OK I need some help

[Headhunter]

Ok, and I feel that posts similar to this one are about to start popping up over the forum soon. but I'll start here.
I am the "sound engineer" for my church's Praise Band (first off, please, no flame wars on religion, this is all tech questions). and we are having some problems in the way of our sound.  I have done everything I know to do in my mind to expand and help our sound but I'm approaching my wits end and I'm looking for help. Below is a list of some of the problems.  -G if you know a better place for this to go, please move it...but given its wide array of questions I just wasn't sure where to start.

1. Our drums are too loud, we have a sound wall around it (basically a wall of plexiglass to help deaden the sound).  for some reason when I arrived the drums themselves were miked, of course the first thing I did was to get rid of that ridiculous idea.  The only thing I can think now is to somehow mute the drums themselves, the main problem now is the Bass Drum, being so loud that the mic on the OTHER end of the stage is picking it up.

2. Our Bass Guitar is also too loud, unfortunally since he doesn't show up for actual practice, I don't know where to start as far as pulling him down.  he seems afraid that I will outright mute him.  his current set up goes from bass to bass amp, bass amp to sound board, sound board to speakers.  I have some control over him, but due to insistance that he wants to hear himself, he turns it up, sometimes drowning out the singers.  we do not have an extra monitor (as far as I am aware) so that option is considered out for now.  I'm more or less curious on how I can reel him in as far as sound, and when it comes to EQ where to start to give him a good round sound.

3. As far as the singers themselves go, I have no idea where to start to give them a good full sound, we have 4 singers, 2 female 2 male, and 1 male's voice sounds very muddled like it has too much bass.  one I have to keep turned down simply because his singing is usually out of tune.  that's not as much my problem as his.  our two (well one constant and one sometimes) female singers are ok and its more of a matter of balancing them on the fly.

4. the guitars are one of the toughest problems I have.  1 is acoustic for rythem and the other is electric for lead.  I have had the most trouble with these two in the simple fact that they have went against me at every turn.  I FINALLY have them on direct boxes so that we aren't overloading the speakers (the old set up had 2 rather nice tube amps being miked and then ran through the system itself)  bringing them down has been one of the main focus's for myself.  my issue now is simply a matter of getting their sound right.  They are using pedal's for their effects, but I would like to eventually move to a rack mounted effects board, which in that case I'm looking for advice as far as what would be a good all around effects rack.  we have a Alesis midiverb 2 for reverb right now, which seems to be working well, tho I would like to find a good guide on how to use it.  as well as a Alesis compressor and a alesis equalizer, both of the two are duel channels.  a guide on how to use them would be nice as well.

all in all those are the main points.  I want this group to sound as best as I can, and the environment is horrible for sound.  the room itself is brick wall and an octagon.  any advice is greatly appreciated, even as far as placement of the band and instruments.  the set up for right now if your facing the stage is the two guitars are to the left, with a projector in the middle to display the lyrics, and to the right of the projector are the 4 singers infront of the drum set, and to the right of the drumset is the bass player.

thank you all once again

[nicklz]

Congrats on having a Parise band. My church has one, too. And now that you've mentioned it I'm not real sure how they have the amplification set up because there's no amps on the alter at all. I think it's just piped through the regular sound system. I'll have to check that out.
We have 2 drummers. One plays more primitive type drums and one plays electric drums. Mostly due to space probably. The bassist is sometimes hard to hear as is the sax if he's there. That's the minister's son that plays that or sings sometimes. The wooden structure is rectangular, high ceilinged, and about 150 years old now.

I don't have a lot of input to your dilemma except for an idea for your bassist to hear himself. Could he possibly run a separate headphone type thing from his amp to himself without it blowing out his eardrums so he can not only hear himself, but the rest of the band?

Just for personal curiosity, I've had one person in particular tell me she'd left other churches because of non-traditional music in church. We have 2 services. The early one, the one I'm usually at is the contemporary service while the later is traditional. I like them both actually. Have you had any comments on how your music is going over? We have a lot of over 50 years old and attendance is about the same amount for both services. I stay for both once a month since I usually set up communion for both services. 

[Thespian-Rhythm]

I can only really offer one piece of advice and that is to do with the bass drum. I, along with every other drummer I know, always practice and sometimes perform with a pillow in the bass drum to help muffle the sound. Apart from that, I'd have a quiet word with the bassist to tell him to grow up and trust you with his volume. Of course I say that without any knowledge of the particular person etc o it's really down to your decision.