Renting Speakers for small Gig?

Do you have somewhere else you can rent from? None of the gear on that page will give you a “club” sound. Especially, for a few hundred people.

I’ll let Terry and Vintage get into the specifics, but you’re at the very least going to want 15-inch active speakers and a couple of 18-inch active subs.

You’d need 4 of those (bare minimum). You are saying this is the only PA rental gear company in your area?

Usually I would take a few pictures of the room, jot down the dimensions, number of people and type of gig and ask the rental boys for advice on what to get.

A pair of K12’s will fill a medium sized room easily – kids don’t want ear-splitting volume levels (they are more sensible than most 18-24 year olds in that case) and they wont care that much about the sound quality..

At one of the bigger events I work at, we use 6 k12s plus 2 Ksubs to fill a large (150x80m ish) space to insane (120db in the middle of the floor) levels of sound – and the bass from the K12’s in “Deep” mode is something else – they have enough amp power (1KW RMS) – and they use it well enough to put most other speakers to waste – they sound like they have a sub in the system when there isn’t one.

They sound much, much better than the similarly priced Yamaha DXR15’s as well..

Back on topic, if the JBL’s he rents out are anything like the ones in the picture then dont bother. Just don’t. I had to use a pair of identical ones (but branded “Skytec”) for a couple of months before I could afford my Mackie’s. They are awful – they have no low end, the high is really muddy and they have a freq. response that must look like a mountain range.. It hurt me every time I used them – my £100 sony hi-fi would have done a better job of filling the room.. 🙁

And the power rating he states – 720W – must be peak for both speakers, meaning that total RMS is around 360W RMS or 180W RMS per speaker.. Which is nothing as generally you want between 5 and 10W RMS per person in your venue (Indoors – double it for outdoor work) to fill the room properly.. In comparison those QSC’s are 1000W RMS each – Ideal for a crowd of 400-200 people if the maths works..

Hope this makes sense/helps,

bob6397

The reason I recommended 4 speakers had nothing to do with power ratings or whatever. With larger groups I like to create a “dancefloor” (even if none is physically there), by putting 4 speakers on the (virtual) corners. This allows for a much more even sound level across the area and helps to (somewhat) contain the highest volume levels within this area.

Sound has the unfortunate effect of decreasing rapidly with increasing distance from the source. I.e. if you want a fair level at the back of the room/floor, you have to make a lot of noise at the front. By firing inward from four corners, this effect is way less.

Just my two cents as usual.

True that.

In general: Assuming that the customer will pay for the rental (and the DJ pockets a small 10-20% fee from the rental company), it’s good procedure to offer the customer what YOU think is the best (with all the supporting arguments) and if the customer frowns at the price, you can always say that it IS possible to use only 2 speakers but they will lose some of the advantages.

That way you won’t be stuck with a “it didn’t sound as good, too loud, not loud enough” remark later on 😀