Anyone gig with a column P.A. system?

[romanianreaper]

I have a cheap 800 watt Samson P.A. that my band uses at practice and we have thought about upgrading and getting a column P.A. as an option if we play a place and need our own P.A. We would be looking at something that would be good for heavier stuff and acoustic shows.

I'm not wanting to go too crazy price wise. I think below $1500. I've seen some with good reviews. Just wondering if anyone has had any experience with these and likes them or hates them?

 

[Rackman]

We've always done 2 powered speakers and a mixer and snake plus everyone BYO favorite wedge if you want one and FX if you need them.

 

[rsm]

edit: they make column speakers too.


Have a look at Alto Professional powered cabs...the TS series.

https://www.altoprofessional.com/

I have two TS Series (TS3XX, and TS4xx) with subs, a pair of TX308 I use for guitar modelers; I have a another TX with subs I use for pipe organ.

the TS4xx are the latest generation

They are reasonably priced, and worth a look. SW carries them

https://www.sweetwater.com/c134--Alto_Professional--PA_Speakers

 

[rsm]

TurboSound ? Owned by Musiic Tribe (Behringer group)

 

[VonBonfire]

I've used the lower power bose version downstairs and in the side club at my residency when the weather is bad. It sounds really good indoors but I'd feel weird using one outside for a full band gig. TBH I think we'd overpower them vs a traditional PA.

 

[rsm]

I've used the lower power bose version downstairs and in the side club at my residency when the weather is bad. It sounds really good indoors but I'd feel weird using one outside for a full band gig. TBH I think we'd overpower them vs a traditional PA.

I had an original Bose L1 with two B1 bass cabs; I put it away for a couple of years and when I tried using it I go a high pitched squeall - it was dead useless.

It worked great, sounded good, but the fact it self-destructed - never again. That's when I got the Alto TSxxx powered cabs.

That Turbosound iP3000 goes down to 45 Hz, which is good for most synths, but not for pipe organ pedals. a 32' pipe in a pipe organ is at 16 Hz, only a few headphones can actually reproduce it. Then there's this:

 

[Floyd Eye]

Those systems don't really work well for full rock bands. Plenty of people have tried to save money doing it and all the ones I know of ended up upgrading to a real rig and relegating the steerable array sticks to rehearsals and acoustic gigs. Unless you are playing really big rooms, steerable arrays are pointless and the ones that actually work are large, expensive and work very well, as I said, in large spaces.

It was true 40 years ago when I was starting to put together my first rig and it's true now. There are no shortcuts. Buy once, cry once.

With the new digital mixers it's a different game. No more racks full of amps and FX. Get a good digital mixer, A&H, Midas, QSC, even Behringer are decent. FX on all channels, no need for separate gates or filters. Get the best powered tops and subs you can afford, some IEMs and never worry about your rig again.

 

[VonBonfire]

Those systems don't really work well for full rock bands. Plenty of people have tried to save money doing it and all the ones I know of ended up upgrading to a real rig and relegating the steerable array sticks to rehearsals and acoustic gigs. Unless you are playing really big rooms, steerable arrays are pointless and the ones that actually work are large, expensive and work very well, as I said, in large spaces.

It was true 40 years ago when I was starting to put together my first rig and it's true now. There are no shortcuts. Buy once, cry once.

With the new digital mixers it's a different game. No more racks full of amps and FX. Get a good digital mixer, A&H, Midas, QSC, even Behringer are decent. FX on all channels, no need for separate gates or filters. Get the best powered tops and subs you can afford, some IEMs and never worry about your rig again.

I'd second everything said here and only add that Yamaha is making some pretty quality powered mains that are about 95%+ vs the much higher priced QSC gear. The Altos have pretty good reviews for powered mains and I've found the JBL and EV's are pretty good per some past experience. I'm even using Yamaha mixers though we don't have a subwoofer for our setup since usually it's smaller gigs that don't have house sound anyways.

 

[Floyd Eye]

I'd second everything said here and only add that Yamaha is making some pretty quality powered mains that are about 95%+ vs the much higher priced QSC gear. The Altos have pretty good reviews for powered mains and I've found the JBL and EV's are pretty good per some past experience. I'm even using Yamaha mixers though we don't have a subwoofer for our setup since usually it's smaller gigs that don't have house sound anyways.

