New band clueless what to buy to play live

[JackTK]

Okay our band meets every week to practice, we've never played live, and our band includes a drummer and two keyboardists. We use one amp for both keyboards, and one amp for vocals. We are pretty new to this stuff, though we have been pretty dedicated to practicing every week for several months.

 

The vocals aren't loud enough, and the amp for our keyboards is pretty tiny and muffled, and probably wouldn't be loud enough live. We want to be able to play live by the end of the year (small venues though we'd like to move up), but we really don't know what to buy. Better amps? P.A. system? If you have a P.A. system do you still need other amps or do the speakers from the P.A. system do all the work? If we get a P.A. system do we use it to practice too? Do we need microphones for the drums?? lol we really don't know any of this.

 

Yeah we're pretty clueless...

 

edit: to answer some questions

-Our ages are 24, 25, and 18

-Budget is about $2000 for everything

-We have plenty of storage space and three cars

[gspointer]

I would suggest a 16 channel board, 4 floor wedges or IEM set-ups. 2 subs and 2 full range cabs on sticks. 6 channels of 31 band eq's, 4 amps appropriately powered and a x-over. a couple of racks 8 or 10 mics, a couple of DI boxes and a mess of cables and a way to store/transport them.

[Shaster]

Since you're starting from nothing I would suggest you start small but wisely.

 

Two powered speaker cabs like the Yorkville NX25P (or others like it) and a small passive mixer like the PV10. With any luck you will outgrow this system and later (or much later) can use the mixer for a keyboard sub mixer.... and the original powered speakers as monitors or keyboard monitors.

 

This would be the most basic of set-ups and won't really be adequate for much besides very small clubs and small casuals but it will get you started.Don't forget mics, cables, cases and stands.

 

BTW I'm playing tonight with two speakers and a box mixer in a small pub. It's a pro band with most folks in the band having at least a few records under their belt, so.... although my normal PA is worth $15,000 (and that's cheap) you can do it for much less.

 

 

 

Good luck.

[GCDEF]

How much money do you have to spend?

[kmart]

Before you buy a SINGLE piece of additional equipment, ESPECIALLY any PA gear, do some research and figure out what the target venues you want to play, or are likely to play at are.

 

Since you didn't give much in the way of details/say anything about it specifically, it's entirely possible that the places you end up playing have their own PAs, and all you need is to improve your rehearsal set-up, rather than buying a ton of gear that you don't really NEED.

 

It's also entirely possible that you will need all of it, so...get out to some of those venues.

[banddad]

Shaster has the right idea: start small and build up. A couple of powered speakers and a passive mixer are a good start. These will cover rehearsals and are a start to building a full pa.

 

Research as kmart says (you are still a pretty young band), and after several years build up to something like gspointers system (not too far from mine).

 

Good luck!

[Square]

Let's start with:

- your ages - roughly (I am assuming you are pretty young)

- vehicles and storage space

- budget

 

I will assume a lot for this next part:

 

age - under 20

Vehicles and storage - cars and perhaps a closet or at most your rehersal space

 

budget - lower is better - $2,000 max

 

In this scenario, I would say you should audition a pair of EV ZX-1's and a Yamaha EMX series powered mixer:

 

ZX1:

http://www.electrovoice.com/product.php?id=250

 

EMX:

http://www.yamahaproaudio.com/products/mixers/emx512sc/index.html

 

The ZX1's and powered mixer will give you a decent practice PA. It will not do bass at all, and you WILL hurt the speakers if you try. This rig is tiny, it will sound good, and you will have a mixer, amp, effects and compressor all in one lightweight box. The whole rig will fit in the back seat of a mid sized car.

 

You can play small rooms with this rig, and it will have decent reslae value. The ZX1's are about $300/box and the powered mixer is around $500 so for less than $1500 you could have a useable setup.

 

When you need more than this rig you will have to decide wether you want to buy bigger gear or just hire out. Owning a decent club PA is a lot of money (think $20K-ish) and a serious hassle to store and transport. Unless you have lots of money to spare, or you know music will be a part of your life for a very long time, you are better off to pay the few hundred bucks a night to have an experienced sound & light company handle the bigger stuff.

[JackTK]

Okay our ages are 24, 25, and 18. The budget is about $2000 for everything. We have three cars and I don't see storage space being an issue since there are other rooms in my house I could put stuff in if my room gets full.

 

And thanks for the responses so far, I'm gonna be looking this all over and doing a ton of research tonight and over the next few days

[jwlussow]

Mixer & pair of powered mains to start. Eventually you will want monitors. Look used and have a plan so the gear you get now will be the start of a bigger system.

