gettin a P.A.

[slapunk]

Hey everybody, Im looking to buy a new P.A. for my band. Were a 3 piece punk band and It will mainly be for vocals and maybe guitar so well never need more than 4-6 tracks unless we need to mic the drums (which we never do). It needs to be good to play shows for around 20-40 people. My budget is no more than 900 bucks. Ive been looking around myself but I was just wondering if anyone had any suggestions on what would be a good buy. Also from researching Ive found that bheringer make extremely affordable mixers for what Im looking for, in the 6-10 track range. Does anyone whose used them before know if they are any good? :freak:

[Tedster]

Welcome to the forum! Minor point... I think you are referring to "channels" rather than "tracks". Channels will refer to the number of inputs on a mixer. Tracks refer to how a recording medium is divided. Busses refer to the way the output signal of a mixing board is divided or assigned. So, you can have an eight channel board with four busses going to a four track tape. Okay, that said...for 900 bucks...yikes...hmmm. You're not mic'ing drums now, but down the road you may want to. I would check used stuff...but wait...go to [url=http://www.carvin.com]www.carvin.com[/url] and see if anything grabs your attention. As a minimum, you'll need an 8 channel board (two buss, or stereo, is enough for smaller live applications), a power amp, and a pair of two-way speakers. A couple of floor monitors would be nice too. It'd be nice to get a larger board if you can swing it. Mics? Then, there are all sorts of effects you can pick up to sweeten the sound. A suggestion, are you footing the whole bill? If someone else in the band is "chipping in", have them buy a specific piece of equipment rather than "putting a couple hundred toward the entire cost". Bands break up. And yours probably will at some point too, and when it does, it's much better to give the other guy his piece of equipment than trying to divide up a part of a speaker.