New Church PA

[mwoke]

My church is looking to buy a whole new PA system. I was wondering if anyone could give me a reasonable 'to buy' list - just wanna know roughly how much we should be spending and what sort of equipment i.e. make/models to look at - especially for mixer & speakers/amp.

 

Just so you know - we meet in a village hall (9m x 5m), there can be anything up to about 4 singers, preacher, keys, drums, bass guitar, 2/3 other guitars used on a sunday morning. The service is also recorded on tape/cd. All needs to be able to be packed down each week.

 

Some of us also play in a rock & roll band which we use the church PA for, so it needs to be suitable for that aswell.

 

Let's say budget is around £2000, but I prefer quality to price (within reason).

 

Thanks for any advice. Any questions, just ask.

[revbobuk]

My advice? If it really is 9m x 5m, use acoustic instruments and no PA at all. Save the 2 grand and do something worthwhile with it. Encourage the preacher to speak clearly. And use a style of music that is appropriate to the scale of the venue. Really - you'll encourage a much more engaged, personal relationship with people if you don't use amplification. Think Irish band in a small pub, rather than U2 at Wembley!

[mwoke]

ok. I may have underestimated the size of the hall, it's probably more likely to be 20m x 10m. Average around 60 people.

 

I guess your advice would still be the same revbobuk? which I appreciate and agree with you - it would also be a lot less hassle if we didn't have to set everything up each week.

 

However, we do need something as not all of the people speaking have powerful voices unfortunately. Also we use a keyboard with built in speakers which is not powerful enough to compete with a congregation in full flow. So would appreciate any help.

 

just as an aside, what are peoples opinions of EV stuff?

[J Pearce]

If its a replacement, then make a list of everything wrong or undesirable with the old system. This will form the basis of the spec for the new system,

 

Have a very good think about anything you may start doing within the next 10 years. Design the system to have all the equipment necessary for this, or for any extra equipment to be easily added. Think infrastructure (spare multicore lines, spare desk channels, spare auxes etc), think spare capacity on amps for that loud youth service someone wants to run in 5 years time, think possibilities for creative use of the space and how the system could adapt to that.

Be versatile!

 

Never buy on recommendation, always listen, if possible in your space with your source material, ideally at an actual service, you can then gather opinions from the non technical people and very importantly the musicians.

 

ALSO

 

Read this pdf.

[Simon Lewis]

I'd suggest you carefully list your needs, then put them in priority order.

 

If the portable church PA usage is more important, then size, weight, ease of setup, speech intelligibility and controlled directivity would (to me) seem crucial. The last two items tie in with the acoustics of the space - which we know nothing about.

 

The use of self contained powered loudspeakers could mean greater flexibility (can be used on their own for church, or powered bass bins added for the louder church gigs or for pub gigs).

 

Small, lightweight 16 channel rack mount mixers provide good facilities in a compact package.

 

A 24 way multicore on a drum would provide you with 16 inputs and enough returns to cover most small band scenarios.

 

I could suggest products that I think have the right features and a good feature to price ratio, but I suspect it won't fit in your budget. However, I believe you will want to buy this gear just once? Rather than trying to squeeze every item from a fixed budget, why not get (say) the desk and powered mid/high speakers you really need, and hire in bins for the louder events?

 

Regarding EV, they make a wide range of products, some of which may be just what you want. An (exagerated) analogy would be "I want to drive off road, and may want to plough a field too. Has anyone heard good things about BMW?".

 

Simon

[pwalker]

Hi,

I currently have a complete logic PA System which rates at 3k and consists of a pair of 15" Tops and pair of 15" Bass Bins with amp crossover in flightcase. We have been using this system with my band but we are splitting up and the equipment is going to be sold.

If you would like further details, Please get back to me

 

Regards

 

Paul