Pentecostal Soundmen

[CC1]

Originally Posted by ImThankful

I dont know about the best but I do know the worst..We have him. Hes about 80 yrs old and cant hear..Never pays attention to anything we say but Pastor doesnt want to hurt him by taking him out. He sits there and stares into space. When is it ok to say Ok, Im sorry but your just too old. We have great musicians and singers but this soundman is ruining it .

It is a mismanagement of the churches ministry to allow someone no longer able to do an important task that affects everybody's worship exerience to continue in their role.

If that man is truly kingdom minded he will not mind stepping back for someone else to do the job. He could be given a great big thank you and some token of honor for his service but retired from that job.

When I had employees firing one was the most difficult thing I ever had to do. However what gave me the courage to do it was that I only fired somebody if their actions were jeppardizing all of the employees livelihood. That is in essence what is going on with this sound guy.

[Azzan]

I totally agree! The sound man/person? is a key position. It can make or break a service.

I had to "demote" a guy once after it became apparent that he was not capable of running a board for a complex service (choir, instruments, etc).

I discovered the problem when I observed him (we knew there was a problem, we just didn't know why). When it came time for a solo, he was opening up *ALL* the hand mic channels and then queueing them one by one in the headphones and then turning them down one by one until he found the right mic. When I asked why he just didn't turn up the needed channel, it turned out that he was color blind and was unable to "see" (colored wind screens) which mic was being used.

So I gave gave him Bible study services where we normally just used the pulpit mic.

[unitedpraise10]

We are very blessed at our church with awesome soundmen and a great sound system. Our church is large, so everything is through the system. The organ lesli is backstage, which cuts down on stage volume, and the drums are soundproofed. We have 5 Avioms.....1 for each instrument. We also have several different mixes going at once. We currently 2 mixes on the platform (praise team/choir mix, and pulpit mix) plus the 5 individual personal Aviom mixes. In the house we have two mixes, soon to be 4 mixes. Right now we have the main house mix, and a front fill mix (which is for the alter area). Later on, we plan on adding an under balcony mix and an above balcony mix. We also have two large subs. I don't think they are on their own mix....not sure how they tie in. We have pretty great sound nonetheless.

With all that being said, I don't ever remember hearing out system squeal or distort. We've been in our new building now for 7 years, and it hasn't happened yet. I know I'm bragging...lol.

Let me say, Aviom or the Roland personal monitor mix system is the key to decent sound. Even if you have a lousy soundman. We did not have Aviom in our old building, and we were forever having sound difficulties.....mainly because of to much platform sound. It got rather loud on that platform. When we moved into the new building it was a huge huge difference. So if you could at all invest in this system, it will save you a whole lot of headache. They are expensive, but worth it. I think we spent around $7,000-$8,000 on our Aviom system alone. We spent around $65,000 on the complete package.