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Questions about Church Setup

PrietoBass

PrietoBass

How does he do that?
Apr 16, 2009
774
24
#1
Hi! I have been offered the bass chair at my local church, and tomorrow is my first service with the worship team. No one knew how to set up the PA connectiions to the board, so my son, who is the lead guitarrist at another church stepped up and set that up.

Now the keyboard and bass go through the PA (before the keyboardist just blasted his amp; now his amp will be his monitor). I will also be going through the house and using a Fender Bassman 250/115 as my monitor. I'm using a Livewire passive DI, not the Bassman's DI.

The PA speakers are JBL JRX100: 2 15's up by the walls and two 12 wedges, one pointed across the stage so that the singers can hear themselves. We don't have a dedicated subwoofer.

The sanctuary sits about 100-150 people.

I will be playing an Affinity Jazz V with an Audere preamp. Strings are Sunbeams.

My signal chain is: bass, Korg Pitchblack, MB Compressore, Boss GEB-7 eq, Boss NS-2. In the effects loop of the NS-2 I have a BDDI (on) and an MXR-82 env filter (sometimes on). Out of the NS-2 I have a Livewire ABY to split the signal to a mixer and the DI. Parallel output of the DI goes to the Bassman; XLR goes to the board (ground switch lifted).

Frequency response of the 15's is 30 Hz to 12.5 KHz, and 70 Hz to 12 KHz for the 12's.

Question is: will this PA handle the bass frequencies well or can it damage the speakers? I'm asking because if my memory does not fail me I have heard stories about not running the bass through the wedges.

We did a quick test Friday night and everything seemed to work fine, but I want to be 100% sure.

Thank you for your comments!
 
#2
You won't damage the mains or the monitors. The mains aren't likely to reproduce the bass or kick drum as well as they would if they were coupled with subs, obviously.

Combining that amp with a couple of stage monitors should allow you to dial in a nice, even monitor mix so that everyone in the band can hear you well enough.

Using the stand-alone DI is a smart move IMO.
 
#3
PrietoBass said:
Hi! I have been offered the bass chair at my local church, and tomorrow is my first service with the worship team. No one knew how to set up the PA connectiions to the board, so my son, who is the lead guitarrist at another church stepped up and set that up.

Now the keyboard and bass go through the PA (before the keyboardist just blasted his amp; now his amp will be his monitor). I will also be going through the house and using a Fender Bassman 250/115 as my monitor. I'm using a Livewire passive DI, not the Bassman's DI.

The PA speakers are JBL JRX100: 2 15's up by the walls and two 12 wedges, one pointed across the stage so that the singers can hear themselves. We don't have a dedicated subwoofer.

The sanctuary sits about 100-150 people.

I will be playing an Affinity Jazz V with an Audere preamp. Strings are Sunbeams.

My signal chain is: bass, Korg Pitchblack, MB Compressore, Boss GEB-7 eq, Boss NS-2. In the effects loop of the NS-2 I have a BDDI (on) and an MXR-82 env filter (sometimes on). Out of the NS-2 I have a Livewire ABY to split the signal to a mixer and the DI. Parallel output of the DI goes to the Bassman; XLR goes to the board (ground switch lifted).

Frequency response of the 15's is 30 Hz to 12.5 KHz, and 70 Hz to 12 KHz for the 12's.

Question is: will this PA handle the bass frequencies well or can it damage the speakers? I'm asking because if my memory does not fail me I have heard stories about not running the bass through the wedges.

We did a quick test Friday night and everything seemed to work fine, but I want to be 100% sure.

Thank you for your comments!
Click to expand...

Everyone should take a look at this. This is how you should ask a question on TB. The OP was very descriptive in every possible way.

I agree with the above. You wont get that super low, kick you in the chest bass without a sub and don't try to force the mains to produce those lows, it'll get ugly fast. As long as you're aware of that and mix accordingly, you won't hurt anything, though.
 
#4
Thank you Rip for your kind comments.

