Help with basement band sounds/amps/etc.

[agetupkiddan]

Hello, i'm new to this forum, but have been doing a lot of research before recently buying an amp and have found it quite helpful.
I know the subject is a little vague, so i'll give a little background...
I play backup guitar and lead vocals for a ska-ish alt-rock band i guess you could say...

my gear consists of a new Kustom Duel 30RC amp, (i like the sound and have gone through like 3 amps recently ranging from 80 - 60 watts, (line 6, peavey, behringer, and this is my 1st smaller sized amp).. i went smaller based on a lot of the discussion here and on other forums concerning the whole small vs. big debate.. (lordathestrings i've learned a lot from your posts)... i do realize that it's probably better to get a smaller expensivish good quality amp, however i'm a student and have a limited budget, and the kustom seems to suit my needs right now... i have an epiphone special guitar (ya i know , but it was my 1st guitar.. i do plan on buying a better guitar sometime)

Our lead guitar guy uses a marshall 30 watt amp (not sure the model)
Our bassist recently bought a cort bass, and plays through one of the new Ibanez 100 watt bass amps.. however is planning on buying a 250 w Eden amp soon...
Our drummer uses a pearl set he's invested a lot into, however is planning on buying a new set this summer.

ok, so we play in the drummers basement , and recently have been playing the guitar amps and vocals through a makeshift PA out of an old stack we've aquired along the years... through mics of course.. i recently bought a small behringer mixer to level out guitars and vocals...

all seems ok, but we have trouble hearing each other or mainly hearing vocals .. my question i guess is what can we do to improve the sound here? would purchasing an actual PA system with monitors help (it is a smallish space however) or i was even looking into these headphone amps with 4 outputs.. to take the main mix from the mixer and give each player a set of headphones... i'm aware the drums will be louder than the headphones, but will the extra boost of sound from them improve hearing vocals and guitar?

also any advice for mic-ing smaller guitar amps would help.. as we will be playing shows, and i'd like to have some knowledge of that... should we mic them as well as put them through a mixer to go direct to the PA?

man that's a long thread, but i like to read a lot and spit out a detailed question rather than a bunch of small ones!
Cheers!
- Dan

[Raskolnikov]

I imagine the biggest problem you're having is keeping up volume-wise with the drummer?


First thing's first -- get your guitar amps up off the floor; the sound they produce will carry better and you'll maybe even be able to turn them down a bit (bass carries better on the floor).

Next, a PA, even a small one isn't a bad idea. You'll probably want your speakers up off the floor and it will be a little tricky to get them oriented so that you can hear yourselves and they're not feeding back. For practice, you'll probably only want to mic the vocals because you should be able to get the guitar and bass amps loud enough to handle a small room, even in spite of a drum set.

Also, I think you may be on the right track with your headphones idea, though I would look specifically into in-ear monitoring systems.

[Dr_simon]

Yep, all of what Rask said and..

why not run a line out of your desk (mon out or aux out) to a relatively cheap amp that can drive some monitor wedges. You probably only need two and it should make a big difference. I bet you could pick the lot up fro a couple of hundred bucks on eBay which is not so bad if the cost it is split between you.