What is your PA set up for practice?

[khabibissell]

I wasn't sure where to post this, but I'm curious what you guys use for a PA when you are practicing. My band uses a QSC RMX1450 (280 watts per channel at 8 ohms) and two JBL JRX115 speakers for practice monitoring, and you can hardly hear the vocals, even with the amp cranked. Do you think we need more power? I was thinking that maybe building a half wall and miking the drummer behind it would help, but IMHO 280 per channel should be enough power. Our practice space is an approximately 800 square foot basement. Any opinions? What do you guys use?

[markD]

Re: What is your PA set up for practice?

i have a similar problem and my PA is pretty powerful. peavey 2000 (1000x2 watt amp @ 2ohms) running 6 speakers, 3 per side (2 ohm load). the speakers are: 2 klipsch KP 250 3 ways, 2 klipsch La Scala's, and 2 soundtech monitors. we use a little behringer UB1204FX mixer. you'd think that would be fantastic, and two blocks away it rocks. but it sucks balls in the rehearsal space!! the singer and i ended up getting a shure in ear monitor system for practice so we could hear ourselves sing. everyone else in the band can hear the vocals fine...just us singing retards can't. go figure!!

[khabibissell]

Re: What is your PA set up for practice?

Thanks for the reply.

I forgot to mention that use a Behringer (2222FX-Pro) mixer as well. Sounds like you guys got quite a rig going there... I was thinking of bridging the amp (1000 + bridged), but the stereo thing is too cool. I never realized how much power you need just for friggen vocals!

[mwm70]

Re: What is your PA set up for practice?

120 watt Kustom head from the 70's, two 3x10 columns with horns and two 2x10 columns with horns and it is fine. Now I am playing in a classic/modern rock cover band with a female singer, 1 guitar, bass and a volume conscience drummer. Used the same system in a speed metal band with two guitars, bass and an animal drummer and we had to mount the columns at ear level to hear them. IMO music style/players dictates pa requirements.

[markD]

Re: What is your PA set up for practice?

yeah we don't even play that loud. we just like our vocals to be on top of everything. we ended up with that system because we used to play outside a lot. we had it tri-amped originally. the kp250's handled the highs/upper mids, the la scala's handled the the low mids and lows and a separate sub and a sub amp took care of the sub bass. we had a separate monitor amp also, but it was too much **** to move and most outdoor gigs now are "festivals" with provided systems. if we ever need to we can just rent subs and a sub amp, and with the in ear monitors we use the old monitors for the drummer anyway.

luckily the system is pretty stationary. the rack also has a feedback exterminator, (2) samson 4 channel compressors, a dbx crossover, an old behringer ulrta-efx pro, an alesis programmable EQ, an old sabine RTA unit, a rack mounted 4 channel direct box, and a digitech DSP-16 of extra effects...it's a bitch to move.

we switched to the small mixer when we stopped mic'ing everything, but we used to use a 24 channel peavey unity mixer that i really liked a lot. if we need to we have an older 16 channel (a true 16 channel - no stereo channels counted as 2 separate channels!!) peavey unity mixer (our old monitor mixer) that we can run everything through.

but really it's all overkill...to bad i can't hear myself singing!! [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

[markD]

Re: What is your PA set up for practice?

suggestions (back to your main need)? are your speakers mounted on stands or elevated? that will help some. start there and then see where you're at.

[khabibissell]

Re: What is your PA set up for practice?

Right now the speakers are on the ground. I'll bet your right about stands helping it out. Our drummer is pretty loud, and I'm always battling with our other guitar player. He's constantly turning up too loud. I could destroy him in a "volume war" (Single Rec + 4x12 v.s. Vamp into a solid state combo. His tone is in a word annoying), but I would rather hear a good mix than just my guitar and the drums.

