouch.... Anyway, I'm cheesed off with having crappy sound all the time, and am building my own system. The only thing I have so far is the Yamaha S112IV tops which I have yet to try out, but hopefully they will be good. These will be matched up to a small rack of gear with a mixer, power amp, FX unit, and a stereo EQ, so that I can finally get louder monitors without feedback. Well I hope my description raised a few eyebrows, because sometimes I feel llike the people that use this board occupy different universes, but we're all trying to do the same thing- sound as good as we can.
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