My DSRs were the fucking shit dude. Best sounding tops I ever heard for guitars and vocals. I paid $900 a piece for them. No clue what they run now, but they are worth it.

The matching DSR sub is pretty good too, but not as good as the 18" QSC. But my subs were both Yorkville LS801Ps. It would take two of the QSC subs to keep up with one of the Yorkies. The QSCs sound better out of the box, but two small EQ tweaks on the Yorkies is all it takes to catch up to them. I ran banks of graphics and PEQs so it was a no brainer.

 

[pipelineaudio]

These are SUPER popular for hotel gigs and funerals here. Be aware that most brands' models are extremely wide in dispersion so you may be more likely to feedback than you'd expect. If you have y cabled (virtually or with actual cables) to have a separate eq for every channel or monitors than mains you should be OK. Some of these are WAY louder than you'd expect

 

[romanianreaper]

Those systems don't really work well for full rock bands. Plenty of people have tried to save money doing it and all the ones I know of ended up upgrading to a real rig and relegating the steerable array sticks to rehearsals and acoustic gigs. Unless you are playing really big rooms, steerable arrays are pointless and the ones that actually work are large, expensive and work very well, as I said, in large spaces.

It was true 40 years ago when I was starting to put together my first rig and it's true now. There are no shortcuts. Buy once, cry once.

With the new digital mixers it's a different game. No more racks full of amps and FX. Get a good digital mixer, A&H, Midas, QSC, even Behringer are decent. FX on all channels, no need for separate gates or filters. Get the best powered tops and subs you can afford, some IEMs and never worry about your rig again.

Thanks dude Yeah it's funny, while I was researching these type of solutions, I'd see people using two of them. So two expensive, bulky columns and heavier than typical speakers, i was starting to have some doubt.

Right now we use a cheap P.A. I got years ago for us to just have for practice and for gigs as a last resort type thing. It is a Samson with two speakers and six channels I believe. Only 800 watts total. So really anything is going to be better than what we have, lol.

 

[Floyd Eye]

Thanks dude Yeah it's funny, while I was researching these type of solutions, I'd see people using two of them. So two expensive, bulky columns and heavier than typical speakers, i was starting to have some doubt.

Right now we use a cheap P.A. I got years ago for us to just have for practice and for gigs as a last resort type thing. It is a Samson with two speakers and six channels I believe. Only 800 watts total. So really anything is going to be better than what we have, lol.

What kind of music do you play ?
How many instruments ?
Do you want your kick drum to sound fabulous ?
What is your budget ?

 

[romanianreaper]

What kind of music do you play ?
How many instruments ?
Do you want your kick drum to sound fabulous ?
What is your budget ?

We are a three piece punk-influenced rock band. We have a punk feel but out songs vary a bit. I song and play guitar, bass and drums. We like to keep things bare bones and don't need anything crazy. Most places will have a P.A. syatem so we don't worry too much about that.

We want to do some acoustic shows of our punk songs so we can find places to play that are quieter. Right now I have a Mackie Showbox we have been playing with at practice.

 

[VonBonfire]

We want to do some acoustic shows of our punk songs so we can find places to play that are quieter. Right now I have a Mackie Showbox we have been playing with at practice.

I wouldn't hesitate to buy a single high quality 10-12" powered main and the smallest mixer you can get away with if you are trying to get in reasonably cheap. For 95% of the acoustic gigs I have ever done or seen a single main was plenty of power. The Yamaha DBR's are about $400 ea new and have a pretty good rep. The DXR's I have for my group are a few hundred more each for the 10" and there is quite a bit of power there for the size. We have the older style from around 2018-19 and they have done many hundred gigs and rehearsals.

 

[Floyd Eye]

We are a three piece punk-influenced rock band. We have a punk feel but out songs vary a bit. I song and play guitar, bass and drums. We like to keep things bare bones and don't need anything crazy. Most places will have a P.A. syatem so we don't worry too much about that.

We want to do some acoustic shows of our punk songs so we can find places to play that are quieter. Right now I have a Mackie Showbox we have been playing with at practice.

Well, if you're not worried about close mic'ing the kick drum and you and your bass player's rigs can generally carry the stage I think one or two of the DBRs would allow you to run vocals and put a 57 somewhere on stage facing the drum kit and get a little bit of the drums up in the mix. Really it all depends on what you are planning for the future. Back in the olden days we had a PA for vocals only and that was usually one of those shitbox Shure Vocalmasters or something. We had to mix the old fashioned way, with the knobs on the amps.