[Dogoth]

 

Mixer & pair of powered mains to start. Eventually you will want monitors. Look used and have a plan so the gear you get now will be the start of a bigger system.

 

 

Agreed. I'd add a pair of tripods and at least one monitor if you can find the money (another of the same powered speakers as the mains might add flexability and redundency to the system).

 

No don't mic the drums at this point. In a smaller venue, drums are usualy the loudest thing already. If you're trying to get that BIG KICK sound, it requires lots of watts and subs (which don't fit into your budget at all). FWIW the aforementioned system could easily be expanded with subs down the road so you would have a good foundation to build on.

 

Also be careful about what brands/models you buy (as jwlussow says look for used deals but don't buy junk bottom feeder gear as you will regret it many times over - think mid level gear). Examples:

 

Good brands:

Yorkville

Yamaha

Peavey

Mackey (possibly)

JBL

EV

 

Bad Brands:

Samson

Behringer

Nady

Tapco

Kustom

 

at least that's my opinion.

[Mogwix]

I saw a used deal at the shop today, 8ch yorkville powered mixer and a pair of yorkville E12's for 1200... pretty good. Yorkville NX35's are awesome little passive boxes, the E12's are the next step up.

 

A small mixer and a pair of powered speakers is a good little rig, but I like a lunchbox (powered) mixer and a pair of passive speakers.

[tado921]

Just to add my two cents: We are using a Yamaha EMX312SC Powered Mixer, and it has been rock solid reliable. It has all the features we need to handle our four piece band. We use it to run mains and monitors, and it provides enough power for the bars and clubs we play. Definitely worth the money for a small band just starting out.

[banddad]

FWIW: My son's band has what they call "PA-Lite". It consists of 5 identical monitors (in this case Yamaha CM12V's), 2 amps, an 8 channel mixer, and mics, stands, and cords. Something like this could fit your budget.

 

For practice, they use 3 monitors.

For small venue gigs, "PA-Lite" uses 2 monitors for FOH vocals, 2-3 monitors for the band. Drums don't get mic'd, nor do the bass, guitar, and horns. Works great!

 

For larger venues, more gear is added, including my 16ch board, more amps, more mics, and nice tops over subs. Or, the house system is used!

[jwlussow]

The powered board is an option but they are very difficult to add to. Powered speakers are much easier to add to existing gear to build a bigger, better system. The powered board is very limited when it comes to growing your system. I still suggest a good passive mixer and good powered speakers. Just add more powered speakers and your system can easily grow with your needs.

[Mogwix]

 

The powered board is an option but they are very difficult to add to. Powered speakers are much easier to add to existing gear to build a bigger, better system. The powered board is very limited when it comes to growing your system. I still suggest a good passive mixer and good powered speakers. Just add more powered speakers and your system can easily grow with your needs.

 

This is assuming that band is going to need to upgrade. For less money, you can get a decent lunchbox and a nice pair of passive speakers. It's a compact system that's easier to set up and use... when you think about it, the mixwiz is a big, expensive board for someone who doesn't know a thing about sound. Besides, all most bar bands really need is a pair of speakers on sticks and a pair of monitors... maybe one or a pair of powered subs.

 

It also costs more money to upgrade a powered system, I find... Say you have a small passive mixer and a pair of powered speakers. You still need an external EQ, and when you need monitors you have to buy 2 more powered boxes... which gets to be expensive. Most lunchbox mixers have a simple EQ across the outputs and when one wants to add monitors, they can just buy a pair of passive boxes and run the system in mono.

 

I'm not really a fan of powered systems, unless you're running a rig like Subs'

[abzurd]

Buy what you need for practice and monitoring on stage - a couple of solid powered multi-purpose speakers. The usual suspects are the likes of QSC K12, JBL PRX 612M, Yorkville NX55P. Any of these will work great for practice, and be usable for mains or monitors for gigs.

 

THAT'S IT THOUGH....BUY NOTHING ELSE! This is where you hire a sound company. Many people subscribe to the logic that they're just throwing away money they could spend on gear and instead pay a sound company. They forget to list the "pros" of why you want to, especially for the first few shows minimum.

 

Consider the things below and notice how they all relate to one another and to the sound system.

 

1 - You've already mentioned you're clueless in this arena. That means you don't know what you need to buy, how to operate it, how to optimize the sound, and what to do if something goes wrong.

