Hi Gary,

We only recently started playing out with our Audya. Although I'm younger than you, the same symptoms you had is trying it's best to effect me. For the first time ever, transporting such a heavy arranger around is having it's toll on me. Add to that the extremely heavy new double 18" Celestion bass bin, the power gen that no longer fits inside my trailer and you'll get the pic.

Same as you, I am now taking another serious look at my current toys. Good as they are, I find it rather hard to cope & all of this hard work is taking the fun out of our current ventures. After unpacking everything yesterday, I was severely drained & grasping for breath.

I am seriously considering cutting back on our sound and adding the S950 to my toys. Maybe I'll replace every single speaker & horn inside of those Fanes with the latest, most powerful versions & up my total amping power. I'll try my utmost best not to get rid of what I currently have as these are really, but really outstanding, but definitely not for moving around...

Either the above, or build another bigger sound trailer with everything already attached in place. But alas, I'm also no longer in the mood for working with steel.

All the best my friend,

Henni

Just two more of yesterday's effort. I am going to do something about all this hard work. It's a case of either going really big, or really small... But change I WILL!!!

Henni

Try a couple full size Bose L1s! Maybe add an extra bass (B1) on each side. You will love the sound, the size and the weight.
DonM

Hi DonM,

I will investigate. Did not realize that the Bose system could handle outside ventures also.

The Celestion alone weighs over 80kgs!

All the best my friend,

Henni

I am surprised a good 15 inch sub woofer wouldn't provide the sort of bass response you need and would be much lighter than carting a 2 x 18 speaker cabinet around.

Hi Nigel,

We had two 15" bass bins. Unfortunately, the wooden cases got damp & fell apart. Before I could fix, we were offered the double Celestians at a good price. I did not think about the weight then, but I do now.

All the best,

Henni

Outside coverage by the Bose is phenomenal. You can hear it for a mile.
DonM

Henni,

I concur with Don's observations - the outdoor coverage is phenomenal. I used a single L1 system with a single B1 sub, played at the Aberdeen Municipal Park, where I did a 2-hour concert. I had people 600 feet away dancing and they said the music sounded great. Yet, the people that were just 15 to 20 feet away said it was not too loud and that I was the first performer they could make that statement about. The standard L1 system is just awesome, but for the jobs I'm currently doing it was overkill.

My daughter attends a church near where I live and they have an incredible Bose sound system and the area it covers is massive. I'm confident the church would easily seat 500 to 700 people. Their system consists of 4 L1 type columns, two on either side of the stage, plus a pair of B1 subs that are on the floor, one on either side of the stage area. With the master volume turned up to approximately 1/4, the entire church, including adjacent rooms, is filled with incredible sound.

I don't know if these systems are available in SA, but I would think there would be outlets in some major cities.

Good Luck,

Gary (The old guy!)

try renting a Bose unit for a show first to see if it fill your needs....I'd say get two complete units at least.

Hi everyone,

Tx for the advice. I'll definitely look into it. Sorry Gary, did not mean to offend you. At 59 I'm not that far behind. Please accept my apologies my friend. It's hard for me to accept one is getting older & I already feel like a idiot for even starting this thread. One is only as old as one perceive oneself to be - I should preach this to myself more often.

There's a lot we still intend to do & here I'm whining away like some fool. I think this weekend only caught me a little off guard & I should get over it asap!

Henni

Let us know ..how well the Bose bass modules replace the double 18's...

Most folks don't have a clue...there will be a massive difference in bass..

There must be experienced sub woofer people here that would know what I am talking about..I have played outdoor venues with big sound coming from 18's....No way will you get the same coverage from L1's...

Of course it could be overkill for your venue (18'), and the L1's could do the job...but they are different as night and day..

Rather a different issue with a sub inside a large church and trying to get solid bass outdoors.

Of course, so far, no pictures showing the size of the congregation, so no idea yet what kind coverage Henni really needs, but I think some of us have no idea of the kind of gear you need to get REALLY loud, especially outdoors. If you are doing a full on show, at concert levels you'd get from a real band, one little Bose stick just ain't going to cut it.

There's a REASON bands don't use these things. Heck, even Bose, in their own promotional stuff, show band members as having one of these things EACH (LOL). Bose's are great for lower volume solo/duo acts needing a huge amount of coverage, but try to use one to get a full band sound up to full band volumes, and you quickly see the difference. Most live bands put more power total into just the subs than a double L1 system puts out in total!

