Newbie live vocals question

[LoveBandit]

Me and 4 friends have got this garage band thing going (our tentative name is "Soul Dressing") and guess who got stuck lead singing? Yep, me 8-)

Anyway, they own and use some nice mics and an old but nice looking soundboard and PA head. They have me and the background vocal mics plugged into the soundboard and somehow the vocals come out the PA speakers. I know little to nothing about live sound but I DO know that I need some reverb or echo or delay or whatever on my voice to sound fatter and better (IMO, anyway). My buddy who owns the equip. says he can only put reverb on the "whole band or nobody" so I end up using no reverb. First off, can he be correct about this? Why can't we just put reverb on my lead vocals and nothing else? IF he is correct, what is the preferred way for me to put some reverb/echo on my lead vocals before they get piped to his board?

***UPDATE EDIT*** He solved the problem by pulling out an old dusty but NICE rack effects processor that sounded pretty good after we dialed it in for about 20 minutes. I wonder what else this guy has stashed now... 8-)

[jrgtr42]

As you've probably figured out, it is possible to put the effects on just the vocals or just 1 vocal, depending on the board.
As long as the board is set up with busses, you can send all the vocals through a processor, and back to the board.
Alternatively, and it sounds like this is what you did, process the lead vox before they get to the board.

[chuckocaster]

see if you can plug in an eq on your monitor mix if possible. this will be very helpful. and start reading about live sound and fiddling with the knobs. i know it may seem boring but the time and effort will pay off. trust me.

[Rickenjangle]

I would never put a vocal mic through the processor before it hits the mic preamp on the board. That's what the insert and aux sends/returns on the soundboard are for. Often, there is a 1/4 inch stereo jack that serves as a send/return loop AFTER the mic preamp. However, most sound engineers use this loop for dynamics processing on individual channels (like compressing/limiting) and then use one of the aux busses for the fx send and return. In this scenario, you can adjust the amount of fx on a per-channel basis, so you might effect the lead vocals a bit (not too much, or your sound will be less punchy and cutting, live) and effect the BGV's a bit more. It's nice to put some reverb on an acoustic guitar, too.