I heard a one-man-band use one of these in an L-shaped room, where he was at the corner of the L - each leg of the L about 20'x40' (wedding reception) and I was quite impressed.

The points made by ColoradoGuy - particularly the very minimal setup this guy had to fill this room AND the lack of a monitoring system was very impressed.

That day, I made a vow, if I have to gig that way, I'm going to save up for one of those systems.

I know that everyone here is not necessarily a fan of Bose (I particularly don't like their home stereo setups - never had proper midrange), but I was impressed by this personal amplification system.

Now, on the 801 front - I used to use those things with a traveling choir I was with in High School. I was in the choir, but we all had roadie duty of some kind. Mine was setting up mains (we used either 2 or 4 801's and good old Peavey amps (can't remember the model)) and EQing the mains for the room. Those 801's were in use for many years before I was in the choir and many years after. Every weekend, with kids setting them up and beating them up and throwing them under the bus (where we kept our gear). They lived in the outdoors, in other words, in Michigan. They are still cranking away. I was in the choir from '81 to '85. We also had a set of I believe the model was 401 speakers (wooden cabinets vs. the injection molded cases on the 801's). I think Bose may have pioneered use of injection molded cases for PA speakers. Can't confirm that, but seems like everyone else was using vinyl covered wood (heavy).

We played in churches of all manner of sizes. Biggest gig was 1/2time show at the Pontiac Silverdome, where the Detroit Pistons used to play in a corner of the floor of the stadium. They had the court and portable stands curtained off from the 3/4 of the football field that wasn't used. We set up behind the curtain for our 1/2time concert (and not very many people made the trip to the 'choir behind the curtain'.

Anyhow, to get those 801's to project a little bit, the Pistons had set up some scaffolding for us - maybe 4 stories worth. The local crew hauled the 801's up on top of those things with some pulleys and the set them on the speaker pole mounts, so that they were kind of aiming down.

Now, what they didn't do was tie them down!. Some kids were fooling around on the field (after all, it was the Lion's astroturf - gotta get in a game of duct-tape football) and bumped into the scaffolding.

One of those 801's got to rocking and eventually plummeted to the Silverdome floor. No teenagers were hurt in this test.

No, the injection molded case did not survive. In fact, that thing basically looked like it exploded. Speakers flew everywhere from the carnage. I still have one of the magnets from one of the drivers in that thing. It's a strong sucker.

So, to make a long story short - Don't put your Bose up on 4 stories of scaffolding without anchoring them, and you'll probably get years of service.

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