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How long does it take you to load in/load out? Tips for making it more efficient?

#21
I can have my rig setup and ready to play in five minutes. Any time over that depends on how far I have to park from the venue. If it's an in town gig I can make one trip by going from hard case to gig bag, my head fits in the front pocket, and I can roll my cab with one hand and carry pedalboard in the other. Out of town takes two trips.
 
#22
We always allow 2 hours for load-in/setup/sound check and we are always done in less.

5 piece rock cover band: vocalist, 2 guitars, bass and drums. Drums are miked, guitars are miked, 5 vocal mikes, 2 sub dumps, 2 high tops, 4 floor wedges, drummer monitor, large rolling rack with all kinds of amps and EQs and a 24 ch mixing board. Dance lights, PARs, fog maching, chimes, maracas, tambourines, banner, and about a billion cables. We do it all ourselves, all 5 of us working about an hour to set up, 10-20 minutes for sound check.

Tear down/load-out is usually around an hour, maybe 1:15 because a few of the guys like to relax and have another drink before getting to work. :hmm:
 
#23
We are a three piece rock band. Drums guitar and bass with three vocal mics.
Most of the venues we play at have some form of noise restrictions so we use a pretty simple vocal PA. 1200watt poweramp, drive rack, mixer, two 12" two way boxes two 12" two way wedges.
We have two light racks with four par 64 and four par 33 lights, a smoke machine, strobe and multi colured light and a martin roboscan light.
Before we complete the set up we set the stage with blacks, at the back of the stage and across the front.

If we're playing at a regular venue and have a routine worked out, load in and set up/sound check usually takes just under an hour. If we haven't played there before it can take a half hour longer.

Our massive 5000watt set up with 18" subs, high/mid boxes, more lights and monitors takes a good 2 hours+ to set up and sound check.
We've settled on as simple a system as possible to avoid setup and pack up times.
Worst job is packing up. We're pretty F##ked by the end of a gig, all we want is cold beer and to hang out.
Being really tidy with cables and leads makes a huge difference to save time. Nothing worst than unravelling a birds nest the next night because everthing was just shoved in a box at the end of the previous engagement.

Cheers
 
#24
It takes us alittle over an hour to load in and load out. Sometimes faster depending on the venue and whether we are setting up the truss for the backlights and the drummers riser. Aside from our personal gear as a band we have on a full stage set-up; PA with 2 subs and mains, 3 floor monitors, 3 mics, Snake, Drum riser, Rear truss with 6 cans, Backdrop to clean up the appearance behind us and 2 additional stands to help support that, 2 light stands out front with 3 LED cans on each and 2 LED lights that mount on the supports for the mains to serve as side fill.

Everyone pitches in, we are a 3 piece with a singer and the drummers wife fills in on some songs with background vocals.As we empty bags and bins she normally runs them out to the trailer for us. The guitar player normally handles the PA, while the singer and I set-up the lights, the backdrop and the banner. When we finish I help finish the PA the monitors and the mics. Then the guitar player and I set up our gear. We use a Presonus board that keeps all the settings for our venues in presets. So sound checks are pretty fast and we get a pretty good check on it before we play by running music froom an Ipod thru the PA before we start. The guitar player is the defacto sound guy and will go out front during the 1st song and make adjustments on the PA. ONe of the more convienient things recently is the board is also WiFi and we have a laptop that allows us to change the PA settings wirelessly from out front now. Been using it the last 3 gigs and it works great, keeps the guitar player from having to run back and forth to set the sound up.

It used to take a little better than 1 1/2 hours to set everything up because we were using a controller for the lights and that was a whole bunch more cables to deal with and we were constantly having problems with it, so we just ditched it altogether.

We have a heavy duty collapsible cart to handle all the heavy gear that makes moving things in and out easy. As fara as packing things up we do have a loading procedure for the trailer and it is loaded the same after every show so it all fits in pretty easily.
 
#25
Sounds like we're right on target... We get to the gig about 2 hours before, A little over an hour to set up 2 15" subs, tops, 12 channel board, 3 monitors, simple lights. My bass rig takes about 10 minutes.

Run thru the vocal mics, A couple of thumps on the kick, check the guitar & bass, run thru one song. Sound check takes about 15 minutes, if that. Then we chill out for about a half hour before playing.

Tear down and load out in about 45 minutes, most of which is wrapping cables.
 
#29
TinIndian said:
Do you mean the hose caddy mentioned on the other page, or is there something else?
Click to expand...

I don't know about a hose caddy, but that seems as logical as any 'spool'. So - sure... read back... The mic cables all get daisy chained initially, then rolled onto the spool. At the gig, you just start unrolling and taking what you need (like a roll of paper towels) - at the end of the night, click, roll, click, roll - done.
 
#30
tZer said:
I don't know about a hose caddy, but that seems as logical as any 'spool'. So - sure... read back... The mic cables all get daisy chained initially, then rolled onto the spool. At the gig, you just start unrolling and taking what you need (like a roll of paper towels) - at the end of the night, click, roll, click, roll - done.
Click to expand...

Thanks! I am going to explore those types of options. Anything to speed dealing with cords up is welcome.
 
#31
5 piece band, guitar, bass, keys, drums and vocals.

