mike257

Absolutely, yes. It's in heavy use on pro stages everywhere. As @PinkMohawk said, a huge amount of infrastructure in touring shows is running on tactical/flexible network cable and Ethercon connectors - digital multicores, lighting control, MIDI, and sometimes analogue audio too. I used it for analogue lines on a tour with a rap artist to pick up the main and booth feeds (four channels of audio) from a DJ mixer at centre stage as it was lighter than running a 12 way stagebox out like we'd normally use for stage drops. Used it across two month-long tours, in and out every day being coiled by heavy-handed stage crew, didn't skip a beat. Had a rack panel in monitor world, and a breakout to XLR tails for the stage end. The Tourcat cable (and similar stuff available from other pro brands) is made to be flexible, lie flat on stage, and be coiled easily. You'll be absolutely fine with it. Wasn't on a drum, it coils fine just like any other other stage cable would and didn't need any special treatment. Was just tossed in a cable trunk with all the XLR and other audio bits.

What I'd say is approach it with patience and allow yourself time to adjust. The benefits are massive - for your hearing health, the clarity of the mix, and how your band sounds out front without having stage absolutely blasting with noise - but it will almost certainly be "weird" at first and take some trial and error to get right, and then more time to get used to it, moreso if you don't have a dedicated sound engineer working with you who knows their way around it. Don't be immediately put off if it's not great straight away, as it's a big change and there's a lot of variables and practice to getting it right for you.

The problems you'll have is knowing when to come in, and keeping in time during any breaks where the drums aren't playing. If you were on in-ears you'd get round this by adding a click track that either played throughout, or at least played the count-ins and clicked through any gaps in the drum pattern. You could add a count to your studio tracks, but I'd maybe use a tight hi-hat sound rather than metronome click, as it'll be audible to the audience so it at least needs to sound natural when it's playing. It's a long way from being ideal, but the only real way of doing it on wedges. I think the best solution really is to hire a dep drummer to cover short term while your regular guy is out of action - if it didn't end acrimoniously with any of drummers #1-3, would they come and cover short-term?

Stop that, you. We don't need that argument in here 🤣

I was actually talking about the Alto tops not having one to take the low end out when used with a sub, but you're right, the TS12 lacks any crossover settings for the pass through outputs too.

Glad you've found the info in the thread helpful! The sub technically does have a crossover, but it's only affecting the signal heading in to its own amp - rolling off everything above a selectable low pass frequency. As you've rightly said, it doesn't affect the output - I'm pretty sure that the output socket is in fact just wired directly in parallel with the input and passes through no other electronics at all. The matching EV tops in that range have their own on-board DSP with crossovers, which will be why they've omitted a high pass filter from the outputs on the sub - if you're using their whole system, it all works together fine. Unfortunately, the Alto lacks this feature so you'll be losing a lot of headroom while they fight to kick all that low end out. A standalone crossover/speaker processor might be the cheapest way to address this - there's various models of DBX DriveRack available that will do a simple sub/top processing setup and can be bought cheaply on the used market. I sold two DriveRack PA+ for under £100 each last year, something like that would sort it. Ultimately though, I think you're probably just asking too much of those little Altos. I'd have no hesitation using them in your setting for vocals and a bit of mild reinforcement in front of a normal backline, but asking them to do *everything* loudly and cleanly is probably pushing the limits of what they're capable of for a set of small, inexpensive speakers. I'm a big fan of the silent stage approach for function gigs, solves a lot of problems and gives you a lot of control, but you do need a PA with a bit of heft behind it to get anywhere near the same energy you'd get from a live drum kit and backline running at moderate levels. It's also a lot more directionally focused when it's all through the PA, which has pros and cons - when I've done bigger function gigs, I've aimed the main system to hit the dancefloor but taken an extra pair of speakers as fills that I'll space out to cover a wider area evenly without just cranking the main rig up.

