Tomm Williams
New member
We are rehearsing where all the instruments are leveled to be at the right volume with un-miked drums, as that is the lowest volume we can set everything, cause the drummer can't play any quieter. We plug the mic into a bass effects pedal for reverb, from the pedal to an aux port on the microphone mixing board, then from the mixing board to the pa speaker. He does know how to project his voice. I actually don't know whether the pedal or the mixing board has a gate anyway, but we use a limiter, but the pa is still clipping (my band doesn't care that it clips as they think it is subtle, but I can't stand it personally) The drums are just acoustic, the bass guitar/ bass keyboard (as when I play keyboards, I use left hand bass for the bass part) are plugged into a 200 watt leslie speaker. The regular keyboards are plugged into a music man, the guitar is plugged into a regular 35 watt amplifier, and the guitarist also has a mic (which is turned off most of the time) for singing which is plugged into the mixer as well. I'm also afraid that the clipping is going to damage the speaker, but I'm not sure if clipping will do that to as speaker or not.
Try this-----------Take the mic out of the pedal and run it direct to an XLR in on your board. FX can be a pain in small rehearsal spaces as some types (reverb being one) use compression as an element of the effect. Compression is a huge PITA for feedback issues and quite frankly, FX in vocals has no place in a rehearsal setting (IMO anyway) It's also entirely possible that you're overdriving the pedal itself thus the clipping. Time to educate the band that they do need to care about clipping because it's your sound systems way of screaming: "You idiots are destroying me"
You are correct in playing to the volume of the drums. For the most part, there's not much you can do to change that. (wanna buy some E-drums?) Next look at your gain structure, how do you set each individual gain trim from the channel strip to the pedal to the powered speaker. Don't try to achieve too much gain at any one point, it's a balance. Next, is it possible your mic is the problem? the OM5 is a fine mic but is your faulty?------------it does happen. Test your system without the band playing and without the bass pedal. Determine what the max GBF is that you can achieve. You cannot rule out (at this point) that you simply do not have enough rig for what you're attempting to do. However, I don't think that's the case.