How do you control sound after 10 bands have beaten the gear before you?
Home > Home Recording Forum > Live Sound Reinforcement > How do you control sound after 10 bands have beaten the gear before you?
Posted on Aug 27, 2007 10:15 am
crux
Typo Szar
Member Since: Jul 04, 2002
Long title there, but i didnt want to be ambiguous
Anyhow, here in thailand there isnt a whole lot of work in in house PA, and sound reinforcement for small bar gigs. Its usually just PA's for mics, and then the band has to control everything from stage themselves, which sux.... but yeah its like playing in a rehearsal space.
A big problem my band has is that sometimes the gigs here number over 20 bands all in a row, just going one after the other and by the time we get on stage the amps which have been cranked all night and PA's r all shot. Sometimes if the amps are solid states they just start to malfunction, and with some of teh tube amps being pushed to 10 by lesser knowing guitarists, they tend not to go clean by the time my crew gets on stage.
Does anyoen have experience with this? Are their anyways to rectify the situation at that point? My band does alot of stuff going between distorted and VERY clean guitars, and its really bad when turn off our dirt boxes and the guitars r stil dirty. Even worse when everything is just audio mush. We have a gig coming up with over 30 bands!!! and i just know its gonna sound terrible by our slot
[ Back to Top ]
TadpuiI am not a crook's headMember
Since: Mar 14, 2003
Aug 27, 2007 11:10 am Wow, that's a tough situation. 30 bands in a night? That's a heck of a festival!
About all I could suggest is to either bring your own equipment (which doesn't sound like a viable option) or maybe turn off all of the equipment while you set up for your time slot...maybe just a few minutes without current pumping through it will help cool things off a bit.
Maybe even bring a couple of small fans to blow onto the power sections and transformers of the equipment to keep the temp down a bit.
It sounds like this equipment really takes a lifetime's worth of abuse in just one or two nights. I dont know of any equipment that's meant to handle that kind of torture!
Aug 27, 2007 11:14 am maybe just bring your own heads and use their speakers or something...
The fans are a good idea...not bad thinkin for a KC fan, Tad...
TadpuiI am not a crook's headMember
Since: Mar 14, 2003
Aug 27, 2007 11:59 am Har de har har har
:D
zekthedeadcowEat Spam before it eats YOU!!!Member
Since: May 11, 2002
Aug 27, 2007 05:49 pm You I got pulled into doing PA a big local metal festival after the original sound guy walked off... show was from 10am-2am... the power amps were completely shot at the end.
My suggestion (and I've seen this a couple times) is to simply bring your own PA...maybe speakers and mics too...
Your own snake too... and just set up beside the house system that way you can just switch the mains cables out of their power amps and go...
If you let equipment get really hot and cool down there's always the possibility that a solder joint will crack and it won't come back on....
cruxTypo SzarMember
Since: Jul 04, 2002
Aug 28, 2007 05:08 am
Gigging in Thailand is rough, if you imagine a really bad night at your local punk rock DIY dive, and then minus like 10 points from that... im not even exaggerating.
Alot of teh big "sound" companies here dont know alot about sound to begin with and i dont blame them coz there isnt alot of educational material in our language and not everyone is as lucky as me to be able to come on to a site like this and read alot of good tips for free.
In terms of bringing our own stuff well.. we dont own enough equipment to compensate. But ohwell, thanx for the tips guys, i thought that maybe there was something i was missing, but i guses sometimes u CANT make lemonade out of lemons eh?
WaltChief Cook and Bottle WasherMember
Since: May 10, 2002
Aug 31, 2007 08:57 am To be honest, I don't see a lot of difference here; at least in the Detroit area. Granted the R&R band I was doodlin with never played many large venues, but the sound equipment in the 'watering holes' was all beat to hell. Bringing all of your own equipment is really not viable either. Most of these bars don't have the storage room, properly placed egresses etc. for that volume of equipment. Then there's the time to get it all swapped out between acts. You're pretty much stuck. Then of course there's the house sound guy..... Yikes!... Usualy the burnt out something in-law of the bar owner. Most of the boards are covered with druel. Couple all of that with the paradygm that rock is LOUD... period.. and the resulting sound is always the same..... mega-mud!
I always thought it was histerical when people would tell me about how great our band was. I'd ask them "how could you tell?"
cruxTypo SzarMember
Since: Jul 04, 2002
Aug 31, 2007 09:25 am
haha, very true!
really gotta give props to kids who support music just becoz they believe in wat u do and can take the fact that 9 times out of 10 the sound will be shot.
wat is it with sound guy's in these places thinking that their the front of house engineer for the rolling stones to?
Aug 31, 2007 09:27 am I can't say have had that experience...in all the places I have played around the cities, even the worst P.O.S. dive I have played ("Fernando's" on Lake Street comes to mind) had a decent board, with compressors and loud speakers...anywhere else we brought our own...
Maybe I was just lucky...
WaltChief Cook and Bottle WasherMember
Since: May 10, 2002
Aug 31, 2007 09:47 am You're gonna get me to move to the twin cities yet.
Well Crux, from what I saw it was somewhat fitting. In their minds each of the bands that I witnessed thought they were the undiscovered Rolling Stones, or whatever band floated thier collective boat. From what I could tell most of the bands were emulating something from an 1980 something heavy metal band. Cookie Monster to the front, a barage of un-coriagraphed 80-esk stage theatrics etc. From a distance the bands and the sound guy were sharing the same acid trip. Each band would hang out and 'air head bang' until it was their turn on stage. Beyond a few 'regular' drunks and whoever each band drug with them there wasn't any real audiance. Basicly a few folks acting out their fantacies.
It was always fun at some level. Bars made a few bucks selling drinks to the bands, nobody got hurt especially those smart enough to bring ear plugs.
Aug 31, 2007 10:58 am Well, I will say this, the "house sound dude" is often a charmer, THAT I have seen...if you don't smoke dope with him you'll sound like hell...one night, when we played the "other room" of a strip joint the sound guy wound up being a dude we hired on a few other occasions...very pleasant surprise...but not usually.
Aug 31, 2007 11:14 am The best "sound man" experience I had was when one of my bands opened for Tommy Overstreet. We got to use Tommy's sound tech, and he was THE MAN. Before we started, he told me if I needed a particular drum or mic louder or softer in my monitor, to simply point at it, then point up or down. My monitors sounded great to begin with, but by the middle of our first song, they were perfect.
I thought, wow, these guys are spoiled.
WaltChief Cook and Bottle WasherMember
Since: May 10, 2002
Aug 31, 2007 08:18 pm In a very real sense, the sound person, if good, can be the most important musician at a performance. Per my short stint with R&R I began why I bothered using any kind of technique, it all sounded like mud post sound person. I got to work the back-oh-house once with Maynard Fergeson's sound person. WoW! he could get a sound out to the audiance. I worked with a couple of R&R techs the said they also did recording. I always wondered if they put a distortion plug just before the maximizer while mastering to match the sound they got live.
Noize2uCzar of MidiAdministrator
Since: Apr 04, 2002
Sep 02, 2007 11:43 pm I was never lucky enough to play in clubs with their own gear. Except near the end of my local playing days. We/I had a huge investment in a sound system. I personally liked the idea as you were pretty much guaranteed to have good sound. If something was broken you knew it and had it fixed by showtime. And as well gear that might stand a chance of crashing was usually covered with a spare piece on the truck just in case. Although I have to admit that most of the places I have been around here as of late have great gear and seem to keep it up to par for getting good sound.