Hope you're having a lovely Christmas too mate! There's a few good options out there for kick mics. My go-to in my touring setup is to use an Audix D6 at the port, blended with a Shure Beta 91A sat inside the drum, but I'm more than happy to just use one mic if that's what the situation calls for (and will sometimes end up only using one even if I've got both of them in there!) On a budget - I used to very happily use a Sennheiser e602. I've got a pair of them, picked up for around £60-65 each. Perfectly capable all-rounder. I now use it as my go-to floor tom mic (kick drum mics on a floor tom is a delight, especially if you've got enough PA to make the most of the bottom end!) If you're spending a little more, the Audix D6 is a good shout. It's got a bit of an EQ curve baked in to the frequency response, with a bump in the lows, a scoop in the mids, and a lift in the high mids where the beater attack sits. Some folks grumble about this as it's the most "coloured" of the commonly seen options, but it's a great sounding and robust mic that gets you close to a useable frequency curve with very little work - especially helpful on a more basic pub gig PA setup where you're limited with EQ options. Wouldn't use it on a jazz gig but for anything with a punchy rock/pop sound where you want the kick to easily sit in the mix without a load of flubby midrange it's a good shout. The other big player is the Shure Beta 52A. Also sound great, less accentuated frequency response than the Audix so has a more natural response that can lend itself to a wider variety of sounds (but can need a little more work to get there). This (with the Audix in second place) is the "default" kick mic you'll generally see in venues, on festival stages etc (usually paired with a 91A). If you had to pick one kick mic that all engineers would be happy to use on a gig, this is your safe bet. The other option is a boundary mic - the Shure 91A being the most common. They sit flat inside the drum on top of whatever dampening foam/blankets/cushion you've got in there. Pick up a very prominent beater attack, and often used in combo with another mic, but perfectly useable alone too. They can take a little more EQ to get in the right place but sound fantastic when dialled in, plus you don't need a mic stand or any additional trip hazard in front of the kit. You do need a hole in your kick drum head though, or you're taking the front off to put it on there! The Sennheiser 901 is also solid in this role, although they're obnoxiously wide and I've come across a few drums with smaller port holes where I couldn't fit it through! Behringer do a knock off of the Shure which, although I haven't used, I'm told does a very decent job on a low budget, but I can't speak for it myself. A few good options depending on what suits your needs best!

I've toured with the Scott Dixons - never seen a guitar damaged in one, but they always ended up dented/deformed around where the lids attach after a while and become an absolute pain to close up. Recently picked up four Enki cases for a touring client - two of the new X series, and two (one guitar, one bass) of the original AMG versions, as that was all the available stock in the UK that week! Have had them in car boots, planes, vans, and on a truck over the last three weeks. All of them weigh in around 21/22kg fully loaded and flew as standard hold baggage on Ryanair without issue (their bag limit is 20kg but we had other stuff under weight so worked out with weights pooled - most other airlines are 23kg so should be fine elsewhere). The new X series are definitely neater - handles and latches are all recessed, so when you're stacking them in a van they're much easier to play Tetris with compared to the AMG where the handles protrude. The lids are much easier to remove and replace on the AMG though - the moulding around the hinge pins on the new X series makes them very awkward to slide back on in comparison. Only really an issue if you're using the cases as guitar stands and need the lids off and out of the way, otherwise you can just hinge them open and closed without removing the lid. Definitely happier with them than with the Scott Dixon alternative though, and the new X range has a triple guitar case too (which there was no UK stock of, unfortunately, else I'd have had them!). Been using them in lieu of a guitar rack while I've had limited workspace on a support tour and they've been great.

Yep, the dLive is full of goodies, the compressor emulations have plenty character. The 16T is a favourite, does lovely things to drums and bass. The new V2 software looks great too, yet to have any hands on time with it but the "Actions" functionality is appealing to me (as a big Digico macro nerd) so I'm keen to have a proper dig in to that. We've got an S3000 out on our current tour that has the V2 software and the new RackUltraFX card fitted and our FOH is loving it. Currently on another support run, this time working our way round arenas in the UK. Got our monitor engineer back for this one, so I've ditched the iPad and I'm doing one less job, just tour managing and looking after backline world. Two shows left before I'm done for Christmas! Couple of behind-the-scenes pics here, and our FOH also sneakily caught a clip of me warming up the drum kit in the O2 Arena last week 🤣 VID-20241207-WA0009.mp4

If you're looking for a guitar equivalent of this place, thefretboard.co.uk is a nice spot. Originally started when the old MusicRadar forums closed down, by some long term members from there. Similar vibe to here, pleasant conversation, no 'orrible characters and some very knowledgeable folks on there.

