Questions regarding Home Studio

[vx02]

I have a few questions which i hope you guys can help me with. Firstly, i jam in a home studio that has a 10w bass amp, a 15w guitar amp and another 50w guitar amp. the room's quite big and we crank up the volume to hear ourselves over the drumset (maybe thats mistake number 1?)

- What can be done to level out the sounds? Should we DI the guitar and bass amp into the mixer? Or will that overload the mixer, considering vocals are already plugged in?

- What are the limits of the PA/Mixer system? There has to be some level of punishment before the thing burns down the house or something. How would you know that the mixer is being strained? I read some online articles saying that your monitors would glow red (wtf?) before the horns blow. haha. clarification please!

many many thanks in advance for your help!

 

[soft]

Sound is about balance. If the drums are too loud, other instrument will be too soft. Best way is to try to muffle the drum sound a bit. Or use those satay stick bunch together to play instead of using actual drum sticks.

Should not have to patch your guitars into the PA. If you can't hear yourself, just move closer to your amp. But careful not to hurt your ears.

Playing soft has it advantage, you will be able to hear all the mistakes clearly.

 

[Brin]

u have small amps,one solution is to mic up all the amps through the PA system,don't blast the volume of ur amps.. balance the volume from the mixer this way u can get better sound and for the drums, try get some foam to muffle ur drums and as James was saying, buy a pair thunder rod so it wont be too loud even if u hit hard...

 

[vx02]

although, we're trying our best to balance out the sound, we're definitely not doing it by maxing out each other's amps. but thanks for the feedback! looking forward to more suggestions