Unfortunate revelation

As I have stated here many times, my band has a regular sound man. Well, he also does sound for another band, which doesn't bother me at all. That is until he bailed on a gig we had booked to do the sound for this other band even though we were booked first.

He is competent and he understands how to hook up our system as well as I do, which is a huge bonus because it takes the load off me, however, it's not like he is a great engineer or anything. I know another guy that will run our system for us ( When he's available) for $80 a night. And that guy is a very good engineer.

Anyway, we get to the gig last night. It's at a place that has a house system and we were hoping they still had someone to run it. They didn't. Their board is a Mackie Onyx and a POS. We spent an hour just trying to get the Aux for the stage left monitors to respond. There was a kid that worked there who had watched the guy that used to run the board and pretty much knew how to turn the system on, that was it. We had already decided that we would not do a full PA set up like we normally do, rather we would just put vocals and a little kick and snare in the PA. Nevertheless it was a goat ****. We called a guy I know who was familiar with the system and he came up and helped us get it set up. We ended up running one monitor mix. Little kick and snare and 3 vocal mics, vocals only in the monitors. Pretty much a set it and forget it deal other than a few times I had to go over between sets and turn it all down a little. I definitely missed my MixWiz.

The mix wound up being pretty decent and I had at least 2 people come up and say that we haven't had a mix that good since I used to mix from the stage. I am guessing that in the small(ish) bars we play, putting all that crap in the PA is not warranted.

In conclusion, we have decided that other than large venues or outside, we will just go back to me mixing from the stage and most often we will not put the guitar and bass rigs in the PA. Sucks that now we have all the gear necessary to fully mic it all up, but it is what it is.

So I guess it's back to a 3 way split.

 

What do you mean by stage left, stage right and middle? Do you have 3 guitarists?

We have one guitar, one bass and the drummer. We all sing. I definitely think it's a good idea to mic the rigs on some gigs, if for no other reason than to have the ability to put it in the monitors. If I was to mic the guitar rig but I didn't want it in the FOH, would I be able to drop the fader all the way down and still put it in the monitors via the aux?

 

Ah, I'm guessing you have 2 guitars and were referring to the bass as Stage left or stage right?

 

Our SE was made a member of the group and paid an equal split. The only thing he was responsible for roadie wise was the same as the rest of us. And I ALWAYS helped him set up the PA. You are correct though, a good SE isn't cheap and I suppose we will only be hiring one when necessary. The fact is I am pretty good at mixing and at most bar gigs, where a minimal set up is necessary, I can do as good a job as anyone else. Especially since my guitar player and I are both wireless.

 

Yeah dude, I understand that. I was just confused at first about how many guitar players were in his band. I got it now.

 

It was an older model, but it had 6 auxes. It was installed though and without being familiar with the board it really wasn't a good idea for me to uninstall someone else's board. They have one XLR on each side of the stage, built into the wall with a cover plate. I'm pretty sure the stage right one has some kind of issue with it. Their installed snake is a very old POS too, with many broken channels. Probably the only workaround would have been for me to break out my snake and/or hook several XLRs together and run them up on the wall all the way back to the board. It wound up being easier to just hook the monitors up to the one working aux feed.

I'll tell you one thing, I was a little embarrassed how confused I was looking at their mess of a system. I guess I have been spoiled by the simplicity of my very neat, very easy to understand, MixWiz set up.

 

I can't say anything about the quality of the Mackie stuff because I have never had one. I only know that it is set up a little different than my Mixwiz and I had a difficult time figuring out what was what. That particular board was older and a little busted up. Their snake was one of those old, big, square silver box types, with channels on top and the sides and 1/4" returns. Jacks themselves were rusty.

Mixwiz has 6 auxes, 4 of which are assignable pre/post. It is far easier to use than that board last night. At least to me, but probably just because that's what I'm used to.

 

We are pretty much all in agreement about our former SE. In the event that we need to hire someone in the future for larger venues and outdoors, I have a couple other guys who are willing to do it if they're available. Guys who actually make their living as SEs. They are friends of mine and have both given us very reasonable prices. Less than what we normally paid the other guy.

Most of the gigs we do are bar gigs. We have no intention of going without subs though. Most bars we will use 2, but we have a few coming up that are in very small venues where we will use a single 18" sub. Pretty much vocals, kick and snare only in the PA, though I think I will mic up the guitar and bass rigs at most of these places just to have it in the monitors.

 

4 of the 6 auxes on my board are assignable pre/post fader.

 

And subs.