With the eternal caveat that I can't really give proper advice on a mix without hearing both the system and the content.... Kick Drum: I'd do about the same on a proper full range touring system. If you're on a small powered tops & subs band setup, I'd maybe go up a touch higher just so you're not overworking the amps. You're not going to get gut-shaking low end from a couple of small boxes in a function room/pub etc, so if you can let the sub amps and drivers work a little less hard at the super low stuff they struggle with, they can give you more of the slightly higher stuff that they're able to reproduce more efficiently. Bass: Depending on the sound you're going for and where it's sitting in the mix, I'd generally go anywhere from 40 to 80 as a starting point. It's always good to sit the low end of the bass in a different spot to the kick and give them each their own space though. Vocals (Male and female): I tend to go a little higher with these. Generally anywhere from 120 to 160, sometimes even higher depending on what else is going on in the mix. You really don't need that much low end from a vocal in the majority of situations, and a lot of the information down that low will be spill from drums and amps too, which you can do without. Guitars: I'll usually go somewhere around 100 to 120 as a starting point. If it's a busy mix with lots of keys, tracks etc I'll often go quite a bit higher to help it sit in the mix, whereas if it's a simpler drums/bass/guitars mix I'll probably leave it lower down and let the guitars be a little bigger. Drums: Another big "it depends"... With individual close mics I'll use this to place each source in the mix, with toms set a little higher (small rack toms at around 80, stepping down with the pitch of each tom , floor tom often as low as the kick). Snare will depend on the mix - I'm quite partial to a chunky snare with a lot of low end weight so I'll often leave this low, but sometimes you need a "smaller" snare to sit in a busy mix and I'll crank it up towards 180/200. For overheads (or a single mic over the kit like you're using) I'll go pretty high with the HPF. You're not going to get tons of definition or pleasant low end from overheads on a small stage and the stage spill from amps etc will be significant, so I'll take this up pretty high and just use that mic to get the attack of the drums popping through, especially when it's a small system and you're just after a bit of reinforcement and extra definition in a smaller room. If you're not sure on a HPF, a good starting point is often to wind the frequency up until you can actually hear it taking something significant out, then wind it back just a little from that point. Then you know you're at least getting rid of the content you don't need from that source, which will be a big help in cleaning up your mix. As above, you can be more aggressive with it on some sources, but it's very situation-dependant. Sorry for the essay, hope it's helpful!

It really doesn't work well. As a general rule, I've never found gating vocals to be effective. Good mic choice, good mic technique, a considered stage layout and sensible backline volumes are the best set of tools for dealing with spill in vocal mics, in my experience.

I actually unexpectedly bumped in to a guitarist friend who I played in three bands with from the ages of 19-22 on the train to London this week and had a good catch up. We both work in different areas of the music industry but neither of us actively performing - he's not touched a guitar in 10 years! I did make a crack about next year being the 20th anniversary of our last (and best) band's first gig but there's definitely not an appetite for a reunion show 🤣

The D5 were my go-to for some time and a solid choice, from what I've heard the D7 are an improvement again, although I've been using the SE V7 as my regular choice for about 18 months now and on the majority of singers it's been great.

Haven't used the OM2 myself but from what I hear you need to be pretty tight up on it to get the best of it. Even something with a tight pickup pattern is still going to be full of drums when he backs his face off it though. You can get gooseneck extensions for about 10/15 quid, might be worth a punt to see if you can get the positioning a little better for him. Soundcheck pic of one in use here - I'd usually go a little higher with the stand and come in from above more, but this was what that particular drummer found comfortable to work with without obstructing his playing.