Sound Gear. . .

Peja and I took back the rental sound equipment this morning -- $39 goes further than you'd think. As stated in earlier posts, I was worried as hell about the sound; we had a bit of a rough time in Inverary, but The Wilson Room was very kind and everything went together smoothly.

I got to hear most of Kyra and Tully/Me Man Jack, and I thought the sound was fantastic -- I'm not taking credit, I think most of it is just that the Wilson Room has amazing acoustics. But we kept it simple, with only vocals and a bit of Piano coming out of the P.A. -- The guitar and bass amps weren't miked, just turned up a bit. There was only one mix coming out of the main speakers (pointing at the crowd) and through the monitor. There was only one monitor, on the floor in front of the stage. Stage volume was not too loud, but I could hear everything well. We had no effects, no compression, no gates, and no feedback for the whole show.

Technical Info (because I'm always wondering. . .):
So, we had a 12 channel mixer (we used 6), a stereo power amp (300 watts?), 2 Pulse tilting monitors (used as mains), 1 mackie 12" powered monitor, 2 shure sm58's, 1 shure beta 58, 1 apex condensor mic (piano), a Blues Junior 1x12" 15 watt tube amp, a 100 watt yamaha half-stack 1x15" bass amp, and a couple of passive apex direct boxes.

It's basically a rehearsal space worth of gear, and it was totally enough for an indoor show. We could've gotten away with less than the mackie monitor, it was turned way down (it's got like 400 watts of power of something insane), and I wonder if I could just bring my little 30 watt cube amps, link them together, and point them up at the singer.

There's some talk, mostly from me, I suppose, about charging a bit more at the door in an attempt to do slightly better than breaking even (to the dollar this time). I've paid $2 for great shows and $10 for crappy ones, and I don't know if people would even blink if we asked a bit more than $5 for 2 hours of cool music. I'm trying to create a third way, besides bars and $25 concert hall shows, somewhere everyone can see cool music at a fair price.

What do you think?

-- Jay.