Here is an update of how things went.
* the keyboard player, who is sort of like the team lead or "MOM", didn't show up... neither did the lead singer (they're brothers). So, we had to pick up new songs that were suitable to the backup singers and learn them just before the service.

* It was just one guitar (my son), bass (yours truly), and drums. My son EQ'd the board for that...

* ...however, when we started playing, I couldn't hear the bass through the mains... All of a sudden, BOOM! The house was FULL of bass, very in front of the mix. I talked to the person who is doing sound (whom my son is kinda showing the ropes) and he told me that he "boosted" my channel "a little bit"...

* my LiveWire DI didn't work. It works at home when I connect it to my laptop's interface. But at church there appeared to be no signal going to the board; I had to use the Bassman's DI after all.

* On a couple of songs, I thought it sounded horrible... then I looked down and saw that someone had stomped/stepped on my MXR-82 envelope filter which right now I have it set close to the "gorilla biscuit" setting... :)

* On about 2 or 3 songs, I thought it sounded "good" or acceptable. The congregation responded to the worship.

* my wife said we sounded good, but she always tells me that.

* The Spirit showed up during worship.

* the keyboard player and his brother showed up... The Pastor's wife (who is a Pastor herself) talked to both of them behind closed doors while the Senior Pastor was at the altar. After the service the singer left very quickly.

* after the service, the keyboard player sat at the keyboard, cranked his amp... we all played for a bit... but all EQ settings and sound meter readings went out the door...

* tonight we have rehearsal...

I'm sure it's all a matter of communication.

More to come...
 
#5
If the drums are not miced, your amp will most likely be enough lows for the congregation. You still need to be in the PA for clarity and articulation. In my situation, everything in the main board is high passed at 80 Hz (rumble filter switches on) to keep the boom down. We get enough low end from our "acoustic" sound - drums and amps. Subs in our space would only make everything a garbled mess.
 
#6
Joe Smithberger said:
If the drums are not miced, your amp will most likely be enough lows for the congregation. You still need to be in the PA for clarity and articulation. In my situation, everything in the main board is high passed at 80 Hz (rumble filter switches on) to keep the boom down. We get enough low end from our "acoustic" sound - drums and amps. Subs in our space would only make everything a garbled mess.
Click to expand...

Thx Joe!

No, our drums are not miced. Actually, I wished we had electronic drums to reduce stage volume. But that is down the line since we don't have the resources (money) at the moment. But one of our goals is to try to keep the volume at no more than 95 dB. The Pastors are onboard with this since some congregation members (myself included) have hearing problems. It'll take some effort since right now it is not uncommon for the sound level to approach 110 dB...

I'll pass on your comments to my son and have him set me up for tonight.
 
#7
Wow. That sounds a little rough. Hopefully, things will be a little better next time. I've been playing in churches for about 30 years, off and on, and steadily for the last 15 years or so. Unfortunately, you have a lot of the same problems in churches as elsewhere - egos, reliability, and unskilled sound people. Churches are notoriously difficult places to get a good mix.

Getting a good sound to the FOH can also be difficult, especially since stage volumes usually need to be pretty low to avoid overpowering the PA. We've pretty much gone to in-ear monitoring to help with that.
 
#8
Hi prietobass, hope yr prac went well.
I've played bass in churches for quite a few years, if some of the following helps you great.
I try keep it simple if the sound guys have limited experience, I notice you have quite a lot of effects before the DI, this could make it difficult for them if there are big changes, I usally go bass DI or maby bass compressor then DI if you wanting to protect a small PA, I set the bass pu's quite high usally neck pu full and bridge about half, once they have done my levels I dont change them, you are now free to work with your amp for playback and stage sound, going by the no of people ( 150 ) the sanctuary seems small enough that quite a bit of your amp would come through, if you want to use effects you can try pushing them with your amp leaving a clean house sound.
Be very sparing with pitch altering effects like flange, phaser and maby your env filter, they can make the group sound out of tune.
Try not set up behind a lot of open mics like the backing vox, esspecially when you have someone that sings like a wisper, holds the mic a foot away and needs it to be set one notch before total feed back.
About your question of damaging the PA with bass, not if they carefull with your sound, the problems come when people drive a bass hard through a system thats to small, one of the first things to go are the voice coils on the high frequency horns, and maby damage by over extrusion on the woofers, sounds odd but a cliped bass wave can generate a lot of high freq spikes that a passive crossover will pass to the horn.

