Orange Amps Forum

Hey guys,

Just looking at doing a PA system that's small enough for practice and small gigs, but still has some options for monitoring and such. What do you guys use? I was looking at Carvin's offerings, in particular, this one:

http://www.carvinguitars.com/products/XP800L-PM15

Give me your thoughts!

We have this thing at my practice space. It's works pretty good. The delays are sort of cool.

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/pro-audi ... D=27257684" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

That looks like it would work pretty good for what you need. The separate power amps are nice so that you can have more control with the monitors. Being 8 channels you may find yourself needing more, but a simple trick I use is I have a behringer 10 channel board that is non powered and I run it into one of the channels on my main board, this gives me an extra 10 channels at a reasonably low price as the behringers are fairly cheap. But for all in all I think it would probably work great.

I bought some Turbosounds, a couple of Crowns, and an Alesis MultiMix mixer (which by the way, will record into your laptop with every track!).

However, I've heard the new powered QSC's and I think I'd get those if I was starting over. 1000 watts each!

Carvin is a good call, you can also check Yamaha and Yorkville. I specially like the Yorkville's monitors.

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/pro-audi ... 000#review" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://www.yorkville.com/products.asp?t ... t=2&id=211" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
or
http://www.yorkville.com/products.asp?type=29&cat=58" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Do you have pieces of an existing PA now? If so you could keep that in mind for scaleability but if I was starting from scratch I would probably go with a couple of good powered speakers that can be set up as either a monitor or main and just a simple board. That way if you need more later you could just add more powered speakers.

As for the Carvin, I actually have and use regularly the XP1200 and highly recommend it. I personally would take it over the 800 simply because its equally portable (what, 19 lbs?) And you get a lot more power. I bet you could get them to make a deal on the 1200 head and the same speakers if you called them.

So, we owned the JBL mpro stuff when it came out then the MRX stuff. One thing I noticed when we'd see other bands in clubs: small strained PAs sound BAD. The direct radiators that sound good were always in bunches, like 4 FOH speakers and 4 2x18 subs etc, even in 100 person clubs. They weren't necessarily LOUD, it was more a matter of, they weren't straining: the amps had headroom left, the speakers were not compressing/distorting. SO any way, we went to a club and heard some EAW fully horn loaded speakers (the subs were horn loaded, the FOH were completely horn loaded) and TAADAA: effortless dynamics. I guess you can get there with a lot of boxes or a couple depending on how you load the drivers.

Anyway, I was sold on the horn thing.

So I bought these from a little ol' speaker maker in Texas. The FOHs are neo 15" horn loaded with a 2" compression driver on a aluminum horn, housed in a baltic birch enclosure (we opted for the internal passive xover too) $1800 for the pair. We still haul those B52 horn loaded subs and we can take one or both depending on the club.

Long story short we can go very loud (pegged my RS SPL meter at 130 db from about 4 feet) without strain, plenty for 200 people, and it's relatively compact (it once all fit into my van with my personal gear prior to me buying a trailer). If I couple the subs, you can feel the kick drum in your gut from 30 yards. If we need to play a bigger show, we'll use the house PA anyway.

My 2 cents.



Ha, Neil, I reread your post. I wasn't much help....disregard. doh. I'm just jazzed about our little blocks of plutonium.

That side of the pond you have access to Yorkville stuff at sensible prices. Well worth a look. Avoid anything with the word 'Pro' if you really want Professional sound quality.

I should add that we have the 8600 version of that Peavey powered mixer.600w per channel. It's plenty powerful for band practice.

i like the carvin stuff though i don't own any carvin pa gear but i'm looking into it as well. let us know when and how you pull the trigger.

Hi Neil

It depends what sort of size venues & crowds you want it to cope with, and how much you're willing to spend. In the UK, a staple of decent gigging bands is something like an Allen & Heath mixwizard mixing desk, and some powered speakers. Some guys will add bass bins if you think you need the extra welly there... if that's the case, be careful that you mix well, as very often it ends up turning into a big farty mess.

If I was after a pretty good small portable PA, i'd grab a little digital mixing desk from Yamaha, some Nexo PS10 speakers, and a little Nexo sub. The Nexos sound really good in terms of the fact that they're portable.

If you have less money, you could downsize and go for things like QSC, Mackie, JBL for speakers, and analogue mixing desks.

If you want the desk for band monitoring too, beware of how many pre-fade auxiliaries it has available as a lot of the cheaper desks only have 2, which limits your monitor mixes to 2! It's worth spending a little extra money on a decent desk, as it makes quite a difference if you know how to use them. I really like the A&H desks for what they are: they're sensibly designed, and the preamps sound really good compared to other similar priced desks... Soundcraft or Mackie etc.

Last but not least, decide if you want to use floor wedges for monitoring. We try to use IEMs now, as it takes the stage noise down a lot, and reduces a lot of mess that wedges make of the front of house mix...

If I was on a budget for a powered mixer I'd probably go for a Mackie since we don't have Carvin stuff over here.
All the Mackie stuff I've owned or used has given faultless performance.

you're right about the comment on wedge monitors. i always hated them even when they were the only choice. when the peavey adverb [i think that's the name] came out. it would shoot the room with white noise and throw up presets customized. we ran it daisy chained to a manual that we fine tuned with.

we did the same thing with the monitors. you can imagine how outrageous our rack was.

i must admit i've never used ear monitors but i would predict i'd much prefer it.

IEMs have their upsides and downsides.

Positives...

- Much reduced stage noise, so you can concentrate on getting a great FOH mix.
- Much smaller than wedges, so easier to transport.
- Can protect your hearing SO much more.
- Don't get into the vicious loop when the person in the band next to you hikes his monitor up, so you have to do the same to hear yourself ok.
- You only get what you want.
- SO much better for vocalists.
- Can often get stereo imaging without having to buy two units.

Negatives...

- If you've not used them, they take a little while to get used to as they don't 'sound' normal.
- You're really reliant on a decent monitor mix so you have to take a little while to make sure it's right.
- If you use wireless rather than wired ones, batteries can fail on you mid-set (not a problem if you check them first).

I went onto IEMs a few years back and just infinitely prefer them now, especially if i'm singing. It's so much easier to get vocal clarity in your ears and control pitch / volume etc. You can always drop one ear out if you want to hear the 'band' sound also, or you can get a couple of room mics up and blend them into the mix.

But basically, I don't like using wedges any more. Way too loud and they make everything sound too congested. If I have to use wedges, i'll often play with my ear plugs in.

Sorry for the late reply, but thanks guys! I'll be looking into my options Dow now, band stuff is goon pretty slowly as is, so we're not in dire need of them right this second.