Set up time

[Vito Corleone]

 

Don't you need everything else set up before you can turn the PA on? What's the point in firing up the PA if you don't have everything set up and miced?

 

 

I think he means he just wants everyone to assist with the PA and get it up and running before they spend time on personal stuff.

 

Its a good plan. I used to have a bass player who managed to spend the entire setup setting up his small rig and magically never had time to assist with the PA.

[newmaxnew]

For us it depends on if we bring our lighting gear. A few places we play have some limited lights and stages that are too small for our light system. In those cases we can set up in 90 minutes. THe lighting gear can add as much as 30 minutes to our setup time.

 

We are a cover band and always bring our own P.A.

 

Max

 

Max

[Vito Corleone]

A big part of the set up time for us depends on the size of the stage and if we've played the room before. Small stages can be a nightmare because we have a lot of gear and setup becomes more like 5 people trying to simultaneously put a puzzle together.

 

If it's a new room, I like to have some extra time to work on the sound as well.

[RoadRanger]

Don't you need everything else set up before you can turn the PA on? What's the point in firing up the PA if you don't have everything set up and miced?

I usually start with some canned music as soon as enough of the system is set up, When using powered tops I plug the iPod right into the first one set up .

[SpaceNorman]

I usually start with some canned music as soon as enough of the system is set up, When using powered tops I plug the iPod right into the first one set up .

 

I like getting the PA up and running as quickly as possible ... but not in that much of a rush. For me, I want the FOH and amp rack position, signal snake between FOH and amp rack patched and all speaker cabling in place. I also want my keyboard sub-mixer patched into the FOH (only because that's where I choose to connect my iPod). At that point, I power everything up (in appropriate sequence of course) - and then fire up the wireless mic (receiver is wired into the FOH rack). First check is to confirm that I get signal to the board ... and then signal to the amp inputs ... and finally output from every main and monitor cabinet. Then I fire up the iPod and give the system a listen ... tweaking system EQ if appropriate.

 

By this time, somebody will have completed their personal setup and I can start doing line checks for individual instruments and vocal mics. Since my PA typically only goes out with my band board settings don't change alot - meaning that I'm pretty much validating existing settings are OK in the room. Power up and line check typically takes less than 10 minutes if everybody is ready to go. Once that's done - we run a quick soundcheck with the whole band.

 

Since we mix from stage - I recorded one of our "everybody plays and sings" middle of the road tunes with a keyboard intro on my CP300. I set my keyboard rig volume - and press play. It's my parts -as played by me, being played by my keyboard rig coming out the PA ... with the rest of the band playing too. It leaves me a good 4 minutes worth of tune to dial in a workable mix - and wander the room to give it a listen from our front, as well as from the monitor positions.

 

I then do a quick headroom check .. ringing out monitors as necessary. Finally I enable the Automatice Feedback Suppression on my DriveRacks and save all settings to memory. I typically have the whole thing done inside of 20 minutes. If it takes any longer - it's because we're doing a little practicing during soundcheck as well.