Hope this helps, enjoy yr team. :bassist:
 
#9
carldogs said:
Hi prietobass, hope yr prac went well.
I've played bass in churches for quite a few years, if some of the following helps you great.
I try keep it simple if the sound guys have limited experience, I notice you have quite a lot of effects before the DI, this could make it difficult for them if there are big changes, I usally go bass DI or maby bass compressor then DI if you wanting to protect a small PA, I set the bass pu's quite high usally neck pu full and bridge about half, once they have done my levels I dont change them, you are now free to work with your amp for playback and stage sound, going by the no of people ( 150 ) the sanctuary seems small enough that quite a bit of your amp would come through, if you want to use effects you can try pushing them with your amp leaving a clean house sound.
Be very sparing with pitch altering effects like flange, phaser and maby your env filter, they can make the group sound out of tune.
Try not set up behind a lot of open mics like the backing vox, esspecially when you have someone that sings like a wisper, holds the mic a foot away and needs it to be set one notch before total feed back.
About your question of damaging the PA with bass, not if they carefull with your sound, the problems come when people drive a bass hard through a system thats to small, one of the first things to go are the voice coils on the high frequency horns, and maby damage by over extrusion on the woofers, sounds odd but a cliped bass wave can generate a lot of high freq spikes that a passive crossover will pass to the horn.

Hope this helps, enjoy yr team. :bassist:
Click to expand...

Thanks Carl! Your comments definitely help! I'll place my DI right after the compressor and allow the bass to be EQ'd at the board. I haven't figured out why the DI isn't working (maybe I need an active DI?) but I'll figure it out. What you are saying makes perfect sense.

Yesterday we tried the recommendation to hi-pass the bass at 80Hz; the board channel has a hi-pass filter at 75Hz so that's close enough. But then, I had to increase the master volume on the Bassman amp, and that was bleeding into my son's Shure SM-57 (he mic's his Bugera amp).

On a positive note, the keyboard player was great last night and kept himself within sound limits; his amp is pretty much for himself and the drummer and it is not bleeding into the house (that much). We are at 90dB with slight peaks at 95dB.

It seems like we don't have enough time to set everything right and then rehearse, so we are doing it little by little, and emphasizing that we don't want anyone changing things without asking first. The Pastor posted a "don't touch" sign on the PA's Crown (I believe that's the brand) amp, because someone had turned down one of the channels down completely, and it took us a while to figure out why sound wasn't coming out through one side of the house.

We need to continue to switch things around; we have very limited space. Right now things look like:

Bass (back) + Guitar (front) | ALTAR | Drums (back) + Keys (front)
-- --
Wedge (2 singers) Wedge


| |<-- seats ---------------->| |<-------------- seats -->| |

...

[Board] (main entrance)
---

Little by little, I believe we are going to get this right!
 
#10
I'm not a PA expert at all but have many years experience of playing in church. One thing I'd suggest is, if at all possible, getting there 30 minutes earlier (or more) and spending that time just getting the sound right.

Our typical approach when rehearsing, either on a Thursday night or before the service on a Sunday, is for the PA guy to do a check on each channel (i.e. each individual signal, so checking things like each drum mics separately) to check that everything's working and coming through at an acceptable level. Then we check the instruments through the monitors and adjust so that no-one has too much or little of what they need to hear. Then we'll run through a song with just monitors and make adjustments afterwards. Once that's sorted we'll go through the house speakers and the PA guy can start to get a good mix. We'll run through the whole set at this point so that we're rehearsing and the PA guy is honing the sound and understanding who needs to be really heard at which point of which song.