 

2- Do you really want to be thinking about #1 above during your initial shows? You only get one chance to make a first impression. If you score a gig you need to do everything in your power to make sure that gig has as high a chance of success as possible. It doesn't matter how hard you've practiced and how good you are if 1) you sound like crap, and 2) Get flustered due to having to run and maintain the sound system.

 

3) First and foremost the venue wants to know if you can pull a crowd. As a new band I'm guessing a lot of friends and family will show up to your initial shows. This is the one thing you have going for you out of the gate, and a heck of a shot in the arm versus bands that have been toiling in mediocrity for years and have no following. You bring 50 people, great sound and some lights and you have yourself repeat business that's sustainable as you should start pulling in a "real following". By gig 3 the subsidy of friends and family you enjoyed will start to drop off. If the product isn't good you'll just be another band with a mediocre offering wondering what the heck happened.

 

4) If you start with your own system it will likely be a hodge podge of ideas and unrealistic expectations for the money spent, you'll end up buying and selling, constantly looking for that holy grail piece of gear that makes the band sound good (insert Sonic Maximizer here). Using a sound company will allow you see what's appropriate and more importantly, what that level of appropriateness costs. From there you can decide if it's in your best interest to buy and OPERATE a system or continue to rent out the production.

 

Next Step - See what the scene is like in your area. Call some small time sound guys and ask for some dates of their public shows. Go check them out. Look at the gear they have. If it's all Behringer or giant 70's-80's speaker stacks, move on. If it's decent gear, but doesn't sound fantastic take notice of the band and what they are doing. The best sound guy with the best equipment can't polish a turd. If stage volume is insane or the guitar player has all the mids scooped out of his tone, or the drummer has a poorly tune kit, it's not going to sound very good.

 

There are a lot of poor bands with poor sound. There are some great bands with sound so poor they are unlistenable (that kills me). There are very few good bands with good sound. You want to do whatever is in your power to be at the top of this pyramid. Leveraging someone else's $10,000 - $20,000 PA system and experience for a few hundred dollars an outing is the way to get there.

[W. M. Hellinger]

 

our band includes a drummer and two keyboardists. We want to be able to play live by the end of the year (small venues though we'd like to move up) -Our ages are 24, 25, and 18 -Budget is about $2000 for everything

 

If I understand the description of your band correctly, I'll suggest that a band comprised of a drummer and two keyboardists could be a bit unconventional, as in: what's the special shtick of your band that requires two keyboardists with the exclusion of other conventional lead instruments? With that defined, that might help narrow your field of viable live venues suitable for your product... which could then better define the appropriate tools for the job. IOW: If you wanna buy a fishing boat, first you gotta identify the type of fish you want to catch, then secondly, identify where those fish are, and then it's much easier to narrow-down the type of boat needed to go fishing. Of-course, if you just wanna go fishing as the ways and means to hang out with your buddies, drink beer, and talk {censored} about doing something cool... heck, you don't even need a boat that floats... just buy anything that resembles a boat, leave it parked in the back yard... drink lots of beer and cast away... or just tune in the Jimmy Buffet/Kenny Chesney channel, crack a beer, close your eyes and sail away.

 

My first knee-jerk reaction is to suggest you seek the services of a band manager or similar consultant experienced in the live entertainment business in your primary market, who can offer a feasibility assessment of your business model... before investing your seemingly extremely limited start-up capitalization.

 

What I'm getting at is this: It could be that your live entertainment product might be a hugely popular niche... where you could immediately start playing good gigs paying real money at a full time schedule... but it might take 10X or even 50X your proposed start-up capitalization to step into that viable niche... it doesn't matter what the capitalization costs are if the business plan is solid and your market ascertainment supports the business plan. On the other-hand, your product might be virtually impossible to market for it's live entertainment value... and might be better served as strictly a studio band project (no PA needed). It could be that the majority of venues which would buy your entertainment product in your primary market... those venues have capable in-house systems and you don't need to be self-contained (production equipment wise) to "go live" with your product.

[Tomm Williams]

Once you figure out what you want (lot's of good ideas given) look at GC used, CL, Soundbroker and Music go Round. I've bought tons of stuff from all those folks and are rarely dissapointed. Also Agedhorse always seems to have quite a bit of used stuff and he doesn't sell crap. The biggest thing is learning to use it to it's fullest extent. You can achieve pretty good sound with mid-level stuff (Which is all your budget allows) if it's used properly.

 

TW

[monthlymixcd]

Lots of good advice here. Interesting band concept. Is it like a dueling pianos thing with drums or more of an orchestrated thing? First thing first though... get a gig or two under your belt with borrowed/rented gear and see where you're at...