If you haven't played for years with a full live band, playing full volume for younger people, I honestly don't think you can really judge what is needed.

Henni, Believe me, nothing you said was offensive. I'm proud to have lived this long, and to still be an active, full-time entertainer. Now, I can tell you that getting this old was not nearly as much fun as it was cracked up to be, but I just returned from a 3-day, 150-voyage on my sailboat, and when I got back to the dock I had a call on my cellular telephone from a lady in Marathon Key, Florida who wanted to know if I could do a large, outdoor, private party for her in early February. I asked how many people and she said probably about 100 to 125, which I can easily do with the L1 Compact. Last winter that system worked very well for audiences to 170 at Marathon City Marina's Tiki Hut.

The largest outdoor job I've done was approximately 1,200 people at the Ocean City Maryland Tuna Tournament. I had performed this particular event the first time using a pair of Peavey SP5Gs mounted on poles and the system was driven with a Peavey 600FX Stereo powered mixer. The following year I added another pair of Yamaha 12-inch powered speakers, which really made everything boom! The next year I used a pair of Barbetta Sona 32-SCs on poles, which were a lot cleaner sounding than the Peaveys. Three years of Barbetta and the Bose L1 with the B1 bass cab went on stage with me.

Keep in mind that the audiences here were a bunch of party-hearty big-boat owners that spent thousands on these tournaments in hopes of winning a million or more by bringing in the largest tuna. They loved to party and they were extremely loud - always. This had been a concern using the prior sound systems, mainly because when I fired up some MP3s and walked to the back of the venue I thought the volume was much lower than I anticipated.

When I set up the Bose system the Ocean City Fishing Center owners came to me and said "Where are your speakers?" When I pointed to the tower and the sub it was plain to see they were a bit skeptical to say the least. At the time, the place was mobbed, everyone had been drinking heavily for at least an hour or more and they were ready to party. I fired up the keyboard and played "Flip, Flop And Fly", the crowd loved it, the people who in prior years that were at the back of the venue were up dancing, and the owners looked at me, smiled and gave me two thumbs up.

I sincerely believe that for your usage, a pair of Bose L1s with a pair of B1 subs would be more effective for a number of reasons. First and foremost, as you well know, you would be dealing with a much lighter sound system, the heaviest component tipping the scales at just over 30 pounds. Assembly time is less than three minutes for each system, which I demonstrated a few years ago with a YouTube video.

Bose excels when it comes to clarity, which I consider an integral component of any sound system. One of my major gripes with the Peavey system was that it never sound clear, especially the vocals, and this is coming from someone that lives and dies by the quality of his vocals. The Barbetta system was good, and so was the first Yamaha sound system I owned, but not even remotely close to the vocal quality provided by the Bose L1.

Falloff, especially in outdoor performances, is always a major obstacle that every outdoor entertainer has to deal with. I watched in awe at the Merriweather Post Pavilion when three tractor trailers pulled up to set up the stage for a Jimmy Buffett concert. There was a crew of at least 30 or more that spent six hours putting the stage together, a structure that placed speakers in both a massive horizontal and vertical array. There was probably 100 speakers involved in their setup. I got to talk with one of the sound guys who said they needed every one of them to reach the audience at the back end of the crowd with the volume they wanted.

Falloff with vertical array systems is minimal at best, averaging less than 10-percent at 100-feet. In contrast, the fall-off is substantially higher with conventional sound systems is considerably higher, as much as 25 or more percent at 100 feet. Additionally, with the Bose L1 vertical array, the horizontal coverage is at least 180-degrees, and I believe that has been increased to 210 degrees with the newer systems. This means that audience members off to the side, even those at great distances, hear the same clarity and volume as those situated directly in front of the speakers. To my knowledge, there is no other sound system that provides this amount of horizontal coverage.

I suspect that a pair of L1s with a pair of B1 subs will do everything you wish and more. However, I also suspect that in SA the import taxes will be brutal unless Bose has a manufacturing plant in SA. Bose provides some of the highest quality sound systems in the world, but they come at a premium price.

I hope the above information is beneficial and you are able to lighten the load and continue to do the great work you do for many years to come.

