Active or Not... Help!

[Sapphire Disco]

Why don't you ask if the guy selling the Mackies if he could meet you half way ? if he's still got them .

No I think you would be throwing your money away on QTX type stuff , you don't necessarily need subs with the Mackies although if you found you needed a bit more for some venues you could get a single compact active sub and put it under your deck stand.

[Pe7e]

For your budget of £500 there are no new speakers that I would advise you to buy, QTX an Ekho would be best avoided. In my opinion, you would be much better off buying a s/h pair of professional standard speakers than new inferior ones. They will sound better, out last them, and retain a better residual value when you come to sell them (think cost of ownership). If you are regularly doing gigs for 150+ then maybe you should be looking for a decent pair of 15" actives, a pair of 12" speakers without a sub is a big ask even for pro speakers, especially if you are doing lots of 18th and 21sts. Assuming you have a decent size vehicle, and you aren't a seven stone weakling, I would recommend you consider the Mackie SA1521s, awesome sound, and they will cope easily with 250ish guest parties without subs, and (in my experience) are pretty much bullet proof if not over driven. Cost wise you would need around £600 for a s/h pair of these in good condition, and only buying s/h speakers that have been well looked after is important, if the outsides are in a poor state, the insides are also likely to be the same, ropey ones are best avoided IMO. To illustrate a point, I sold a pair of 1521s three weeks ago for £600, I originally bought them s/h for £675 and had owned them for just over two years in which time I spent just £30 replacing a HF diaphragm. I can't think of any new speakers I could have purchased that would cost me less than a £1 a week to own and operate. Buying s/h pro quality kit is the way to go IMO, but you do need to be selective and only buy the well looked after examples as they don't come with a guarantee.

[starlight-party]

Thanks for all your advice, seriously its been a godsend.

I think I am going to have to save some cash and buy some mackies, seems like they are the best for what I need and if I need more power, then its going to be a case of using my old speakers and amp to boost and then saving and buying a second set of Mackies for bigger parties.

Sound and understanding sound is not my expertise at all (which is not good really), so all your help is appreciated.

thanks again guys.

[DJ Jules]

Anyone any idea what the ekho or qtx speakers are like?

In one word. (insert any swearword you like). They look good on paper and sound awful in person.

When I started out I had a Prosound rig from maplin's which did me well for a year or so. I then went out and spent £1200 on a JBL system (2 x JRX115 tops and 2 x JRX118S subs) and another £400 on a pair of amps (amps were new, cabs were second hand) because the idea of spending £1600+ on a pair of active EON's or other quality active speakers put me off and I thought I was getting more for my money this way. I then spent 18months regretting the decision as I was lugging around a lot of heavy kit which always sounded a bit "sharp" at the top end to my ears and didn't really give me what I wanted.

I then bit the bullet and spent £1600 on a pair of RCF's, sold the JRX kit and the amps at for about £800 and have never, ever looked back since.

The moral of the story - don't be tempted to buy kit "to tide you over" or something that you think "will be good enough", it WILL cost you more in the long run and you are unlikely to ever be happy with it until you have bit the bullet and bought something of quality. I wish I'd just followed my gut instinct and bought RCF, QSC or the JBL EON's first time round - I would have saved myself a LOT of money and backache!!

Before you buy anything, go and listen to it and think really hard about how happy you're going to be to a) be carrying the speakers around (and bear in mind that a lot of actives from the cheaper brands have little weight advantage over passives) and b) be listening to them belting out 2-3 times a week for the next 2-3yrs.

If you're really not happy with what you've got now because of the weight and their power output, I'd recommend buying a cheap pair of plastic passive cabs second hand that will cost you less than a few hundred notes and tide you over - but don't blow your budget on something which you should realise is going to need to be replaced in a year or two (and might not even last that long given the track record of some of the cheaper brands for reliability).

P.S. a 5hr round trip isn't that bad (and there is always www.parcel2go.com if you're really not up to driving that long).

Julian

[DJ Jules]

I think I am going to have to save some cash and buy some mackies, seems like they are the best for what I need and if I need more power, then its going to be a case of using my old speakers and amp to boost and then saving and buying a second set of Mackies for bigger parties.

The other thing to bear in mind is that cheaper brands will quote figures on paper that they can't produce in real life. I borrowed a set of SRM350's (10" cabs rated at 275w RMS a side) for a school disco 4yrs ago and they wiped the floor with the kit I had at the time (Prosound 15's and a Prosound1600 amp rated at 350w/side!)

The 422's I own now are rated at 450w RMS a side and I've never hit the limiter on them with gigs up to 200 people. I know I'd get a fuller sound out of them with one or two bins, but they do well in most venues by themselves and they're only a 12" cab. A few weeks ago I had a chat with the resident DJ at a venue and he runs JBL 125's paired with 118 subs in the same room (theoretically over 1100w per side) and said that my RCF's had a much nicer, rounder, sound to them and were doing the job better than his 4 cab rig!

Julian

[SoundONE]

P.S. a 5hr round trip isn't that bad (and there is always www.parcel2go.com if you're really not up to driving that long).

Julian

Never use parcelwillgo-astray without insurance, I see a lot of people recomending these, don't be fooled, don't risk it, myself and several others I know have all had parcels lost by them and they they charged all of us to loose them, shocking.

[teenypops]

Never use parcelwillgo-astray without insurance, I see a lot of people recomending these, don't be fooled, don't risk it, myself and several others I know have all had parcels lost by them and they they charged all of us to loose them, shocking.

surely it isn't parcel2go themselves that can be awful as they are just essentially an agent like compare the market, advertising and selling other couriers services on their behalf????

[DJ Jules]

Never use parcelwillgo-astray without insurance, I see a lot of people recomending these, don't be fooled, don't risk it, myself and several others I know have all had parcels lost by them and they they charged all of us to loose them, shocking.

Going a little bit Off topic, but which courier were you using through parcel2go? I've never had anything go missing or get damaged yet (and I've sent quite a bit through them, including amps and the aforementioned JBL JRX118S subs!)

I agree with the insurance thing though, I would always use insurance for any item worth over £50 regardless of which courier/service I used.

Julian

[SoundONE]

It doesn't matter which courier, loose-your-parcel (parcel-has-gone parcel2go whatever you want to call them) wont except liability and the courier will refer you back to them. My advice is free, don't take my word for it carry on using them, makes no odds to me, I was only offering advice. We all thought they were OK until they lost our parcels.

[ckpr2]

I bought a pair of new ekho 400 watts speakers and was a bit disappointed in the volume of them.

Look for a decent make preferably new.

Second hand stuff scares me especially after being stung on ebay a few times.
"Honest guv just used twice" is a common saying on ebay.
I have received cd players that were completely useless off ebay despite them saying they were hardly used.
Speakers don't last forever so why chance unknown second hand speakers off ebay?

I don't have a problem with ebay as I always buy new off ebay from a dealer rather than a private person.
I have had a couple of good deals on lights which were £20-£30 cheaper than list price.

The only other way is buy from mates who will be honest about how old the speakers really are.