talkmagic.co.uk

I'd recommend going in to your local guitar and general music accessory shop and talking with them. It's what we did, I wish I could tell you the name and model of the stuff we've got but I can't (both remember or look it up, on loan at the mo). It worked a treat for us.

Good luck with your search.

Thanks for your help guys! The aerobics instructor thing looks just the job!

rhysjones wrote:I'd recommend going in to your local guitar and general music accessory shop and talking with them. It's what we did, I wish I could tell you the name and model of the stuff we've got but I can't (both remember or look it up, on loan at the mo). It worked a treat for us.

Good luck with your search.

Thats my plan for Saturday. Realised that there is no point looking at them on the internet. There is just too many to choose from and I'll end up buying something that won't meet my requirements.

The licensee of the pub I have been performing at has just bought a PA system from a specialist shop on Washway Road, Sale, Manchester (sorry nowhere near Crawley!) but the point of the reply is that the guy gave him exactly what he wanted, didn't try to sell him anything he didn't want, explained it fully, and it cost less than £300. For that he got two speakers and stands, hand held wireless mike and stand, and the Amp box itself with more dials than you possibly use! It also has a connection for ipod and laptop and he was playing his ipod through the system prior to my last gig.I did try it out at the start of my performance but I couldn't deal with the hand held mike so ditched it and went back to projecting my voice....or was it shouting! If he'd had a head mike I would defintitely carried on with it.
I was that impressed that I'm tempted to get my own.
I think the advice about the guitar/specialist shop is probably sound if only to pick their brains and see what Costco have to offer!
Happy hunting.

Try http://www.nightillusions.com they may cost a bit more but are good buy.

The best portable system I've seen is the Peevey Escort. Amethyst had one a few years ago at Ferrybridge and I had a good look at it. It doesn't come with a wireless mike but none of the decent ones do, but its a very good system. If I was going to buy one, thats the one I'd get, but I do already have a radio mike. It will fill a big hall and the quality is spot on. Daniel Hunt only speaks on it, with a bit of background music, but the quality is superb.

Hi All
I'm not a performing magician (a noobie in fact) but I am a sound engineer that works full time in the audio visual industry, and thought I'd try to gove some helpful pointers:

Ultra portable systems that come with a cd player and radio mic built in - dont expect great sound quality from these, but they do a job for the money, although they often have additional mic inputs if you want to use 2 radio mics (a wireless hand held and a lapel for example) at the same time, you'll need to buy a second radio mic system (on a different frequency). Bear in mind that a radio mic system would be best part of £200 on its own. As the speaker has the amp built in you dont get much in the way of sound shaping (EQ) so if it sounds crappy theres not much you can do to remedy it. Also be careful using a lapel (tie clip) as they can feedback if you go anywhere near the speaker.

You could do a lot worse than to buy a cheap practise bass/keyboard amp and a separate radio mic kit, and possibly a cheap 4 channel mixer. although this maybe over complicating things at least you can upgrade certain elements as budget/requirements see fit further down the line.

The other thing to consider for those of you with a bigger budget - Beware of buying second hand UHF radio mics as the bandwidth will become obsolete in 2012 (and a lot of people will be offloading them to the unaware on ebay!!!) - VHF frequencies not affected.

Regards
Paul