These days if you want big bottom end in a portable PA package a worthwhile consideration is a sub satellite powered speaker system. With a huge range of these speaker systems on the market, all of different sound and build quality, not to mention a huge variation in their prices, it’s well worth listening to a few before making your final decision….But how do you know which speakers are right for you without listening to all of them?
The above questions all confronted Jeremy Holcombe of the Doc Holcombe Folk’n Country Band a Regional NSW Folk, alt-country and bluegrass band consisting of vocals, guitars, banjos, fiddles, mandolins and washboard. For the bottom end they use a Big Foot stomp.
“…..I went looking for a powered sub to get that fat bottom end out of our BIG FOOT stomp. I “test drove” all the usual suspects – Mackie, Yamaha, JBL, etc. Those big powered subs are expensive – and I still had to take care of the cross over issue, because I was intending to add the sub to an existing system.
Then I saw the Motivity Systems on Cannon’s web site; I was a little dubious that they could do the job for the price point, so I went out to the warehouse at Brookvale for a listen.
I couldn’t believe what I heard. They sounded great. I was, however, still a little dubious about the unknown reliability of something that was a “no name” brand to me at that time; but based on my previous dealings with Daniel (he had never steered me wrong before!) I did a deal on the AS – 1500’s, and took them home……… with my fingers crossed!
Now, I have been gigging with them for the last year or so, at our regular pub beer garden and dance hall gigs. They continue to give the band the big bottom end thump we wanted for our stomp; but also, that sub brings out the bottom end in the acoustic guitars as well as the vocals. (We have a baritone vocalist that likes to think he’s Johnny Cash. He is happy!)
Don’t be deceived by the small size of the satellites either. When you have a big powered sub doing all the low end grunt work; it frees the satellites up and makes their high end work a lot easier. The punch and clarity of those little satellites is remarkable. (We ended up using our existing 2 way 15” FOH speakers as floor monitors!)
And…….I have had no reliability or maintenance issues at all. They just do the job.”
To check out the Motivity range please click here.