I volunteer as the "sound guy" for a small series of house concerts/basement shows. Neither the host nor I make any money on the shows - 100% of the money goes to the artist(s); it's a labor of love.
I recently upgraded the old PA with a bunch of "new" gear that I purchased (combination of brand new + some Craigslist scores). I have a small fantasy of starting a small audio production company on the side (or at least that's how I justified my purchases).
Venue:
- Basement of a ranch-style house
- Approximately 1000-square feet with 8-foot open ceiling
- Seats around 55-people
- I've done 93 shows there in 2 years (with old PA)
- Some major acts (Baseball Project, Minus 5, Robbie Fulks, Waco Brothers, Jon Dee Graham, Kevin Kinney, etc)
- Primarily Americana/folk/alt rock
- Try to keep total volume to 95db or less (some acts have ridiculously loud stage volume (e.g., The Figgs, The Bottle Rockets, Dressy Bessy)...
Old PA:
- Soundcraft EFX12 (donated by someone; really old, with various issues on channels)
- Crown XLS 1000 for monitor
- Crown XLS 1500 for mains
- dbx 231 EQ (mono mains, mono monitor)
- Mains: 2-way JBL JRX100 (15" + horn); on poles, horns at 7' high
- Monitor: old Yamaha BR15M
I had my work cut out for me with the old system, but finally got it EQ'd well enough that it sounded really solid. That said, I bought the following gear and ran my first show with it last night:
- Behringer AIR X18R (new)
- EAW FR153z for mains; on poles, mid/tweet at 6' high (used)
- 2 Yamaha SM12V monitors (new)
- 1 QSC PLX3602 for mains; running in stereo (used)
- 1 Crown XLS1502 for monitors; running in stereo (2 feeds) (new)
- 8 Mics: primarily Beta 58As and SM57s (all new)
** I've never run "rock" shows with a non-horn PA... The venue is so small that I don't need subs (for now), and I do try to keep levels well below 100dB. Last night's show was 80dB. That said, I will purchase subs if my fantasy comes to light and I FOH at small bars, etc.
** I spent 3 weeks configuring/testing/burning-in the system at home prior to the first show. Primarily playing music through mains/monitors and setting-up a mock stage with mics and DIs so as to understand the mixer's software.
My questions:
1) How concerned to I need to be about the resiliency of the mid/high drivers in the FR153z? Those old JBLs could take a beating, and I didn't care about them, but I want to be careful with the EAWs. I have the PLX3602 configured to "FULL" and "33Hz cut" with the Clip Limiter Switch set to "on." Gain is set to just under 50%.
At this venue, I'll be totally safe in 99% of the scenarios; just thinking about using them outside of this small place, and with bands that will be more dynamic/heavy/loud.
I've been to a ton of shows that use KW153s; they get stupid loud... Wondering how the FR153z compares in terms of taking abuse.
2) When setting-up and EQ'ing the SM12Vs on the old XLS1500, the XLS1500 went into "thermal" mode, and one of the SM12Vs was shutting itself off. I didn't have major feedback, but there was a bit of a ring (well under 1-second) in the 1.6kHz range.
After the feedback ring, the entire monitor sounded static-like (both horn and woofer) and channel 1 of the amp (channel this speaker was on) would thermal light/cut off when I passed music through it at anything above -30dB on the Aux In fader.
When the feedback occurred, the Crown was configured in stereo, no filters, with gains at about 60%. The Behringer was sending a single mic feed at -3dB with the Bus feed at -3dB as well. EQ was largely flat; dip in the 300Hz and 1.5kHz ranges.
I disconnected that speaker, set it aside, and only ran one SM12V for last night's show, on channel 2 of the Crown. At the end of the night, I re-connected the wonky SM12V to channel 1, and all was fine. Are the SM12Vs that sensitive? The feedback was incredibly minimal and very brief. Not sure why the speaker/amp got so upset.
Notes:
- The sound quality of those FR153zs with the PLX3602 is unreal. Never had such clarity before.
- The Behringer seems like a solid mixer. I can't wait to really sort it out and get the most from it.
