Mixers during gig

[H3RMAN]

I had a gig last Saturday and one thing I realized from that gig (and from some of the venues that I've played before) is that usually, the guys doing the mixing will muddle up the cabling or something and we'll end up with the monitors not playing someone's instrument or most commonly, the equalizing is really off. For example, the bass will be booming and guitars will be barely heard.

Now, as I'm using DI for both my guitar and keyboard, it tends to drown the rest of the band.

So, I was thinking whether it would be better if I were to buy a 6 channel Tapco mixer or something and connect all instrument outputs to it and then have the mixer's output out to two DI channels.

This will effectively give me stereo for everyone and more control over everyone's volume, minimizing the chance that the people up there doing the mixing will mess something up.

What do you guys think? Will it work?

 

[Wadi]

Why not just get your own soundman for every gigs/shows?

 

[shinobi]

you can use your own mixer but in the end the rest of the PA (speakers, etc) belongs to the house. at any rate, they probably wont let u mess with their stuff. sometimes it's because they are not familiar with your gear and fear that their stuff will somehow get damaged.

u meantioned that you use DI, but does that mean the others are mic'ed or do not go into the soundboard at all? if the latter is the case then sound issues will be inevitable.

i think bringing your own sound man is the simplest solution

 

[dir]

are you going to DI everything? sounds like a bad idea. Maybe you should spend more time during soundcheck or invest in a sound man.

 

[hardpan]

I feel you dude. The soundman can really make or break a show. For every good one there is out there, there is an equally crappy one.

You make a good point though. It is indeed possible to hook up all your instruments on stage to a sub-mixer and just run the stereo mix to the house board. You will have control over the balance of the instruments which eventually end up being sent to the house board. However, you may not be in the best position to mix from where you are on the stage.

So ideally, you would have your own sound engineer. If not, at least clearly communicate to the guy doing sound back there behind the console what you hope to achieve in the mix. The bare minimum would really be for him to try and give you a balanced mix as far as possible, though this doesn't happen all the time for sure.

At any rate, it's still the best to bring your own sound guy to your gigs. I'm sure there are lots of people here who would be willing to help you out.

 

[someone]

This can actually be a really good solution for a band playing small venues. especially if you don't have loud amps/drums to compete with.

i was running sound for a show over Christmas and there was an acapella (i never know how to spell this) group who bought their own mixer and mics, then just ran two lines to me. one mono for the house, and another mono for the stage mons. they were using a digital mixer (with their own engineer). They had mixes stored for each song so they really sounded fantastic!

 

[H3RMAN]

Thanks for the replies everyone!

It was really insightful. Gathering from all your replies, I think an ideal solution for me would probably be to have a sub mixer with my own sound man before going into the house speakers. That way, although the sound man will have lesser parameters to tweak with in the cheaper and smaller sub mixer, he will be using the same mixer everytime so there's no need to get accustomed to a new mixer every gig.

 

[someone]

But there will be a whole lot more setting up to do.
If you can have your own sound guy with the house system then no need to repatch everything into your mixer

 

[H3RMAN]

Hmm... Good point. Well, I guess I'll discuss with my band first before making any major decisions. Thanks again for the suggestions!