Hi all, I play in a 4-piece cover band, consisting of piano, bass, guitar and drums - all four of us sing in some form or another and play an eclectic mix of songs through the decades. We've reached a point where we need to upgrade our aging passive PA / powered desk setup for something a little more modern. Though as it stands, I've had so much conflicting information visiting various in store places in the UK such as PMT and Andertons, I wanted to also try and do some research online. We self-mix and typically play a lot of small pub gigs throughout the year, and probably up to some 250 people venues for weddings here and there. For larger events, or outdoors in marquees, we've typically rented in the PA (usually pair of 15" tops and 18" subs) + engineer to do sound for us and I think we'll continue to do this if the venue or event requires it due to size. We're pretty sorted on the desk front, having gone down the X32 Rack route, but we're coming a little unstuck on whether to invest into a bigger set of speakers, or try utilise what we have... We already own a small rehearsal space that has an installed pair of RCF ART710A MK4's (10" speakers) and a single 702AS II sub (12" subwoofer) - it works great in this space / small pubs, but until today, we've never taken these to a larger venue. In my opinion it feels like we'd be absolutely fine up to a typical 200 person space - we're not heavy rock, we like to keep vocals nice and prominent and really the subs to me add enough bottom to give that roundness. But has anyone any experience of running 2 x 10"s plus a single 12" sub for a band to a reasonable size room? For us, this is the most cost effective route, as we have an older Yamaha DXR10 as a monitor, and could buy a second to then put these into our rehearsal space, making the RCF our 'gig rig'. We're also on IEMs now and have a couple of cheap Alto wedges if we ever need those, so not like we use the DXR10 either. Everyone I have spoken to in person has always responded with a lot of 'sucking through teeth' about the route of 2 x 10s and 1 x 12 - and we're being told to consider whether we may want to look at 2 x 12s for tops and 2 x 15s for subs, then we have a modular system where we can bring the sub(s) as necessary that will also cover the lifetime of the band. We have the budget to do this and I'm not saying they're entirely incorrect and only out to sell us something, but I'm just debating whether people think we'd be running the RCF setup closer to capacity, and that we should invest in a more capable set of speakers that are slightly larger and would cover more options. Or are we crazy to spend the money when we've a perfectly capable setup in the RCFs we already have? Any thoughts much appreciated!
