I played an outstanding venue in Panama City FL yesterday. They had a HELL of a good PA system...
All JBL PRX series FOH and monitor systems... First time I've played through those (I have used an SR series pair of passives for quite a while and LOVE those) and I have to confess, I was blown away (almost literally!) by the 12" monitors they had on stage. Superb clarity, 500W RMS (1000W peak) power built in, switchable system EQ for either FOH or monitor use, and, dig this... bombproof construction, built in power, and still only 40 lbs.!
On top of that, the venue provided vocal mikes, and get this... they were all Neumann KMS 104/5's
A superb $700 microphone with air for days. I WANT ONE! Finally, something in a handheld that blows away my EV 767a...!
All LED lighting system, Allen and Heath split console mixing board, house engineer... Even a dedicated, reserved parking spot in the crowded parking lot for the band van! I thought I had died and gone to heaven!
But all this was for just another beach bar and restaurant, albeit a pretty large one, not some fancy theater venue... After seeing so many of these kinds of venues go cheap, nasty and sonically horrible, to get to play a place like this was a total pleasure. This was with a live reggae band (but I still just use my G70
), and I play there again next Sunday. At long last, a beach gig with a house system I'm actually looking FORWARD to
BTW, place is called Pineapple Willy's, if you want to look it up...
Anyway, Fran, you want a reference to judge those Podium's against, stack 'em up against a pair of JBL PRX's and let me know how they compare... Yes, yes, I know, the JBL's are triple the price of the Podium's
But seeing as how everyone else wants to compare the Podium's to the $2500 Bose systems, I thought maybe a comparison to a great conventional system might be interesting, too...