PA Advice...............

[nocaster]

Been in a few bands but never owned a PA. As with all things these days, the prices are falling and I've spotted a few bargains. This one here :

http://www.guitarampkeyboard.com/en/72087

The bundle deal half-way down the page seems too good to be true. Thomann are even £300 more for the same thing?!

I need it for band practice (obviously!) and gigs which is in mid-sized venues.

Is that bundle too much? Too little? Shit? Good?

Ta

K

PS: Budget is less than £1k for the lot.

[Danny1969]

You need to be careful with this end of the market. Behringer (and others) are quite imaginative when it comes to listing features and specs that indicate it can do a lot more than it actually can. Look at the frequency range of the speakers listed as 50Hz to 18Khz, now notice that it's down -10dB at those frequencies. Usable range is more like 70Hz to 14Khz, ie no bottom end and not much top. They sound really middy and harsh when you start driving them. Ok for small venues at lowish volume though.
My old band brought the powered Behringer desk with fader recall. It went wrong after a few weeks and the RTB warranty took so long to fix it that they had to buy another desk to carry on gigging. I've got a passive Eurorack Behringer desk, that's been ok but as you would guess at the price it has very little headroom and it's not exactly expensive sounding.
The Behringer mics are fine though, similar to 58's in sound but not quite built as well. For a cheap live mic they are ok and you normally get a little hard case with em.

If you want more professional PA kit without breaking the band then maybe take a look at some used stuff on Ebay. Me and some other guys have about 6 PA's of which only 2 were brought new. The rest came came from hire companies and broken up bands via Ebay. Last week we brought 4 X HK 18" Subs, 2 X 15" tops with horns, 2 X HK 1400 watt power amps in a flightcased rack with HK crossover and a Studiomaster 16 channel desk. Winning bid was 1200 for the lot. Then the guy chucked in 20 way snake and a graphic. There's some fantastic professional quality PA kit on Ebay all the time that typically goes for no more than really bad stuff sells for new.

[nocaster]

You need to be careful with this end of the market. Behringer (and others) are quite imaginative when it comes to listing features and specs that indicate it can do a lot more than it actually can. Look at the frequency range of the speakers listed as 50Hz to 18Khz, now notice that it's down -10dB at those frequencies. Usable range is more like 70Hz to 14Khz, ie no bottom end and not much top. They sound really middy and harsh when you start driving them. Ok for small venues at lowish volume though.
My old band brought the powered Behringer desk with fader recall. It went wrong after a few weeks and the RTB warranty took so long to fix it that they had to buy another desk to carry on gigging. I've got a passive Eurorack Behringer desk, that's been ok but as you would guess at the price it has very little headroom and it's not exactly expensive sounding.
The Behringer mics are fine though, similar to 58's in sound but not quite built as well. For a cheap live mic they are ok and you normally get a little hard case with em.

If you want more professional PA kit without breaking the band then maybe take a look at some used stuff on Ebay. Me and some other guys have about 6 PA's of which only 2 were brought new. The rest came came from hire companies and broken up bands via Ebay. Last week we brought 4 X HK 18" Subs, 2 X 15" tops with horns, 2 X HK 1400 watt power amps in a flightcased rack with HK crossover and a Studiomaster 16 channel desk. Winning bid was 1200 for the lot. Then the guy chucked in 20 way snake and a graphic. There's some fantastic professional quality PA kit on Ebay all the time that typically goes for no more than really bad stuff sells for new.

Great post. Thanks.

Will keep an eye on the bay. I've only noticed shitty DJ set ups though. Will have to look harder!

K