12 Month Update...!

[lateandlive 0]

Hi All,

 

Haven't really posted on here that often...if at all?!

 

My cousin and I started out 12 months ago, give or take, as a favour to our friend. She was having her 18th in a relatively small venue and needed someone to do her music on a VERY tight budget! We'd never done ANYTHING like this before, but through the wonders of a £10 mixer WITH built in amp (!) 2 hi-fi seperate CD players and some strange speakers that looked like extras from Star Wars, we pulled it off!

 

Now, a year on, we've gone from that to a relatively high turnover business. We're not relying on gigs to earn a living - although that would be a much better way in my opinion - so the ones we ARE doing (5 or 6 a month) are funding our holiday in September :)

 

Reason I post is for your help! At the moment we are a "typical" mobile disco. This is how we want to stay, with the possibility of club work in the future, but I really think our equipment is excessive. We're more of - alot of decent stuff rather than a few excellent bits.

 

I mean, we use 6 speakers...it looks good, but its a bit OTT in my honest opinion! Plus we've got 7 lights, mostly mini moons and the like - again, they create the effect we want, but are there any you can reccommend that are better??

 

Really, we're competent and confident in doing gigs, and we enjoy them immensely, just wondered if anyone could give an idea of the sort of things they use and some decent alternatives so we can confine all the excess crap to the stage in the sky!

 

Cheers guys,

Dan

[DJ Marky Marc 0]

Best thing to do would be to go see other discos ...

 

See what other people do and learn from it...

 

 

[Welsh Audio Man 21 0]

QUOTE (DJ Marky Marc @ Jun 21 2006, 06:37 PM)

Best thing to do would be to go see other discos ... See what other people do and learn from it...

Agreed, see how others work...

 

Equipment wise... 6 speakers is quite alot, my equipment will push 8.5k with 6 speakers! Most of your average pub, function type jobs, you can usually get away with 2 15" tops and a pair of bass bins....some venues are so small, the tops would probably be enough on their own! Lighting wise, 5 abstract, acme, chauvet lights would cover most venues! for example... 2 abstract twisters, 2 acme skyrays and an abstract Twin FX, covers me for most venues!

[djwesty 0]

2 x 12" tops 2 x15" bass bins 1500 wat amp,4 xacme dynamos 100 wats 2 x wild blaze 250 wats 1 x xtc 250 wats for most gigs got a mini moon and 3 other 50 wat lights for really small venues

[YourBigEvent 0]

Just finished a gig tonight, used 7 speakers amd 6 Chameleon effects.

 

Sounds loud.....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It wasn't I like to use a thing called sound re-infrorcement, OK so if powered by the three amps I also had we would have a total of 4000 watts for a small room, but because the speakers were 'placed' it sounded great, and not loud.

 

It is what you are happy with, my next gig in a smaller room will have 2 speakers and 4 effects.

[Jason v G 0]

On the lighting front you could probably get rid of a few minimoons and replace with a barrel scanner. The mirrored barrel in these moves around the room 'spreading' the light effects output more. In some instances I get away with just two barrel scanners for the gig, depending on what kind of gig and the atmosphere required.

 

[Leonna 0]

If you have a search on here, you can see how some people have set up. BrianMole has a nice tidy setup, maybe look at some of his picks in What have you been up to section. sorry can't link you there, I may teach IT but I still have no idea how to do stuff like that on here. http://www.dj-forum.co.uk/html//emoticons/fear.gif

[DJ Marky Marc 0]

how about making it look like this....

 

MY SETUP

 

MY SETUP2

[lateandlive 0]

Yeh, thats the sort of setup we're really after. I'm out and about tomorrow night so i'll take some pics of what we look like.

 

Biggest problem is, we started off with a front box. Nothing special, but we went down the route of plastering our name and nuber across. This was 3ftx3ft and took pride of place. If you can imagine, that was in the middle with 2 speakers either side, and oon the outer most speaker on each side there was a smaller (15" from what I remember) top. Our lightings on a tripod type stand behind us.

 

We've since dropped the front box, and just hang a banner in its place, but i'm seriously considering getting some identical black material (the sort you find outside pubs from Carling saying "watch the World Cup here!) and hanging it across the front and making a longer setup.

 

Main thing that annoys me is the clubs are often dark and dingy and then we put this dark, small disco in the corner. The sounds good and the lights too, but when you compare it to the images above, they look big and bright and roomy......ah well!