You say the recording came out just fine. I have no idea what type of band you taped, but with stereo XLR, don't you have guitars too low in the mix and the vocals and drumkick a bit too high? That usually is how the soundboard is set to get the best sound in the venue (at a metal gig).
It doesn't matter much wether I record with XLR/Jack or just minidisc straight into the soundboard, but that seems to be the problem over and over. Somebody has any experience in handling this?
I don't like SBD feeds in small clubs. They are running in mono, have a lot of stage volume, and as someone stated above the vocals are way up in the mix.
I was recording a classic rock band with a 30+ piece symphony in a 2000 seat theater. The larger the venue, the better the SBD, or at least it seems to be the case.
this is true. Think of the job of the PA as that of "Sound reinforcement".
In a small club you're going to get vocals and drums heavy in the mix as these are what need to be "reinforced" over the stage volume of loud guitar amps.
In a bigger venue stage volume will not carry as far so all instruments and vocals will be present in the mix.
FWIW - in small clubs, if everything is mic'd you may be able to grab an open AUX feed from the board and make your own mix just for the tape. You need a Pre-fader AUX send so your mix isn't affected by the engineers moving of the faders. If you know the band well enough to arrive at soundcheck and get patched in this is a good way to grab a great board feed in a small club. Let the engineer do his job and then have the band play a song or two for you to mix the tape feed.
I did this a LOT when I was first taping analog. I got to know the bands and the engineer at my local club really well this way. It also taught me how to put together a mix before I ever had to think about eq, compression etc. It gave me a good foundation to start doing FOH work and eventually I was a house engineer at that same club.