Amplification for small hypothetical jazz gig

[Immo]

Hey all, I'm in the early stages of starting up a "Great American Songbook" project, as Dave likes to call it, with a female vocalist. We're hoping in the short term to maybe do restaurants, lounges, and the likes and are wondering what sort of speakers we should be looking at for such a venue hopefully to cover both vocals and piano. I don't imagine the fire power usually discussed around here is necessary as we haven't packed out a stadium yet and won't be competing with a loud drummer (or for that matter any drummer at the moment).

 

Any suggestions or resources we should check out?

 

Also, it is probably leaving the realm of this forum, but some info on mics would be helpful too. Do any of you recommend another one of the forums around here for mic info?

[Jazz+]

I think the minimum to suit your jazz duo gig would be a pair of powered 10" PA speakers. Anything larger than 10" are a lot harder to carry around. I use 12" powered PA speakers for my jazz duo (digital piano & guitar).

You want to put PA speakers up on poles so they will project. They will sound muffled down near the floor.

 

Your little powered 10" with tweeter PA speakers options are:

JBL EON10 ($499 each)

Mackie SRM 350 ($499 each)

FBT Max 2A ($499 each)

 

You will also need the little Mackie 1202-VLZ mixer ($299) to merge the piano and vocals into the PA speakers. You might not even need reverb.

You can also carry a little portable CD player that can play CDs through your PA during your breaks. Levy's sells a carrying bag for the mixer.

[ITGITC]

Immo,

 

Get a Shure SM58 or 58 BETA for vocals.

 

Consider a Mackie 1202 or 1402 vlz pro mixer. Good-sounding and great bangfordabuck.

 

Add a reverb unit, & perhaps a compressor in a small rack.

 

Use jbl eons or mackie SRM 450 (two) on sticks.

 

Get a couple of smaller eons or SRM 350 for monitors.

 

That's a good start.

 

Tom

[Garrafon]

Diddo what Gas said. 58 Beta! It's a good choice! Eons or SRM450s....you will be plenty happy!

[davinwv]

I'll put in a vote for those FBT MaxX2as (or the bigger MaxX4as), Audix vocal mics (OM5s), and a Mackie mixer. Some on this forum do not care for the FBTs, but I have had a pair of MaxX2as for about a year. They are the best cabs I've ever owned. Not many people in the States are hip to them because they are a little hard to get over here.

 

My $0.02,

Davin

[niacin]

In my experience doing similar gigs you can probably get away without or with minimal (one wedge) foldback. For jazz, forget the compressor but a little reverb might keep the vocalist happier. As for mics, the 58s are standard but again whetever keep the vocalist happy with her sound. Try whatever the store has within your price range through whatever PA speakers you decide to buy.

Good luck.

[guestuserguestuser.com]

You might want to try renting gear for your first few gigs, if that's feasible. Try out a few different systems, see how they work for you.

 

If you're only using one mic, and one keyboard, and your powered pa spkr has 2 or more inputs, you might be able to get away with not owning a mixer, however, in that case, you'd want to go mono. Mic (into a mic-level input) and keyboard (via a line-level input) into one of the powered spkrs, and then use the line out of that spkr to one of the line-level inputs of the other spkr. Make sure to balance the level of each spkr by ear, since master volume knob positions might not match in this scenario (if you were using a mixer, they probably would)

 

If you put your keyboard in stereo, one side to each spkr, then you'd only be able to use one of the spkrs for mic, if you see what i mean. Unless you used a mic splitter of some kind, too much trouble

 

depends on your budget, and how much gear you're willing to haul around. If you can get away with a pair of Eon G2 10's (or similar) for house, then your back will thank you (they're small, and only weigh 28 lbs each). You could use an additional pair (or one) for monitor(s). or you could try using no monitors. However, if your keyboards are going only into pa (ie, no separate kbd amp or monitor), then you might find it weird to have no monitor, your sound would be far away from you. I like to have my kbd monitors close by me, I'm used to that, and for digital piano, it enhances the realism of the experience. and with digital pno, the realism needs all the enhancement it can get.

[burningbusch]

You might look into those mixer/amp units like the Gigrac for power.

http://www.sweetwater.com/images/items/Gigrac600-large.jpg

 

Then you can use lighter non-powered speakers and just run audio, not audio and power. The GigRac 600 has two amps and can be configured as one amp for main and one for monitor or both for mains. NOTE: I've never used one of these. They just look interesting.

 

BTW, I play in a smooth jazz/jazz gig with singer, bass, drums and sometimes sax. For smaller venues I use non-powered JBL SRX monitors (pricey, but nice). I set up one behind me on a stand so that I can hear myself, the vocalist and whatever else might be running through the PA (I don't use a separate amp for keyboards). It gives me a fairly good idea of the overall mix. We have have a second SRX set up as the "main." This allows the band to hear and yet it's still projecting out to the crowd. We don't have feedback issues unless someone puts the mic directly in front of the speaker. There is no law that says you HAVE to have the PA in front of the band, especially for smaller, quieter venues.

 

For larger venues the smaller SRXs become traditional monitors and we have large ones for mains. Very flexible setup.

 

Busch.

[BluesKeys]

Check out Carvin for thier PA's. Lots of reasonable stuff VERY durable. I used an 8 channel for myself and a 4 pc jazz band that had 3 singers. I also used it with a duo and have used it for up to seven piece bands. It's 10 years old and the head has been dropped on concrete from about 6' and it works like a champ. www.carvin.com