Critique my stage setup

[Jim Campbell]

I would put the drummer in the rear center behind the singer and move one guitar player to the far left so teh bass is between him and the drummer. It will be easier for both guitarists to hear you and make it easier for you and the drummer to lock in with each other.

Drummer in rear center. Then left to right: Guitar, Bass, Singer, Guitar. This will also balance out your stage volume for your audience.

i think this makes sense.....i don't see raising the guitar amps as a problem....everyone here does it unless they have half stacvks.....i think the better they can hear themselves the less likely to start a volume war.....drums center,bass beside, singer front center,geetars on the ends

your pa is going to kill you.....and with no monitors,whoa,dude.....

 

[Munjibunga]

It's mostly been said, so I'm just re-iterating.

1) Put your guitar players on opposite sides of the stage from each other. Each one needs to hear his own guitar amp much better than he hears the other guy's amp.

2) Put your FOH (Front Of House) PA speaker in front of the band. You will NOT be able to run it loud enough for the audience to hear the vocals if it's behind the vocalist' mic. You'll just get ear-bleeding feedback.

3) Use your other speaker as a monitor, on the floor angled up, for the vocals, mainly for the lead singer to hear, but shared with the other other vocalists. If you have 2 speakers and a stereo power amp, you can use one channel for FOH (mono) and the other channel for the monitor (mono) and at least have them at different levels, so the FOH level can be loud, while the monitor level quieter.

If you're going to put the guitarists on opposite sides of the stage, you may need to put their instruments in the monitor mix if they take cues off each other. When we play on certain stages we put the lead guitar and the keyboards in the monitors for that purpose.

 

[trowaclown]

I'm back!

Went with the following setup in the end:

As you can see, it's vocalist dead center, drums and bass slightly behind to her left and right respectively. The guitars are pushed to the extreme ends for stereo effect.

It was one PA speaker firing dead center outwards, with a second lying down firing upwards back at the vocalist as a monitor. All four mics were fed through the PA, and nothing else was in the speakers, given the very lacking equipment available.

For 'monitoring', we had to hear each other, and surprisingly it worked most of the time. We had two short sets this evening, and worked to set up well before the first set and to correct the mix after the first set, from the audience's feedback. Surprisingly, everyone heard everyone else most of the time, except times when the guitars got too busy and the guitarists couldn't hear each other. I got them to anchor to the drums before the gig, so it worked out well.

The equipment was adequate for the venue and crowd, I think. There were no issues of audibility, contrary to what some of you were worried about.

The problem was a boomy wooden stage that I forgot to factor in. I turned my bass down on the Genz Benz Shuttle 3.0 and went for a grindy high mids heavy tone to compensate and cut through instead. Conveniently there were cheerleading mats (those foamy squares with interlocking edges that cheerleaders practise on) backstage, so we 'stole' one to isolate the drum and minimize boomy-ness.

One more problem was the hall itself. Glass walls/windows on three sides and a concrete wall on the last. The sound was variously described as too bassy and too screechy by various people, depending on where they stood. I could only shrug, and hope for better locations in the future.

Anyway, thanks for all your advices, fellas. Much appreciated. I'm sure I'll need your help again in the future. But for now, at least it's one gig done.