[kavihasya]

Our band has the following members:

1. Electric Guitar and Vocals
2. Flute and Vocals
3. Upright Acoustic Bass
4. 5 - string Electric Bass
5. Trumpet
6. Keyboard
7. Noise
8. Drummer

The sound is sometimes distorted, noisy rock music, and sometimes sweet orchestral. It started as a recording project, but now that we're doing it live there is a big problem trying to make everyone sound good on our crappy existing equipment. We are currently playing in small venues - coffee houses and bars, mostly - but love to be loud, and would like to be able to expand to bigger venues.

And we're on a budget. Having just blown most of our savings on recording equipment, we have to make do with slowly upgrading our setup. We're trying to figure out how to prioritize, which things we need to get first, etc.

Currently we have:
Guitar - plugged into Palomino 32 tube amp
Bass Guitar - plugged into Fender Bassman 200 (will upgrade to 250 when we can snag a deal)
Drummer - not miked
Noise - on a Peavy practice guitar amplifier (not sure which one)
and everything else running into whatever PA the venue has.

The flute and vocals use the same mike, since they seem to just bleed into each other anyway - though we haven't tried a clip-on condenser for the flute so that's a possibility. The upright bass uses a pretty crappy pick-up, and we frequently can't get him loud enough without him feeding back. Our mikes are mostly SM58 wannabees.

Oh, and we have four channels of compression, so that serves flute/vocals, vocals, upright bass, & trumpet.

Thoughts we've had for sounding better?
- improving the bass pickup/mike situation
- getting good EQ board for the PA - at least for trumpet, flute and upright bass
- our own PA setup (powered speakers or powered mixer?)
- better mikes

and on and on... We have a LOT of room for improvement. If it were you, where would you put money first to have the biggest impact on sound?

Thanks for the help!

[grungepuppy88]

Our band has the following members:

1. Electric Guitar and Vocals
2. Flute and Vocals
3. Upright Acoustic Bass
4. 5 - string Electric Bass
5. Trumpet
6. Keyboard
7. Noise
8. Drummer

The sound is sometimes distorted, noisy rock music, and sometimes sweet orchestral. It started as a recording project, but now that we're doing it live there is a big problem trying to make everyone sound good on our crappy existing equipment. We are currently playing in small venues - coffee houses and bars, mostly - but love to be loud, and would like to be able to expand to bigger venues.

And we're on a budget. Having just blown most of our savings on recording equipment, we have to make do with slowly upgrading our setup. We're trying to figure out how to prioritize, which things we need to get first, etc

Currently we have:
Guitar - plugged into Palomino 32 tube amp
Bass Guitar - plugged into Fender Bassman 200 (will upgrade to 250 when we can snag a deal)
Drummer - not miked
Noise - on a Peavy practice guitar amplifier (not sure which one)
and everything else running into whatever PA the venue has.

The flute and vocals use the same mike, since they seem to just bleed into each other anyway - though we haven't tried a clip-on condenser for the flute so that's a possibility. The upright bass uses a pretty crappy pick-up, and we frequently can't get him loud enough without him feeding back. Our mikes are mostly SM58 wannabees.

Oh, and we have four channels of compression, so that serves flute/vocals, vocals, upright bass, & trumpet.

Thoughts we've had for sounding better?
- improving the bass pickup/mike situation
- getting good EQ board for the PA - at least for trumpet, flute and upright bass
- our own PA setup (powered speakers or powered mixer?)
- better mikes

and on and on... We have a LOT of room for improvement. If it were you, where would you put money first to have the biggest impact on sound?

Thanks for the help!

some of the Sm58 'wannabees' really produce a crappy sound....the shure 57s and 58s are good mics and cheap....what mics are you using? What exactly is the problem with your overall sound? If it sounds muddy then the problem is probly in the bass gtr and kick drum fighting with each other. Do you use any eq on the bass....and if so what frequencies do you normally boost or cut? Do you pan the stuff going into the the PA and if so where? Someone with experience running your sound would probably save you a lot of money on new equipment. There are plenty of audio guys out there looking for something to do who might do it for free or some beer and food........shoot I would do it for free just for the practice and something else to add to my resume.