My friends and I are starting a band and it's the first time for all of us. Right now we're just playing in a basement and figuring things out. We just got a mic and quickly realized vocals sound BAD without reverb and possibly other effects that are unknown to me. What should I get to make the vocals sound decent? Also probably need help on how to set up the signal chain. Right now the mic is plugged directly into a Roland KC-550.
Also, recommend some bass pedals that won't make me homeless if I buy them. I currently just have a P-Bass going into an Ampeg RB-108.
Help me with setting this up in my mind. I'm looking at a picture of a Yamaha MG10XU. Mic goes into channel 1 and then crank FX knob? How do you split the wet and dry channels?
Also found an Allen & Heath ZED-10FX on craigslist for cheaper
The zed10fx seems to have aux levels in addition to the gain and fx knobs. This can be useful because the aux send can be used as a monitor mix which can differ from the main speaker mix (if you have a monitor). Seems a bit more versatile in that sense.
If it's all DIY, a mixer will be good to have. If you are performing at a venue with a sound person, they will handle it and you can just plug your mic cable into their system and tell them what you want (typically just a bit of reverb).
That stuff is for a DAW program (or a larger, more complex mixer), if you don't have internal sends you can't do it live. In-channel fx are fine for live and there is typically a separate FX knob anyway, which won't change the volume of the dry signal. On that mixer, you won't experience the problem I was describing because there isn't a wet/dry knob, there is a gain knob and a fx knob that don't affect one another. Sorry, I wrote that before understanding this was a DIY live situation.
If you felt the need for off-board FX, you could use the FX send with a patch cable, then after the pedal put it back into another channel. You won't need to do that in most situations.