Sorry that's not very technical but I think, from what you've said, that you maybe need some more time to sort the sound out.
 
#12
SoVeryTired said:
I'm not a PA expert at all but have many years experience of playing in church. One thing I'd suggest is, if at all possible, getting there 30 minutes earlier (or more) and spending that time just getting the sound right.

Our typical approach when rehearsing, either on a Thursday night or before the service on a Sunday, is for the PA guy to do a check on each channel (i.e. each individual signal, so checking things like each drum mics separately) to check that everything's working and coming through at an acceptable level. Then we check the instruments through the monitors and adjust so that no-one has too much or little of what they need to hear. Then we'll run through a song with just monitors and make adjustments afterwards. Once that's sorted we'll go through the house speakers and the PA guy can start to get a good mix. We'll run through the whole set at this point so that we're rehearsing and the PA guy is honing the sound and understanding who needs to be really heard at which point of which song.

Sorry that's not very technical but I think, from what you've said, that you maybe need some more time to sort the sound out.
Click to expand...

Thank you for your comments; I'll make note and pass it on to the sound folks.
 
#13
meRTKendrew said:
Why not use the BDDI as a DI?

Go Bass > Tuner > MB Compressore > BDDI >FOH Board and Bassman.

But you really need to take the time with the band and soundguy and Pastor to get things right, it needs to be done outside of a Sunday, or take a few hours one morning.

-RTK
Click to expand...

I tried the BDDI, but it didn't work. I thought there was something wrong and bought the Livewire DI (passive, $30) to have at the end of the chain.

Summary: BDDI DI and Livewire DI don't work. Bassman (and I also tried an Ampeg PF-350 DI) works.
 
#14
Hi prietobass, not sure problem with DI, I find active and passive fine, I have a proco monoface passive, not sure if still available.
High pass filters are very usefull for cleaning up the sound especially on the mics, not usally used on bass, kick drum and synth if used for bass. I have an old rack EQ that has a 45hz high pass, I use that sometimes, it adds some headroom by taking out the very low signals. 80hz may be a bit high, your low E vibrates at around 41hz so there is a big roll off at this stage depending on the slope of the filtre.
 
#15
Just so there is no misunderstanding, In my previous post, I was saying that the bass is mostly being carried by my amp. The room is very boomy so, even though the whole band is high passed at the board, the is still enough low end in the room at our volumes. The end result is that the only bass sound carried by the PA is the mids and highs - just enough for clarity. If I was not using an amp that carried the room, I would never advocate high passing the bass. Acoustic drums in a live room necessitate a certain bass amp level. In our case the PA is reinforcing our sound for the congregation, not carrying the full spectrum.
 
#16
The Bassman 250/115 has enough to carry the room, IMHO. Highpassing makes sense to me.

I tested both the Sansamp DI and the Livewire DI at home and they worked fine. There is a difference in output if I set the BDDI XLR output to line (not padded); the output seems to be higher than that of the Livewire at -0 dB pad. I'll check things at church again.

Last night I was very tired so I stayed home resting. My family attended prayer service. There is normally no music playing at those services, but last night the Pastor called the keyboard player and drummer to play while people responded to an altar call. My wife told me that she heard comments about the sound being "better". I assume that is because now the stage is quieter, and the sound is more balanced throughout the sanctuary.
 
#17
we have "church in a box" so have to set it all up & break it down every Sunday. I feel your soundboard & tech difficulties! Little slider goes a long way on the mains. We've spent great deals of time tracking down signal problems to the board with varying degrees of success. We use a previous board which gives a lot of info regarding what's going on. We've hit close to 100db measured but strive to keep it 85-95. Patience with the sound people is huge as they will grow into it. I look forward to running sound almost as much as playing. Best of luck and God Bless
 

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