mike257

Very handy little box for small gigs. I've drilled the rack ears out on mine to fit some connectors, so there's a Powercon in and through, feeds a junction box fitted in the back that powers the XR and a 13a socket to charge a tablet from. TP Link micro router velcroed in the back too, and the tablet, charger, and 13a > Powercon cable all live in a zip pocket in the case lid. I'll have to get a better pic when I'm down at the lockup over the weekend, the only one I can find appears to have been taken with a potato...

It works for a lot of drummers I've looked after on tour. It's also meant ditching a sub from the drum monitoring setup in many cases, so cleans up the stage sound. Happier artists, happier monitor engineer, and happier FOH guy not dealing with an extra source of noise off the stage.

Most covers bands are pulling stuff from a pretty common pool of songs. When I was doing regular function gigs, I'd have been pretty happy to dive in to most things with minimal notice and feel like I could get through it. I've done things at three hours notice, where we've jiggled their set list around to make sure it's stuff we all know and just gone for it, and I've banged a Spotify playlist together for the drive there for anything I wasn't too familiar with. Nice to have a challenge, keeps it interesting!

Beyer DT series are staples in studios and have been for decades. I use Sony MDR-7506 for live work, comfortable to wear and perform well sonically without too much colouration. I've used them for reference to mix FOH from shitty mix positions, as well as just for PFL use, and been more than happy with them.

The Cluny is a cracking little venue, always a good gig in there. How are you finding the DM? Never had more than a brief glance at one to be honest.

Nice to see they're still going strong! I've been spoilt lately, spent the whole of August on a Digico SD5! Everything else feels tiny in comparison now. Really impressed with it too - I'd only ever used Digico very briefly and not had time to get comfortable, but having spent a month with one I'm fully converted, such a well featured and powerful bit of kit.

I'd aim for this spot here, stick your hazards on and do shifts staying with the car while you ferry stuff in - that's likely to be the shortest walk to Flanagan's. I've pulled a van up on the pavement there when loading kit in to another venue nearby. The parking advice you've already had is spot on. On street parking free after 6pm in designated pay and display spots, or the new multistorey just around the corner. The traffic wardens are still out of a night enforcing taxi ranks etc so I'd not chance it anywhere that isn't a proper space.

Lovely stuff! Plenty of nice new Yammies. I've mostly been tour managing and guitar wrangling recently, but I did get to give a dLive a little run out in the real world at last before Christmas and it's a VERY impressive piece of kit.

My mate Ali bought a keytar. He seems quite pleased with it.... https://youtu.be/ulDZdUzn7EY

I wasn't blaming the sound guy. I am the sound guy!

This is about right though, because, unless I hear something that obviously and immediately requires some remedial tweaking, I want to quickly flash through all inputs to make sure I've got a good clean signal I can work with, then hear things in context with the band playing together before I make any serious sonic decisions and start to tweak. No use me arsing about with things in isolation if it isn't going to sit in the mix right when the rest of the band start.

It's really never going to be the kit. It's all in the players own technique and touch, how hard/soft they play, the angle they attack from - spent two weeks teching for a great session player who stood in on a tour I was looking after, I knew the lines as well as he did having worked with the band for ages, but when I line checked his bass, I sounded almost exactly like I sound playing through my own kit. He sounded completely different. I was lucky enough to work for Victor Wooten for a couple of shows. I can 100% confirm that having his actual bass in your hands and pedals at your feet in no way makes you sound or play anything like him 🤣

Better?

I have it on authority from mutual acquaintances that this was a fully unprovoked attack, and that the singer gave the offender a well deserved pasting.

Although the inputs have an instrument level, the outputs will be at line level, so a lot hotter than the front end of a bass amp is expecting to see - I'd bear that in mind when you're hooking it all up.

As much as the first three records are still my go-to more often than not, I think (especially if you dig in to albums/b-sides/live shows, rather than just the singles) they're one of the few bands that have managed to nail down a more broadly appealing songwriting approach whilst keeping a lot of what made them exciting in their early days. It's still full of musically clever bits, unusual time signatures squeezed in to the context of a catchy song, and little bits of weirdness amongst the more polished sound. They're still absurdly great live too. Albums 2 and 3 are probably my faves, but there's gold on every record.

At the bare minimum, I'd be looking at Sennheiser G3. You should be looking at a Channel 38 (Sennheiser GB band, 606-648) unit, although these come with the obligation to buy an annual license from OFCOM for about £75/year. If you have a tour manager or FOH engineer who is advancing the show (and for a show of that scale, someone should be advancing it properly - happy to chat about this if it's not something you're familiar with) you can ask them to put your wireless requirements in to the production rider and see if it can be supplied by the visiting production company. If you are carrying your own, include details of it in your production advance so that the person from the sound company doing the RF co-ordination can include it in their frequency plan.

I don't think I particularly looked like one, but the smoke machine definitely helped!

Got a three pack of these for an absurd £54 a couple of years ago on Amazon. Normal price is about double that but still a good deal for what you get. Definitely punch above their weight for cheap mics. I find they work well on brass too.

No, I'm saying that it's an overly simplistic reduction of a complex set of factors, some within your control, some that aren't. I'm certainly not disputing that there's people out there who are putting together overly kick-heavy mixes, but that big waffling post was me trying to give an insight into why getting a great mix, even in a prestigious venue with a quality sound system brought in, is not as straightforward as people might assume.

It's a tough one to judge in soundcheck as the low end is the thing that changes most drastically when a room is filled with bodies. When I've done time as a house tech in a venue, I've got a feeling over time for how that room changes when it's full, so a soundcheck that might sound bassy and muddy can be down to reflections from a bare floor and walls that won't happen at showtime because of all the meat-based acoustic absorption units milling around the room. A good tech will be well aware of this and how the room can change, so will have that in mind during soundcheck.

The AKG D5 is my regular go-to. Better off axis rejection than a 58 and nicer response around the high mids to my ears. Suits most vocalists I point it at. Occasionally find a voice that doesn't suit them that well, at which point I tend to reach for a Beta 58a or a Beta 57a. The Sennheiser stuff is also great, and I'm more than happy to use it when provided, but I've got five D5 in my personal kit now.

The RAH doesn't have an in-house sound man, every show bring it's own system and crew in. It's a bugger of a room to get right, but when it's right it's brilliant. The last show I was on in there, the whole soundcheck was hours behind because it didn't sound quite right and the headliner's FOH guy had the audio crew drop down the centre hang of PA and reconfigure it. It's a right pain in the derrière! ^ this is great advice. You keep turning things up, you just end up in a mess. The best way is to cut holes for things to fit in, give everything space. If you boost 80Hz on bass and do the same on kick, they'll get in each other's way even more.