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How Long to Set up for a Gig


Iconoclast

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A lot depends on the venue.. and the band. One of the bands I play with(blues/rock/funk cover band) is notorious for IMO the fastest tear down of any band in the city. For venues without a house PA, a full setup(PA, lights, drums, guitar & bass rigs) normally takes them roughly 20 mins. But their tear down is insane! Everything(EVERYTHING that was mentioned as the full setup) is usually torn down, packed up and inside the trailer in roughly 15 min tops. I could still be wrapping cables when 1/2 of their setup is packed away.

 

Setup for my rig usually is done within roughly 20 - 25 min or so, with the KB stand(having to put it together) and cables taking up a lot of the time(I don't have a very streamlined setup, as you can see). Ditto for the tear down.

Kronos 88 Platinum, Yamaha YC88, Subsequent 37, Korg CX3, Hydrasynth 49-key, Nord Electro 5D 73, QSC K8.2, Lester K

 

Me & The Boyz

Chris Beard Band

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For festival gigs with a tight schedule, we stage our equipment off-stage, and setup the entire band in 15 minutes or less. These smaller festival gigs typically don't have any backline, so that's drums and everything (and since we are a Santana Tribute, that's 3 drum rigs -- trap kit, timbales, and congas). They do have PA, and typically a pretty good engineer who helps get everything plugged in quickly.

 

For club gigs it's harder to measure. The timing depends a lot on the club, and most of us like to be set up early so that we can relax and have a meal or whatever before the show. When there's an opener we usually sound check first, and have a long wait before downbeat.

 

For bar gigs it probably takes 45 minutes for the leader and the sound man to set up the PA, and the band takes roughly 30 minutes after they are (more or less) done.

 

--Dave

 

Make my funk the P-funk.

I wants to get funked up.

 

My Funk/Jam originals project: http://www.thefunkery.com/

 

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Most of my playing experience has been in churches as a guitarist. I get there, set my guitar and amp down, tune up with the tuner, set up the guitar stand, plug the guitar into the amp and pedals, and the amp into the sound system - usually about 10 minutes, tops. The amp settings are not a problem.

The whole band? Depends on who's there, but most of them know what to do, so they can do it quickly.

The problem is not the setup, but getting a good soundcheck - easy in theory, but not always in practice, LOL - and getting a few minutes to quickly run through the tunes to make sure we're on the same page.

I always would get there at least an hour before playing time, to be ready for anything... and believe me, just about ANYTHING could happen, LOL!

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