Members modulusman Posted July 20, 2012 Members Share Posted July 20, 2012 Are you nervous? I noticed in a thread earlier you mentioned a street dance next week. Is this the one you posted about in March? If so they must have liked your price. Did you hire sound or just go small. I guess you will know if it was the right decision next Sunday. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members tim_7string Posted July 20, 2012 Members Share Posted July 20, 2012 Hiya, Mod. No, unfortunately, I was never able to get ahold of that lady in time. One of our competitors got it instead. It's possible we would not have gotten it anyway, as I believe she was looking for the lowest bidder. She wants us back in the Fall, though, so I'm looking forward to that (finally caught her on the phone a couple weeks back). They love our style of music at that place (rock/hard rock). Maybe we can snag it next year. This one is for a different town. We played there before back in November. I was kind of surprised they called us out of the blue back in April, but I was also thankful. We set a low price and this will be my first street dance where I am the bandleader/coordinator, so yeah, I am a bit nervous, haha! I guess you could say we're "going small," since we didn't hire sound this time. In preparing for this gig, I purchased a 32 channel stereo mixer, a Lexicon reverb processor, another power amp, a table for the mixer, a light stand with small truss (can handle up to four lights), additional Speakon speaker cables and additional phono cables. I've been testing out the system, making sure all the cables work and that they are all neatly tied up and accounted for. I'm also going to rent another set of LED lights like the ones I have as well as an additional subwoofer (also like the one I have). In addition to all of that, my cousin also has some PA gear and lights which we will be integrating into my system. He has two heavy-duty lights stands with four Par 64s (old school, not LEDs), a homemade light controller for the lights, two 2-way main speakers, speaker cables, a powered mixer he will be using for his monitor (I'll be using my powered mixer for mine), some microphones and another power amp (in case something blows unexpectedly). I'll probably bring my little Samson submixer too just in case. And I'm definitely bringing extra cables, DI boxes and other assorted things (like an outlet tester), just to make sure everything goes as smoothly as possible. I know having tarps handy is a given, in case it rains and/or hails all of a sudden. Since it's been super-hot lately, I may just ask my boss if I can use one or two of the huge industrial fans we have at work so we can stay cool. And of course, I will bring a cooler filled with lots and lots of bottled waters. Any other suggestions? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members modulusman Posted July 21, 2012 Author Members Share Posted July 21, 2012 Well you probably know this but if the home made light controller is just on/off switches you might be blowing breakers unless you have the lights on a seperate circuit. Four 500 watt pars on at once will probably blow a 15 amp circuit. One question did you get a good deal on a 32 channel mixer?That seams like over kill for a 3 piece band. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members tim_7string Posted July 21, 2012 Members Share Posted July 21, 2012 Well you probably know this but if the home made light controller is just on/off switches you might be blowing breakers unless you have the lights on a seperate circuit. Four 500 watt pars on at once will probably blow a 15 amp circuit. One question did you get a good deal on a 32 channel mixer?That seams like over kill for a 3 piece band. Yeah, it's a wooden box made up of a bunch of light switches (as in, the kind that turn the lights on at home). I suppose we could just leave the Par 64 lights on throughout the show. He's never blown breakers with them yet, but if it's going to happen, this would probably be the time! If we absolutely have to, we could just run a few long extension cords and plug into a different circuit inside of the bar to keep it off the main distro. Yep, I got a good deal on the mixer. I have an account at the music store where I teach guitar, so I didn't have to put any money up front for it. I did the same for the Lexicon processor. It does seem like overkill, but I would like to be able to use the extra monitor sends for subgrouping, so I can control the amount of reverb/delay through the mix. I was in a casino band in 2005-2006 and our guitarist was also our soundman (I played bass guitar and keyboards). He had a 32 channel mixer, which I also thought was overkill for our three piece plus singer, but he put it to good use. And, if nothing else, it will look more impressive onstage than a couple of dinky powered mixers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members modulusman Posted July 21, 2012 Author Members Share Posted July 21, 2012 Well having all the pars on at one time would be the biggest power draw. A 20 amp circuit is 2400 watts, all 4 lights on would be 2000 watts which pretty much eats up one circuit. I would advise getting there real early to check out the power situation. You mentioned distro in your post.If there is an actual distro available you should be fine just be sure to spread the gear around to different circuits. If you actually need to run ext. cords make sure they are 12 gauge and not cheap ass 16 guage especially if they are longer. If you are just plugging into different circuits find the breaker box and find out which breakers your on in case you trip one. I would try to find 3 seperate circuits if possible. Good luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members wades_keys Posted July 21, 2012 Members Share Posted July 21, 2012 Generally you have to go significantly over the circuit rating to blow the breaker, but what will happen is you will get a nice voltage drop which can cause tubes to run hot and digital equipment to glitch. My markbass amp starts to sound real "saggy" and weak when I'm on a circuit that's overloaded. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Vito Corleone Posted July 21, 2012 Members Share Posted July 21, 2012 Yeah, 4 Par 64s left full on are going to pretty much eat up an entire circuit all on their own. I'd recommend finding some other place to run those from and leave the rest of the band on a separate circuit. Especially if you aren't 100% certain of the power situation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members modulusman Posted July 30, 2012 Author Members Share Posted July 30, 2012 Well how did it go? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members tim_7string Posted July 30, 2012 Members Share Posted July 30, 2012 Thanks for asking! I was just about to post that. It was a resounding success! The board worked well, my power amp and case arrived in time and worked just fine. I had lots of backups and redundancies in place, including my sub-mixer and powered mixer just in case the board malfunctioned, plus lots of extra speaker cables, line-level and XLR cables. We set the LED lights for sound activation. I thought it would look cheesy at first, but after looking at the video, it actually looked pretty cool! The only problem we had was my subwoofer apparently blew something, but I had an idea of that going in (didn't happen at the gig), so that was a bummer. The other sub we rented worked just fine., so we still had some low end. We used my cousin's 2-ways daisy-chained to my 2-ways and it sounded really good. Nice and clear. The drums sounded like a studio recording! All we used was a bit of EQ, a compressor and my Lexicon unit. BIG difference from the powered mixer. We looked professional, we sounded professional and people responded in kind. We got a lot of dancers after the first set (it was still pretty light out until the second set) and quite a few people came up to request songs, a few of which we pulled off. I never played "We Will Rock You" before in my life, but we faked it pretty well. I figured the Rock Of Ages movie must have been the inspiration for that. We also got some requests for hair-metal by bands like Bon Jovi, Ratt and the like, so we'll have to learn some more of that. Thankfully, it was more of a rock crowd. I expected our country numbers to go over well, but other than Fast As You, not so much. So, it was good we had a lot of rock to bring out and keep them happy. Ultimately, the bar owners were also happy and really enjoyed us and we'll be playing there again pretty soon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members tim_7string Posted July 30, 2012 Members Share Posted July 30, 2012 Oh, I forgot to mention they had a 50A distro box for us, so we were well within the limits. No sudden breaker tripping at all. And...the weather cooperated. No rain. Just a hot, humid day that became a less hot evening with a cool breeze. Perfect. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members StratGuy22 Posted July 30, 2012 Members Share Posted July 30, 2012 Good to hear it all went well!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members modulusman Posted July 30, 2012 Author Members Share Posted July 30, 2012 Glad it went well. Yeah it is always a good idea to have spare gear for all the essential parts of the PA with you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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