Typical PA System
Here is a good multi purpose sound system, assembled piece by piece over the last eleven years. It serves as PA for the band gigs and rehearsals at Tom’s exquisite garage/music room. It also makes a good quality recording system when coupled with his Fostex eight track (upper mid-left) or Teac four track reel to reel recorder (middle).
This picture is in Tom’s garage but the arrangment is pretty much the same on stage because he runs the P.A. and plays bass at the same time. The tape recorders don’t always show up for the gig, and the McIntosh power amp (for the monitors) usually does not have a stack of papers on top of it.
Starting from the top of the main rack, there’s the Denon dual well cassette deck, then the Rane aural analyzer and graphic equalizers.
The patch bay is next, then the heart of the rig, a Mackie sixteen channel stereo mixer.
On the left is one of Tom’s bass rigs, a smooth ‘n heavy (like a boulder) early 70’s Fender Jazz Bass leaning against the equally smooth 15″ cabinet powered by a QSC amp and Yamaha pre-amp.
The Alesis MicroVerb is a high quality unit and makes a dramatic difference in stage sound dynamics and live or studio recordings. The dual dbx mini compressor/limiters are worth their weight in gold. The six channel Rane preamp controls input to the six channel (x300 watts) Rane power amp. Not shown are the QSC, McIntosh and Yamaha power amps used to power the mains and elaborate stage monitor system. On stage we use a couple of cool Shure SM55-S microphones and some SM58’s and SM57’s.
For band gigs, the system is usually run mono; left channel as mains and right channel for monitors. This simplifies EQ setup for different rooms and allows the use of three way crossovers for the well built, home made speaker system boasting (for stage left and right) a 1×15″ cabinet with JBL speaker and a 1×12″ JBL spkr. / Altec horn cabinet. When run stereo, each singer’s microphone is panned toward their location on stage but never hard left or right. Each vocal is still pumping through both sides, just less volume from one side than the other.
Sixteen channels have proven to be enough for almost every situation we’ve gigged in, and are probably the minimum required for any serious recording project where overdubbing is anticipated. You can do well with less, but it isn’t as easy.
O.K. this woofer / sub-woofer cabinet should be on the bottom and the mid / horn cabinet should be on top (it’s hiding behind the Showman amp). We just unloaded them after a gig, so they are not arranged correctly. There are two more matching cabinets on the other side of the garage. They are home-made and sound really good. Plywood with non fiberglass insulation, they usually provide only vocals and a bit of drums. In larger clubs some of the instruments are miked also. Usually these cabs are run with 2-way crossovers, unless some heavy lows are needed for keyboards or miking the bass and bass drum. When run with a 3-way crossover, this cab with the 15″ JBL becomes the sub-woofer, and the other cab with 12″ JBL and Altec horn pump the upper lows, mids and highs. The system is powered within a range of from 800 watts total to 2400 watts total (4 cabinets).
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