Good Luck,

Gary

Since I suggested Henni might like the Bose setup, I suppose a couple of the back-handed comments were directed at me.
First, he is not a full band playing for a rock audience. He plays an arranger and does a wonderful ministry, and even though there may be hundreds there, I would think clean coverage for everyone in sight would be preferred to blowing the ears off the first five rows of people in order to be heard in the back.
However, since I haven't heard or seen his needs (and neither has anyone else here), I merely suggested he might be really pleased with the Bose. The L1 was designed for each player in the band to have his own system. However the Bose forum has countless pages of suggested setups and dialogue suggesting that an awfully lot of people are using it for duos and small groups as well.
I have considerable experience with both types of pa systems, and there are certainly venues where one is better than the other.
One other benefit of the Bose is that your ears will thank you when you can still distinguish highs when you get older.
Go ahead guys, haul your 18-inch subs around. Oh wait, I'll bet there aren't more than two or there on here who do that. Maybe that makes it easier to suggest to others that it's the way to go?
My limited backwoods experience tells me that most people, not everyone, who tries the Bose gear under anything close to normal circumstances ends up liking it a lot. Not everyone can afford it though.
DonM

I can’t add much to what others have said, except to agree that the Bose Model II is the best vocal PA I’ve ever owned. Coverage was great, with lots of compliments. However, I’ve convinced myself that backing tracks in stereo sound better----especially for arranger playing, guitar, etc... So, I sold the Bose and got a stereo mixer with powered speakers. If Bose ever figures out how to do what they do in stereo, I’m sure I’ll return.

Oh it's easy to do, you just buy two of them!
I had two of the original L1's, but only once did I need anything approaching that much power. It was outdoors at a large stock car race track.
I then bought two Compacts and after about a year of using them on everything, I sold both of the big ones. I simply don't play venues that require that much output.
I'm a stereo nut also, so I always take both Compacts, even though volume-wise they aren't needed.
The rig that Henni would probably need would cost at least $4,000, for two L1s and a couple of bass bins on each side.
Two Compacts run about $1600 or so, but I'm worth it!
DonM

Hi everyone,

Tx for all your feedback. How we wished we were playing for a few thousand at a time... But the hard reality is that the crowd normally range from 100 to 200. So I know what we currently use is an overkill for our situation.

I've made up my mind. I'm going to scale down our current sound trailer to the bare minimum required, which in our case would be those Fanes built into the doors.

Next I intend paying someone to start building me a bigger sound trailer on twin axles like I had before. The one side will lower to be the stage, the front and rear panels will open like doors and these will house all the speakers. Even the generator will be fixed inside.

I had a similar trailer many moons ago, and it was really just a case of opening up, start the gen & play. My current trailer is no longer taking the work out of the venues & taking the work out of it was my intention when I built it.

I really believe the Bose must be a fantastic system and if it was not for the fact that we've already had the sound, I would seriously consider. Please remember that we are not paid for what we do - do the contrary it costs us a lot. So everything I buy comes out of my current salary.

Anyway, I've sulked enough - cowboys don't cry. How's the saying: "Getting old is not for sissies"

Thank you once again for all the feedback my friends.

All the best,

Henni

Hi all,

Herewith a more close-up of those Fanes.

Keep well all,

Henni

Hi all,

Ours is a weird application - Why we sometimes need the distance & the oomph for the occasion. Here we just parked, opened up & started to address those inside their houses in the distance. This type of scenario presents itself more often than not.

Most of our venues are uninvited where we just barge up to the scene and try to grab as much attention as we can. I know this sounds rude, but this is what open air evangelism is all about & mostly it's not for the faint hearted.

Those double 18" Celestions would have come in handy here... Sorry to say, if it sounds like I do not know exactly what I want, then it is because I do not know exactly what I want.

Keep well all,

Henni

Take a look at Electro-Voice. I used their SB122 subs (molded plastic cabinets and 35lbs each) and ZX-1's (molded plastic 16 lbs) with sub poles for 90% of what I did both singles and with the band. Mixer and power amp required in rack, or powered mixer. My amp put out 660w @ 4 ohms. Added a pair of Klipsch 215's for oversized outdoor stuff. There are now powered sub/satellite combos from EV as well (ZXa1 sub and ZXa1 powered satellite). The clarity is superb, and the 12" subs sound like others 15's+.

More great advice from sailor Gary...
I did and went double bass units and the crowds
Love it and so does my back!
Tom Patrick

I think it a very Cool set up keep using it .

Hi all my friends,

Tx for all the advice.

All the best,

Henni