[markD]

Re: What is your PA set up for practice?

yeah the volume war is a huge problem. i've been the only guitarist in my band for the last 7 years or so, but one of the ways we used to work that problem out before (and when i double track in the studio) is to have one guitaist take the mids strongly, the high take more of a scooped sound (but less on the bass). allow the bassist to carry the fundamental low end, and the drums to fill the rest. if you allow the music to sonically work together, then the PA and the vocals can be where they need with minimal EQing.

try that also. sometimes having a guitar tone that kills by itself gets lost in the mix with other instruments. when that happens the volume war starts because you only have so much frequency space where an instrument is comfortable.

in my band, my guitar sound is very midrange heavy, with little bass (as far as the woofiness goes) and only enough treble and presence to add clarity. the bass player adds the "heaviness". in fact, ALL the weight in our music comes from the bass which is slightly overdriven so it has almost a cello like quality. the drums fill in the rest. it allows our vocals to remain natural and true to the actual timbres of our voices.

[khabibissell]

Re: What is your PA set up for practice?

You're absolutely right about the guitar tone thing. I've also found the tones that sound like crap by themselves sound great in a mix. Our problem is "gadget" use. I run straight into the amp with an EQ and Wah out front... Very "in your face". He's got a ton of delay and reverb going on which makes his guitar sound like a screechy keyboard or something. Volume just exaggerates the problem. I've tried to explain this carefully, but it doesn't sink in.

[markD]

Re: What is your PA set up for practice?

record a practice...even if it's on a 4 track. mic everyone up through your mixer. send the music tracks through a sub group and out to a pair of stereo tracks (but don't send them to the PA out). send your vocal tracks to the main outs and if your mixer has more than 2 sub groups, send them to a 2nd pair of subs out to the the other 2 tracks. make sure you pan the guitar hard left and hard right. add NO eq to anything. make the recording as true as you can. maybe that will get his attention.

if you have recording capabilities and need some assitance/ideas PM me and i'll help you out. sometimes people don't hear what's really happening in the room...more like an ideallized version of what they expect to hear.

[Inearthed]

Re: What is your PA set up for practice?

Well, our rig is this old Shure mixing console that can support/power a bunch of speakers but we only use the 2 speakers that came with it. I'm not sure on the wattage, but it probably isn't that much. We run vocals through it and the band we share our practice space with runs vocals and keyboards through it. Its not amazing but it gets the job done quite well. The speakers are sitting on unused cabinets, one specifically pointing towards the keyboardist and the other pointing between the drummer / bassist. Triggers for the kick are setup through a keyboard amp sitting in front of the kick drum.

We'd love to have a better setup, but budget-wise it isn't doable at this point.

[slo100]

Re: What is your PA set up for practice?

Single 15's and the QSC should be plenty for practice.

Did you deaden the room? We use a set of ancient Yamaha 115H with a Crown DC300 and a Behringer 16 ch board and a lexicon MPX for reverb. The speakers are up off the floor with the horns at ear level and we have moving blankets everywhere to deaden the space.

In a small enclosed space like that, drums and cymbals will tend to dominate the sound in a live (bare, flat walls) room. This, of course, makes guitar players do the "volume knob shuffle" which in turn makes drummers hit harder which in turn makes the bass player want to buy more 4x10's to keep up with the arms race.

This has been our experience so we try and get everyone to play a little softer, deaden the room as much as possible, and get the PA cabs up high.

I think you have plenty of power and the right speakers, just play with the room/speaker configurations.

[khabibissell]

Re: What is your PA set up for practice?

I thought so!

Thanks for all the replies, I appreciate it. Lots of good ideas. I'm gonna build a small divider for the drummer to sit behind and mike his kit. We'll see how that works out.

[OnlineStageGear]

Re: What is your PA set up for practice?

You Should have plenty of power with that amp, but you may need to run it at 4 Ohms per side to get it going. You could also have some weak speaker cables sucking the power out of your rig. Speaker placement is also big big factor. In a practice situation with 2 15" Combo speakers, you will probably want to set them up as side fill monitors and on stands would help too. Vocals are a very directional sound, so if the speakers are on the floor facing away from everyone, you won't hear them well.

Matt

[StukaJU87]

Re: What is your PA set up for practice?

We use the same system for practice as we do when we play out. The only thing we don't run at practice is monitors. Not needed with the bins facing you. We set up the drums and amps like you would on a stage, all facing forward. Then we have the subs and the mains facing in at us from the corners in front of us. It gets a bit loud in there but everything can be heard. One 1200 watt Crown powers the mains, one powers the subs. The third is for the monitors, which we only use at gigs.