This may be a dumb question but I feel like I have to ask it. I play in a 3-piece band that has 1 guitar, 1 drums, 1 bass and 1 singer. We play on small stages, bars, local gigs etc. The singer uses a Boss VE500 for his own vocal effects and harmonies. He uses a Heil mic (as do I no effects except through the CQ). There are a total 4 mics + 4 drum mics.
My singer uses 2 12” powered speakers to hear himself (and yes before you ask, they are loud). I use no monitor and just listen off the FOH or his wedge to my left. I have no amp btw - using Tone Master Pro direct to CQ and a Tone Master FR out of my TMP.
The bass player has a monitor not very loud and has just some of my guitar in it and his own vocal but he is not the problem.
The drummer has 1 12” power speaker for his kick, some of the singer and sometimes if he can’t hear my Tone FR, me. He uses an SM57 mic for his vocals which is mostly talking in between songs.
As you can imagine, feedback has become a problem. I bring up volumes and use the feedback assistant and can find where I have to back off the output and it helps but the frequencies jump all over the place.
I am considering just putting the feedback assistant in LIVE mode with fast recovery and let it do its thing but is there a problem doing that.
I do not have the ability to mix all night or make adjustments along the way so isn’t what this type of thing is made for?
A good solid “ringing out” of the monitors using the monitor mix out EQ would be a good start and not just relying on the feedback assistant to try to do all the work.
You said the singer uses a vocal effects processor on their mic……of all of those of any brand that I have encountered 95% of the time they cause issues all around on the vocal channel, people using them use way too many effects, they add noise to the channel, strange eq and compression. Generally the person using them thinks more of everything is better! I have had rock solid monitors and then someone plugs one of those into their mic line and 50% of the time I start getting strange random feedback issues and many times the level has not changed much. Yes I’m ranting, take the Boss unit out of the signal path, not bypass but removed and see what the monitors are like then. Get them solid that way and then maybe reconnect the Boss and dial back the effects and bypass the EQ and compression. Don’t forget to tell them to bypass the effects when they talk to the audience in between songs!
Singer runs directly to the input channel on the CQ from his VE550. I can confirm that this is the cause of probably 95% of the feedback. He can’t run without them AND he can’t perform without hearing the effects on. Sort of like a guitar player who can’t make out his overdrive or reverb (so I get it - he needs to hear what he’s expecting). So Boss can’t come out.
BTW - there are really no issues on the FOH. Its always the backline - too many speakers, too much gain and too much delay/wet effects.
I think ‘won’t’ is more appropriate than ‘can’t’. Go ahead and put the FBA on his channel and let it chop up his signal. Apparently he thinks feedback sounds better than no vocal processing.
Seriously though, the outs on his unit (which are wet) go to the mixer. I don’t have any dry signal at all. That’s what I meant by can’t.
Thanks though - you just confirmed what I was thinking. I’m trying to eliminate setup time and not worry about fussing over minute details before I’ve even tuned my guitar. At least now I can shrug my shoulders and say: “Auto-feedback is on, I’m not controlling it”.
There is an option if you haven’t run out of inputs; stick a y-cable between his mic and the unit.
Then feed the processed side into one channel for his monitor, and the unprocessed side into the other for the PA. He’ll hear all his vocal glop, but the audience won’t. It doesn’t fix the feedback problem, but the band will probably sound better.
Sorry. My experience has been the mostly the opposite. Most users overdo it. Like having too much distortion on a guitar. It just doesn’t work in context.
I notice the replies are all “who needs vocal processors anyway!?” take it from somebody that uses one AND runs the PA. One sore spot if a harmonizer is used is that the Mic gets into a loop with listening to the sound and creating harmony. In my case, it gets the feed from the keyboard. Worst-case, it starts sounding like the keys are out of tune. Part of the trick is to make sure the mic is not tweaked so hot that it picks up everything. In my case, monitor versus mic placement is crucial. If we are so cramped I can’t fix it, I bypass the FX unit. Contrary to what sound guys want to say, “if you can’t sound good with a 58, you can’t sound good!”…..What a house guy might want, is to make his job easier…it flies in the face of every guy I know that has a microphone collection…bottom line, a 58 is less trouble for them. Me, I like Heil. Job one is to make that singer sound as awesome as possible…yeah, and put a big button topper on the bypass switch for when he wants to tell the audience a joke….
Thanks for that reply - very helpful. Both the singer and myself use Heil mics (love them). He takes the feed from my guitar out into his VE550 so there is no issue on the harmony tracking (well as long as I play in key anyway).
We talked about it last night and we are going to try some changes this weekend to see if we can limit the feedback. My fallback is to just leave the FBA on with a quick response and see how it goes.
Whenever I’ve had to work with one of those things, I have found it useful to split the mic signal with a Y-cable and run the mic directly into the mixer as well as to the processor. Then I run the effect output into another channel (or pair of channels) on the mixer. Make sure that the vocal processor is set to 100% wet so that its channel(s) only send processed signal to the mixer. That way you can deal with the dry vocal channel normally while still doing what you have to do with the effect channel EQ in order to deal with its feedback inducing enhancements.
I did run this weekend with 1 less front monitor and the FBA on in live mode and we had no issues. I heard the start of some feedback and the FBA quickly kicked in and it performed as expected.
I also got the drummers wedge under control and working perfectly. No more feedback on his which was contributing.
If we go to a second monitor this weekend (for one of the places), I am going to test out just running the line out on the speaker to the next speaker (Same signal from the output) and see if that helps. The FBA will be in live mode.