 

FWIW - If you'll be using the keys to do bass lines or sub-bass synth stuff I would think you'd want a sub... and if you've gone that far why not e-drums? With everyone sitting or standing still... are you thinking of a light show or something?!?

[Yer Blues]

I would recommend powered speakers. I was a lot like you two years ago when I started reading up on everything. I ended up with a pair of JBL PRX 512s and, IMO, they sound great, are light weight, and easy to set up. If you start out with something like these, or one of the similar offerings from another company, then you will be in good shape and have quality gear. You could buy two powered speakers and daisy chain them together with a mic without a mixer and still get a good sound for practice. If you shop around you can probably get a pair for $1500-1600.

[WynnD]

There are a lot of people here who remember when you could perform with a 100 watt PA. Even though I usually don't use one that small anymore, I have played small clubs with less than 200 watts for vocal only. (And that wasn't being pushed very hard.) I do use that system with nearly a 400 watt configuration for general public address outdoors for up to 500 people. (In a place that doesn't lend itself to more than 1500 people being able to hear and understand speeches with unlimited power options. I turned down a job for 50,000 people there. The people who provided sound didn't cover the 1500 that I would have and everyone else only heard indistinguishable loud noise. They had brought sub-woofers that are useless for speech and every watt to them was wasted. They might have had enough general power, but not in that configuration.)

[jwlussow]

True but my concern for the OP is the band is drums and two keyboards. Synths and kick really need some extended low end. I assume they will have a much wider frequency range then speaking or a typical band. They don't necessarily need to be loud but they do need to replicate their sound to the audience. Synths can go much lower then bass guitar.

[Craig Vecchione]

 

There are a lot of people here who remember when you could perform with a 100 watt PA. Even though I usually don't use one that small anymore, I have played small clubs with less than 200 watts for vocal only. (And that wasn't being pushed very hard.) I do use that system with nearly a 400 watt configuration for general public address outdoors for up to 500 people. (In a place that doesn't lend itself to more than 1500 people being able to hear and understand speeches with unlimited power options. I turned down a job for 50,000 people there. The people who provided sound didn't cover the 1500 that I would have and everyone else only heard indistinguishable loud noise. They had brought sub-woofers that are useless for speech and every watt to them was wasted. They might have had enough general power, but not in that configuration.)

 

 

What's the connection to the OP's question?

[W. M. Hellinger]

What's the connection to the OP's question?

Let me suggest a connection:

 

I'm one of those who remembers performing with a 100 watt "PA". Our's was a flip-top Ampeg combo PA/instrument amp... which accomodated 1/4" Hi Z vocal mics and 1/4" instrument inputs... seperate mix controls for the mics and instrument inputs. Our guitarist and keyboardist ran their instruments through it, as well as our 3 vocal mics. The "PA" sat on in the middle of the front of the stage. That was in 1972 / 1973. I also remember well the audiences we played for back then. I'll suggest that 90%+ of the audience's vehicles were equipped with AM only radios (if their vehicles even had radios). I'll suggest that approx. 1/2 of the audience owned a teevee... and of those who did, back then most (including my parent's) were black & white teevees... and we received 2 stations. Few if any had "entertainment systems"... oh sure, some of the teeny boppers had 45's... some had 4 track... and even some 8 track players in their cars. I suspect I could count on one hand (possibly one finger) my peers at the time that had attended a real concert or even taken in a movie at a real movie theatre. And... back when we were performing with a 100 watt "PA"... we had our pick of venues... plenty of paying work to choose from and very little competition... at good money. At the time, I was making more $ playing music for one night than I could make working a 40 hour regular job. I suspect our 100 watt "PA" cost approx. $5K in today's dollars. Anyhoo... where I'm going with this is that back in the days when a 100 watt PA cut the mustard... being paid for basically being a band of schlock-o musicians was viable as that generally passed for being "professional entertainment". I will suggest that today, if somebody wants to listen to musicians playing music... not only is that free, or nearly free... but the quality of what's available for free or nearly free is generally pretty good. If somebody's gonna pull real money out of their pocket to pay for entertainment, to operate profitably (or even compete) as an entertainer, not only do you need to be reasonably good, but you've gotta deliver a product that is an ENTERTAINMENT product that stands a true chance of competing with all the other entertainment available. I'll suggest that a band of musicians thrashing away on stage with some bare minimum offering really doesn't much cut it anymore... except in very special cases.

[Craig Vecchione]

Yep, and then there's the fact that wynn is talking about general speech, and the OP is asking for something that works for a band.