Hello everyone. First off, I would just like to say that in regards to Pa's I am a novice and am looking to buy my very first. My band is a two piece: it consists of me on acoustic guitar and vocals and my sister on keyboard and vocals. We have the bass and drum parts recorded on my iPod and will be playing that through the Pa as well. It was suggested to us from a PA salesmen that the Yorkville M810-2 powered mixer and the Yorkville Yx12 speakers would be powerful enough to meet our needs and make us sound good. Keep in mind the biggest venues we will be playing at this point are halls and maybe theatres. We will be playing mostly smaller clubs since we are just starting out. We are on a budget of maximum $2000. If anyone has any insight, suggestions or advice for us it would be deeply appreciated! Thanks 🙂
Hi,
How loud it will go depends on the speakers.
So does how much real bass you'll get out of
the speakers using them for bass and drums.
YMMV but I'd expect a typical 12"/Horn PA
speaker to be loud but not up to much in
the bass department at all, fine for vocals
and guitar, not good for bass, low keyboards
and bass drum. Many 12"/Horn speakers have
a matching bass cabinet to turn them full range.
Its a bit of a minefield getting suitable PA speakers.
15" + Horn with decent bass I'd recommend, 8 ohm.
Add some good 8 ohm bass cabs for the biggest spaces.
rgds, sreten.
How loud it will go depends on the speakers.
So does how much real bass you'll get out of
the speakers using them for bass and drums.
YMMV but I'd expect a typical 12"/Horn PA
speaker to be loud but not up to much in
the bass department at all, fine for vocals
and guitar, not good for bass, low keyboards
and bass drum. Many 12"/Horn speakers have
a matching bass cabinet to turn them full range.
Its a bit of a minefield getting suitable PA speakers.
15" + Horn with decent bass I'd recommend, 8 ohm.
Add some good 8 ohm bass cabs for the biggest spaces.
rgds, sreten.
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You can do a lot better than that with $2000, I suggest you find a salesman that isn't stuck in 1970 and buy modern equipment meaning powered speakers and a portable mixer, suggestions would include a pair of EV ELX 115p speakers and a Soundcraft EFX8 mixer.
I am guessing you do not intend to be particularly loud. And is sis mainly playing piano patches? With an instrumental lineup like that I also assume you are not looking for chest thumping disco beat kick drum? If you are not playing huge kick drums and bottom heavy power synth stuff, small speakers should be fine. At least for starting out.
That looks like a nice enough mixer with enough mic channels and inputs for the two of you and your instruments. The mixer has two amplifiers within, rated at 400 watts each at 4 ohms. The YX12 speakers are 8 ohm cabinets so you could add another pair at some point and the amp still be happy.
I see the YX12 listed as discontinued on the Yorkville site. Nothing wrong with that, but maybe you can get the seller to come down on price some because of that.
In my experience, I have always found Yorkville stuff to be good basic equipment and a good value for the price. All the companies make similar models, and it is common these days to include graphic EQ and digital FX, which this has.
Since you are working with a salesman, ask him to show you a couple alternatives and tell you why he prefers the Yorkville. His reasons may be instructive. Some things that may influence might be service/support, where can it get fixed if needed. Price matters. Warranty matters.
Look, the entire service manual is available for download on the Yorkville web site.
http://yorkville.com/downloads/servman/sm_m810m1610.pdf
COmpare that to say Behringer, who will not send schematics to anyone other than service centers in their network.
And if you are in Canada, it is a Canadian product, so there would be no import issues.
Ask the salesman if you can take the system out on approval. In other words, you are purchasing the thing as long as it meets your approval once you try to use it. Just because it sounds good in the store doesn;t mean it will be what you want at the gig. And to expand on what sreten said, a 15" version of a similar cabinet might sound better to you. Does the salesman have any similar 15+ horn cabs?
That looks like a nice enough mixer with enough mic channels and inputs for the two of you and your instruments. The mixer has two amplifiers within, rated at 400 watts each at 4 ohms. The YX12 speakers are 8 ohm cabinets so you could add another pair at some point and the amp still be happy.
I see the YX12 listed as discontinued on the Yorkville site. Nothing wrong with that, but maybe you can get the seller to come down on price some because of that.
In my experience, I have always found Yorkville stuff to be good basic equipment and a good value for the price. All the companies make similar models, and it is common these days to include graphic EQ and digital FX, which this has.
Since you are working with a salesman, ask him to show you a couple alternatives and tell you why he prefers the Yorkville. His reasons may be instructive. Some things that may influence might be service/support, where can it get fixed if needed. Price matters. Warranty matters.
Look, the entire service manual is available for download on the Yorkville web site.
http://yorkville.com/downloads/servman/sm_m810m1610.pdf
COmpare that to say Behringer, who will not send schematics to anyone other than service centers in their network.
And if you are in Canada, it is a Canadian product, so there would be no import issues.
Ask the salesman if you can take the system out on approval. In other words, you are purchasing the thing as long as it meets your approval once you try to use it. Just because it sounds good in the store doesn;t mean it will be what you want at the gig. And to expand on what sreten said, a 15" version of a similar cabinet might sound better to you. Does the salesman have any similar 15+ horn cabs?
Cute. I appreciate your message, but I was a touring soundman in 1970, and that was the era of the Shure Vocal Master. We would have killed for anything remotely like that Yorkie.
Sorry, but gonna have to disagree here.
A pair of decent 12" two-way tops will be plenty enough, and will probably be nicer through the midrange, too:
For a 15" two-way cabinet, you're either running the LF driver into beaming and cone break-up, or you've got a compression driver that's having to work hard down to ~1kHz. With budget speakers, neither is gonna sound good - a rather good compression driver is needed to get that low with plenty of headroom.
12"s don't have as much of this problem, and given that the majority of what people will be listening to will be in the midrange, that's where I'd put my money.
A 15" sub would give some more low end kick, but that can be added later.
If you gave me the money to do this, I'd get an 8-12-channel mixer, a Behringer DCX2496, and a pair of these:
EV Electro Voice ZLX12P Powered Active 2 Way PA Speakers Pair ZLX 12P New | eBay
Use the DCX to get rid of feedback etc as needed, plus it has the option of easily adding a sub later.
That lot will blow the Yorkville stuff clean out of the water, no doubt about it, and can probably be done for ~$1000.
Chris
I do an open mic night in a small lodge with a pair of ZLX-12ps and a Mackie ProFx mixer, the whole PA including mic stands and a couple cable bags fits in the trunk of my car. Powered speakers like this sound good right out of the box, no need to figure out what processing or amp power they need you just plug them in feed them a signal. That was my point... things have come a looooooooooong way even in just the last few years so take advantage of it, don't use the same old crap that's been around for 20+ years just because everybody else does.
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