small venue set up?

graham12300

My wife and I are starting to work in small bars and do wedding gigs. Vocal / guitar duo. My difficulty is in how best to invest in portable quality equipment for amplification.

Having scoured the forums for advice I'm pretty sure that a Schertler Basik will work ok on my Ibanez Mac10, but the Schertler Unico at £600 seems to have a poor reverb. The AER 60 doesn't pair well with the Schertler aparantly. ( info gleaned from this forum).

I could get, and probably should, a Schertler preamp, to help boost and control the guitar signal and so could feasibly just purchase a portable PA. e.g. Yamaha stagepass500 or Fender equivalent. Rubbish reverb again, and very basic EQ.

The Headline SK120 acoustic amp looks like a quality piece of kit, gets great reviews, and like it's contemporaries could be used as a small PA (possibly with the need to add an extra speaker by the same manufacturer). This adds a large chunk of cash to the cost as well.

A quality amp might provide a better sound than a cheapo portable PA, as well as the Basik pickup / amp being more versatile for recording purposes.

So far I've been trying to use various mics alone as I cant find a Schertler pick up here in Scotland. Feedback is a huge problem though, and has highlighted the need to sort my gear out.
I guess we'll not get much change out of £1000. So it would be great not to make a mistake with this decision!

Any advice that will help me find a solution to the choice conundrum would be greatly appreciated. I know that alot of folk here seem to be working musos with experience and might just have faced similiar choices.

Excuse the long winded post.

Thanks in advance folks.
Graham.

Stackabones

I also work in a duo--guitar and vocal (female). I'm using the Schertler Unico and having a great experience with it. Good for small rooms, and good as a stage monitor for large rooms. I ran her vocals and a nylon-string guitar through it.

Played an event this weekend with the duo, audience fluctuated between 200 to 500 people -- in a gymnasium! Used the Unico for stage monitor and the house PA for the rest of the room. Great results.

I set it on top of a wide-based milk crate, which works but my next purchase is a decent stand! Also, I had a chance to play the Schertler Side Active Loudspeaker several weeks ago ... and it really rounds out the sound a bit. Future purchase, I hope.

I've also used it at a jazz jam with an electric slimline archtop jazz guitar at a wine bar ... sounded good. Real clean and warm.

The reverb doesn't really bug me too much, but I tend to run it rather dry.

WowBobWow

I use a Unico too and can't compare it to other amps but it has been great for me. I've had it now for a few years and it gets used weekly for gigs and there has been no problems within it.

In regards to reverb, I'm not sure if you noticed the master reverb switch (there are two switches for reverb and I think if you want reverb there is enough reverb to either add some color to your sound or make you sound like you are in the bottom of a cave--if so desired. I never use reverb unless we are doing an outside gig and even then it would be a very minimal amount, perhaps just for a violinist or accordionist if their tone needs a bit of sugar-coating)

I think the great thing about the Unico is how many people can plug into it at once. I have used it many times for gigs with up to 4 people plugged into it and it works fine (2 guitars--one rhythm, one lead, accordion or singer, and violin). No client has ever complained about the sound and we have repeat annual cliente. You can also route everyone through it and go straight into a mixing board at clubs or set everyone though it or if recording, go into through the unico and patch into recording software like Protools or Cubase to record. There are a lots of fun things about the amp that make it versatile.

One complaint about it is if you are playing a larger concert venue the Unico doesn't have enough muscle to make lot of noise (but for the size of it it does have a good loud sound), what you have to do then is run a few monitors or speakers though it to spread out your sound.

Though in smaller rooms (depending on the acoustics of the area) it is superb for extending tones of your acoustic instruments (I even had my jazz piano teacher fall in love with the Unico when I brought it to a jazz guitar combo class and she wanted to know all about it so she could by one herself for her touring gigs)

Another complaint is it is heavier than the AERs and having to carry the Unico over any long distance blows. I usually use a dolly to secure it and pull it around but if you've got 400 steps to climb for some farout gig in the middle of nowhere the Unico weight becomes a workout to lug it about.

I don't know how the Unico sounds with electric instruments. I've only run acoustic instruments through it. For pickups now I used a Schatten pickup and run it through an L.R.Braggs DI box. In the past I used to just use a DYN-G & Shure 57 mic for amplication (30 percent of the DYN-G for warmth/bassy tones, then 70 percent of the Shure 57 faced near the soundhole of the guitar)

graham12300

Stackabones and wowbowow your comments were very helpful indeed and just what I was hoping for, i.e some pro advice on what works. Today I bought a Schertler Unico, and even with just a Sure mic the guitar sounds great, the mrs sounds fab, crisp, transparent sound. We're chuffed to bits with our purchase.
I felt much more confident having read your responses so thanks very much for the help. As usual the forum has proved most excellent.
All the best.
Graham.

Stackabones

Glad to help, Graham!