PA - 2 mains, 1 sub, 4 floor wedges, rack mixer with 2 power amps and preamp. 1 snake supporting all needs. 3 mics.
Lights - 1 large truss and two vertical light stands for the rear. 12 LED lights in all.

We typically don't let our singer (female) help load into the gig. She's got her hair and makeup just right, so we don't want her to sweat and mess that up. Then we focus on the PA and lights. All speaker cables and mic cables are neatly coiled in their separate bags to minimize confusion. All lights keep the clamps to ease set-up and break down.

That usually takes 30-45 mins to load in and get the PA, monitors and mics setup. Then we focus on our personal gear. Run the DI's. And we're done. This takes another 30-45 minutes. This gives us plenty of time to sound check and have a few minutes to pow-wow or just chill before first set.

Sometimes we load the trailer on the last rehearsal prior to the gig, or if we do not have a rehearsal, our guitar player loads the trailer (we practice at his house, so he understands we all travel for rehearsal and he doesn't, so he takes one for the team)

We play a lot of the same clubs and write down our settings for both the PA and our personal gear to shorten set-up each time we play a venue. Our target arrival time is 2 hours prior to gig.

This always leaves us with plenty of time.

To echo what Phalex said, it usually takes as long as the amount of time we have. We have showed up to a gig 45 minutes prior and had complete set-up and sound check and started on time.
 
#32
My routine:

Furniture dolly shortened to width of cabinets. Stacked on top of it are:

4/10 cabinet
2/10/horn cabinet
amp head in custom wooden rack box

Strap all together with nylon surfboard strap

add aluminum cable/accessory case
112/horn floor monitor

Roll entire stack into venue. 2 small custom bass hangers are in case; they hang on either side of my rig.

Second trip: 2 basses, microphone stand, bottled water and Tums.
 
#33
My Set up is approx 30 minutes

But I'm the bassist and I run sequences and I have my light trees.
-Load everything in
-Set up lights
-Set up laptop
-Fire up my bass rack and plug everything in
-Tune the bass
- set up the mixer and wiring for the sequencing.
-Set up my wireless mic for one of my singers

If after that people need help bringing **** in I help them. We hire sound so they take care of that. I have 2 singers that don't setup. I'd rather do it my self that way I know my gear is safe and set up properly.
 
#34
For where I live/work/play I don't really need to get it down. We can drive, park close, no big deal. I do 2 trips so I don't have to kill myself. Bass, stand, combo amp, extension cab, iPad stand (if using charts), extension cord reel.

Same thing if it's a PA gig or not. I use my little stack as my monitor.

For church, I bring my bass, iPad (for charts) and SansAmp. We have a nice Pa and monitors so it's easy.
 
#35
Band and PA?? For my band, Cosmic Railroad, if we do not have to bring our stage, Load In (Going into the gig) will take 3-1/2 hours with Sound Check and 1-1/2 hours Load Out (leaving the gig) to wrap everything up load the truck and leave. If we just have stage gear, we are looking at about 1 hour to Load in and Sound Check and 45 minutes to Load out and pack the truck. Now if we need to build our stage, add lights, Trussing, stage top and full PA, we are looking at around 7 hours with the sound check and 6 hours to deconstruct and load out.
 
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#36
...drummer with Neal Peart wannabe kit.....crap and cases
clog every conceivable square foot of floorspace. Looks sloppy, real sloppy and creates an obstacle course
for the others.

Why must they lug so much crap around? I'm downsizing, ready to go in 10 minutes LITERALLY.

He's the last one ready on load in...and the last one out.
I've ceased helping him in the hopes doing it alone will force him to pare it down a bit. But....nope.

Terrible.....all this for a simple cover band. I won't even discuss driving up the volume. Terribly unprofessional....

but the gigs keep a' comin.
 
#38
ducatiman said:
...drummer .....crap and cases
clog every conceivable square foot of floorspace. Looks sloppy, real sloppy and creates an obstacle course
for the others.
Click to expand...
Hmmm?
Must be a common issue with those folks, been there and still dealing with that(cases and crap exactly in the way of others setting up).

Could speed up if drummers are told not to help?
 
#39
We have a small mixer with two 12 inch powered speakers, two mics and stands, one guitar amp, one bass amp, one drum kit, two guitars, one bass. Everybody in the band knows how everything needs to be set up, except no one touches the drum kit except for the drummer!

It should take us less than 10 minutes to load in and out, but we chat with people, wander around, do things slowly etc., so the earliest I usually leave is an hour after playing. But we could go fast if we made the effort.

IMO, the first thing you can work on to make load ins/outs faster is to make sure each band member knows how to set everything up and take it apart. That way it doesn't matter who's there or who is dragging the chain; someone can just dive in and start working on it.
 
#40
Phalex said:
It always seems to take just as long as you have. If the trailer shows up 4 hours before stage time, it takes 4 hours. If you have 1 hour to get it done, for some reason it takes an hour.

The one thing that really seemed to make things go more smoothly was letting the singer not help.

There was one gig, that he stood in THE DOORWAY munching greasy chicken wings from the happy hour buffet and trying to converse with the boys that were trying to carry EVERYTHING through the doorway he was blocking. I moved him out of my way like 10 times!!
Click to expand...

Best post ever and by far the most accurate.
 

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