Too much equipment for a venue?

[Ross Brown]

Ok, our gig this Friday night is at a place that we have played many times before. The difference is that they got rid of the sound guy and asked if we can do our own sound. Sure, no problem. I prefer our sound to his anyway.

 

I went this past Saturday to check out the venue without the sound guy and see what the band that was playing there was doing about it. They are a good band with a good rep. I was surprised but they had what I thought was too much sound equipment. I would call this club a mid sized club, certainly not big.

 

How common is it for bands to bring too much equipment/speakers etc?

 

We will play this club with our regular 350W PA with a couple of speakers on stands, a good guitar amp and my bass amp and cabs. Drummer will bring his drums. We will fill the place with sound without much trouble. Why do bands over do it? Is it the look of stacks of speakers? BTW, they sounded like mud. Too bad, they play well.

 

Just checking to make sure I am not missing something.

 

[jeremy c]

People bring too much equipment because they own t he equipment, are used to using it, and think they need it. They also may not own smaller equipment which would be suitable for a smaller venue.

 

It's true of big name bands as well as local bands. One year I went to a jazz festival which was outdoors in a large amphitheater. Of course there was a very large sound system at the place.

 

There were lots of fusion bands and every band set up with stacks of gear on stage.

 

The bass player who got the best sound was Rufus Reid who was playing through a Polytone amp which was, of course, miked into the PA.

 

I heard one band play at Yoshi's Jazz Club (I can't remember who it was, unfortunately), who asked that the sound system be turned off for their show. They sounded fantastic!

 

When I am going to play somewhere where I have never played before, I often have to make a decision about how much stuff to bring.

 

Yesterday I was on the Cal campus. I heard a band playing and wandered over to see what was going on. There was a band playing for a small crowd of about 50 people. The sound system that was being used was enormous. At least it wasn't the band's fault, it certainly wasn't their gear. You could hear the band anywhere on the campus (which is fairly large). Maybe everyone on the campus didn't want to hear a band. I think at least a few people study on Sunday.

 

 

[SteveC]

I think there's all kinds of excess. Gear, stage volume, instruments, toys, etc.

[jcadmus]

With the exception of outdoors gigs, I think bands often bring too much stuff.

 

It just doesn't take that much to fill a medium-sized room.

 

My guess is that what you're planning to use is ample.

[Tom Capasso]

We have a simple sound system for the mains - a powered mixer and two main speakers. Our problem is that we use a somewhat piecemeal monitoring arrangement, which causes lots of setup time with not enough benefit.

 

Other than that, we bring too much because we are a big band, but the amp sizes don't seem that big.

 

I agree that it can be hard to "custom craft" the sound equipment that you have to every size. Even if you have a large system, you don't have to use all of the power....

 

Tom

[picker]

I was the soundman for a Christian coffeehouse of national repute, The New Earth in Kansas City. We had a much more than adequate PA for the size of the room, which was fairly small.

When Rez Band, a national group out of Chicago that is sort of royalty among Christian groups, came to play, they had us take our PA off the stage and out of the way, because they wanted to use their own.

 

Well, they wheeled in stacks and stacks of power amps, enough to kill all the vermin on that block inner city KC with their first note. And, they had enough speakers to match them, and a board that took five guys to carry in. We were expecting to be pinned against the back wall all night by the sound pressure.

But, they were just the right volume for the room, and the sound was crystal clear. You could hear every note sung or played all night. Even the pastor, who was usually unhappy with the volume our much smaller PA put out, was impressed with how appropriate the levels were.

 

Don't ask me how they did it, but I suspect their soundman knew a lot more than I did.

[jeremy c]

I want to hire that soundman. And the roadies.

[SteveC]

A rare example of someone knowing their gear very well and how to make it work for any room. Still sounds like overkill, but apparently great sounding overkill.

 

If you have the manpower to haul it around and the knowledge to use it...

[Rocky McDougall]

I would think that the size/amount of equipment is not the issue, it is how it is applied.

[...]

In my experience the best sounding PA systems have been twice the size they needed to be for the room they were in. Just because you have all that power at your disposal doesn't mean you have to use it. There is something to be said for speakers/power amps hardly working to fill a room vs. speakers/power amps that are getting pushed to their limits to fill the same room.

[Griffinator]

Just because you have all that power at your disposal doesn't mean you have to use it.

 

This, friends, is the crux of the biscuit.

 

Or was it the apostrophe?

[...]

Just because you have all that power at your disposal doesn't mean you have to use it.

 

This, friends, is the crux of the biscuit.

 

Or was it the apostrophe?

 

Well the man who was talking to the dog looked at the dog and said, "you can't say that"