Members JuneBugHunter Posted April 3, 2006 Members Share Posted April 3, 2006 After a year of doing sound nearly every weekend at a local pizza place for good, bad, small, big, popular and unheard of bands on a mediocre PA I think I am finally getting the hang of this. I don't think I've learned anything I didn't know before except that I've learned to use all the things I already knew. In other words, I knew all the stuff in theory but it took me about a year to really get the hang of it and when there is a problem or a sound I am looking for there isn't as much guesswork. Anyway the place I do sound is tiny but we cram 100-250 people in there nearly every weekend. With some bands it's simply impossible for the PA to compete with the volume of there amps in the small room. Anyway on April 1st I got to setting up. I was feeling motivated so I decided it would be a good night to really take the time to mic everything for all three bands playing so I set up about 8 mics and 2 di's, set them on the side of the stage and placed them accordingly. For the first band I had, Rhodes, Kick, Snare, 2 Vocals and a guitar. I wanted to run a line to the bass but the bassist refused. This was the third time I had done sound for this band. They sounded the best I had heard them. The guitar amp was way too loud but aside from that they were great Second band was 4 vocals, 3 guitars, 1 acoustic and a bass. I wanted to mic everything but they said they only needed the acoustic to go direct and said "They like to play quiet" and for what they were I agree although there tiny 15 watt amps were struggling to keep up. They were sort of a folk-country band with pretty impressive harmonies. It was fun to really focus on vocals and get some damn good eq going. For each song the main singer would be different so I would add a little extra reverb to the backup vocalists so the main guy would cut through but the harmonies were present but blended. They sounded good The closing band was 2 guitars, 1 bass, 1 cello, 3 vocals, flute, some percussion and a drum set. The guitarists, again, refused to mic their amps, at least this time they had some bigger amps. I mic'd Kick, snare, 3 vocals (one of which was used for flute too), mic for percussion and I couldn't resist running a line from the cello amp. I can't say I made this band sound great, they would have been awesome without me but I really got everything balanced and it was the best mix I had ever done. You could hear all the harmonies, vocals, percussion, the kick was thumping but not intruding the snare sounded great and the cello was awesome and blended in well with the mix. The coolest part was at least a few members from each band complimented me afterwards. The last band came up to me and told me this was the smallest place they had played on their tour and it was the best stage mix they had ever had. Now that I made this post next week will probably go horrible but it was really quite pleasent having one night with no troubles whatsoever, everything from setup to tear down went extremely smooth. That says a lot for a place with a hokie PA, setup in the back of a pizza parlor with no sound check or anything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMS Author Craig Vecchione Posted April 3, 2006 CMS Author Share Posted April 3, 2006 Sounds great. That's all you can ask for....a few gigs here and there where all the planets seem to be in alignment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members milesdf Posted April 3, 2006 Members Share Posted April 3, 2006 Im honestly suprised that unmiced bass or guitars gave adaquate results. whenever asshole musicians do this to me, it usally sounds so bad off the start i just give up. teach them a lesson. usally this only happens in a hokey little on campus place where when something doesn't sound good, its the band's fault. i would try harder if it mattered. one of these groups was hitting 125 db at foh the other night. our system (in this case 4 18s and 2 jbl sr 423s i think) matched it with vocals, but of course everything else was out of balance. its too bad they seemed like they had skill. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members JuneBugHunter Posted April 3, 2006 Author Members Share Posted April 3, 2006 Our system is basically (2) JBL SRX715's+CE-1000, (2) yamaha club series 15" monitors, (1) LS800P, a Behringer Graphic EQ, Spirit 16 channel mixer. Like I said, pretty hokie but it got the job done do you think the CE-1000 is underpowering those JBL's I think they can handle 800watt RMS and they are only getting something like 275 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members milesdf Posted April 3, 2006 Members Share Posted April 3, 2006 you could probablly get more volume, but if your doing fine and not clipping at all, I wouldnt change anything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Weathered Posted April 3, 2006 Members Share Posted April 3, 2006 Man, it must have been the week for good gigs. For the past 3 weeks, the room I do 2-3 nights a week has been bugging me acoustics-wise, had a couple of gigs I wasn't happy with AT ALL (although the band was O.K.), but for some reason, Saturday was just heaven. Not overly loud, clean, the midrange funkiness that I had been hearing the past few weeks was gone. Possibly this was due to a capacity (525 people) crowd, as opposed to the more sparse (300-400 people) previous shows. Good gigs feel really good, don't they? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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