I would try to make whatever you get scalable. So if you upgrade you can still use the stuff you buy now for monitors, sidefills, front fills or whatever. Definitely go with powered boxes. The best ones you can afford.

 

[VonBonfire]

Well, if you're not worried about close mic'ing the kick drum and you and your bass player's rigs can generally carry the stage I think one or two of the DBRs would allow you to run vocals and put a 57 somewhere on stage facing the drum kit and get a little bit of the drums up in the mix. Really it all depends on what you are planning for the future. Back in the olden days we had a PA for vocals only and that was usually one of those shitbox Shure Vocalmasters or something. We had to mix the old fashioned way, with the knobs on the amps.

We mic vocals, close mic the kick and use an overhead towards the snare/hats through two DXR-10's. If we had a sub we'd have to start using the van, that's getting too expensive unless the pay is better and the pay is better at places with a house PA generally speaking. You could definitely damage the speakers mic'ing the kick and pushing too much volume but when we need the pa, it's usually a smaller club and we just let a small amount through so it can be heard rather than getting it to in your face, hit you in the chest levels. I'd love to have the sub but it's not really worth it overall for a blues group for those kinda gigs IMO.

 

[DanTravis62]

If you're bringing your own PA it's really difficult as a full rock band

These columns are designed for singer/songwriter types, acoustic gigs, and slam poetry - not a full band. Literally every full rock band i've seen try to use one of these has failed miserably and it sounded like complete shit in every single case except for one time I saw a cover band use 5 or 6 of the bose columns.... and at that point just get a real PA because you aren't really saving any money.

As @Floyd Eye said, buy once, cry once

 

[Floyd Eye]

We mic vocals, close mic the kick and use an overhead towards the snare/hats through two DXR-10's. If we had a sub we'd have to start using the van, that's getting too expensive unless the pay is better and the pay is better at places with a house PA generally speaking. You could definitely damage the speakers mic'ing the kick and pushing too much volume but when we need the pa, it's usually a smaller club and we just let a small amount through so it can be heard rather than getting it to in your face, hit you in the chest levels. I'd love to have the sub but it's not really worth it overall for a blues group for those kinda gigs IMO.

Yeah I don't think a sub is necessary in most blues gigs.

 

[romanianreaper]

Thanks guys for the feedback and is super valuable. We are kind of in a weird place. Everyone in my band have great jobs and at our ages (i'm the oldest at 56, and other two in their 40s) we are having fun and don't take ourselves too seriously.

There will be gigs that would be convenient to have a P.A. if we need to and some gigs we won't. At practice alone, would be great to upgrade from the Samson 800XP or whatever it is called.

Simple is good for us and two mains would be fine and then we can decide about floor monitors or whatever. We have played a lot of gigs where we couldn't hear ourselves due to a jacked up XLR cable or tiny monitors so anything will be a step up for us.

Not sure if good ones exist but would be awesome if we could fine something with enough inputs to not need a mixer. Only two of us sing and two guitars. So if we could maybe have four inputs on each speaker, rhat would probably work.

 

[tjnx]

I don't have one but was looking into these pretty hard a while ago and it seems the best bang for the buck is the RCF Evox J8. (no mixer)
https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/EVOXJ8--rcf-evox-j8-active-portable-pa-system

The EV Evolves are good too (more $$) and I got to try the QSC k12 ($$) in person and it sounded great. The Evolve 30m is good but its a 10" sub, where the J8 gets you a 12 for cheapest. The EVs have a more capable built-in mixer than the rcf version, but still worse than the J8 + a stand alone.

The overall potential negatives are that some of the "cheaper" ones don't get to a 15" sub until you go $2k plus and there is a loudness / projection limit you may or may not hit. For portability and no frills I found that rcf to be the best bang for the buck. They released a new version and they have some with built-in mixers (jmix) but I would go with the one above and get the cheap Behringer Flow for less or do the x18 (still for equal or less total).

The Evox 12 is the big boy in this category with the 15" sub, but if you need to budget for point source I would go with either a pair of Yamaha DBR 10s or anything RCF / QSC in your budget for tops (8s, 10s or 12s) then get a 15" sub if you need total projection over dispersion. A pair of J8s would probably be fine for shows < 150 people.

Here's a few videos I saved from when I was looking