Thanks for the incredibly positive response to our first issue and for your article suggestions. It seems that there are an awful lot of you playing live and interested in putting over a better quality sound to your audience. It's all very different from when I began gigging. Not only is there more equipment available, it's also far more portable than it used to be. Many years ago, when I played in a pub band, our home-built PA filled the van! There were two monstrous 'W' bins per side for bass, two horn-loaded 12-inch mid-range speakers, and big EV horns, all driven by rows of dangerously high power, homemade MOSFET amplifiers built into an army surplus grenade case! Unfortunately, our PA sound never lived up to our expectations.

Nowadays I know why. Systems aren't just a collection of speaker boxes, power amps, and arbitrarily chosen crossovers — they have to be designed so that each box covers just the right part of the frequency spectrum, produces the correct level relative to the other speakers, and so that the dispersion from the different cabinets is properly matched. But back then, there was no SOUND ON STAGE around to help me learn.

I still play the odd pub gig and can now pack all my guitar stuff plus the PA into the back of my VW Golf. There's a lot more to getting a great sound, of course, than having the right gear. It's not hard to sound OK when you have a stage to play on and room to set everything up properly. But what happens when you're in an L-shaped pub, the only logical place to put the left-hand speaker is in front of the only entrance door, and the drummer's ride cymbal cuts through your waist every time you step back from the mic?

This is the real world and it's at times like these that you have to improvise, and the right knowledge is far more important than the right equipment. One of SOUND ON STAGE'S aims is to provide that knowledge. In the coming issues, we'll not only be examining the gear that can help you achieve the ultimate sound in the environment from hell, we'll also be looking at various set-up and performance techniques that can transform a potential disaster into a magnificent triumph. And if your band gets just one return gig that you otherwise might have lost, your magazine subscription will have been more than repaid.