Buy once, cry once. Maintain and test afterlong layoffs. Most nights my digital board is on a UPS for protection. QSC k series mains have been extremely reliable for me. Note - I absolutely do not drive the PA past it’s intended limits for anybody... I’ll make it as loud as I have to but will not burn anything by trying to get over the top... If we get a power surge that makes it through the filters and protection we’re pretty likely going to lose stage amps as well so from my perspective the spare PA is not going to save us... Years ago I had a Presonus Studio Live board scrambled to the point of need a firmware refresh generator gig and some volunteer event Support guy plugged a circular saw into our circuit. Took me Bantu. Half an hour to get the spare and swap. Learned my lesson there so on sound gigs, particularly when on generator power or small festival setups or not close by I have a spare board and a spare power rack on the truck.
We will often bring a small 2 XLR input mixer as a backup for clubs. If the large mixer pops, we can at least run vocals through the mains with the smaller mixer, get by with amps for the guitars and bass and tell the drummer he can hit harder . Between two good powered monitors and two good powered mains, if a monitor goes we can get by with one and if a main speaker blows we can swap in one of the monitors. I also have a small unpowered mini mixer that is always in my gig bag just in case of emergency. If we blew everything but one powered speaker and didn't have the backup mixer, I could get four instruments into that speaker through the mini mixer and then put a lead vocal through the XLR input on the speaker. Might not be perfect and but we'd get through the night.
Need a "carrots" option. We have powered mains and monitors. If for some reason the mains went down we could switch the monitors to work as mains. If the board went down we could run a vocal mic direct to a main and scrape by with that. So no, we don't lug a whole spare PA, but I do think about workarounds if something went down.
I was about to respond the same. We go with five powered floor monitors, five separate mixes. Do we need five? Not really. The floor wedges are the same powered speakers you would use as mains, so we essenially have spare mains sitting there on the floor. We go with two powered 18" subs. Could we get by with one? Sure. They're beefy. We don't roll with an extra mixer, but the QSC Touchmix is very reliable. If it happened to blow, time to go direct to the powered mains with the microphones and turn up the stage volume. In short, we take so much crap that if something blew, we could cover it pretty easily.
I just picked up a Touchmix in the last couple weeks and love it. May be the best piece of gear I ever purchased. My PA system is working out so well that my band will be playing our first gig amp less. We have redundancy in powered mains and monitors, so the only thing not covered would be mixer. I usually bring back up analog mixer, but I need to think this through. I could swap it in a pinch, but it’s not going to feed enough monitors.
Agree, the Touchmix is a neat piece of gear. You may want to do a test run "emergency monitor mix" rehearsal where you intentionally reduce your mixes and have two musicians double up, if possible, just to hear what it's like and anticipate it. Interestingly, there are several clubs in my area with house sound that have two or three fewer monitor mixes than my Touchmix , so we face this alternate monitor situation every once in awhile when not running our own sound.
LOL. This should be in the welcome email, actually it may be, I know I didn't read it, never mind, and I do IT work, I *KNOW* nobody, but nobody reads the welcome email... Ah-ha, the important bit... Don't forget, it's different, some guys on here, their bands are providing PA, or there ain't one. Others of us, not so much. It appears to largely vary by location, but also by cover/original, it seems a lot more cover guys are providing their own P.A. That is in no way scientific. Just my impression. For us, we don't worry about that, but, we have two PA's for the rehearsal space... We take spare mic's on the road, and spare XLR cables, and more spares than we probably ever will need. This year, our second PA makes the trips... That's before we consider my personal gear, which includes backup drum key and guitar strings... Apparently I'm rubbing off, the drummer's spares include a clip on tuner...
I can handle everything except the mixer. If the mixer goes, we are screwed. If a speaker goes, we can get by on one, or use a monitor as mains. If my bass rig goes, I can use the PA. I bring a backup bass. But only one mixer.
