No show

This was supposed to be an update on Saturday's gig at the Wellington but it was cancelled a few days in advance - I was told this by the bar staff when I arrived at the pub on the night!

Still its not too bad, the promoter tells me he has plans to run a huge all day charity event there with 3 P.As! One upstairs, used for a variety of electronic bands, two downstairs. The main P.A downstairs by the actual stage area will be used for full bands. Acoustic acts/power trios will be using the P.A in the far corner of the room. I'd like the challenge of running the two downstairs P.As - having one band set up quietly (an ask I realise!) whilst the other band plays. It would be chaotic, but fun - I hope!

Next you hear from me I should have actually done some engineering - this Wednesday at the Vine.

Cya later, Big-O

Gear at the vine

We've quite a DIY set up at the vine at the moment, but generally speaking it serves us well. We have a Prosound 800 amp for the front of house, with matching speakers and a Prosound 400 amp for the monitors, again with matching speakers. The front of house speakers are usually (safely) daisy-chained into speakers that are wall mounted at either side of the stage. Which come in handy! I find that without these we're desperately under powered for getting vocals audible above the drum kit and small combo amps. I'm hoping to convince the promoter to upgrade the speakers and purchase one more Prosound 800 - then we can run the amps in bridge mode with one amp for the left and for the right of the desk's output.

Speaking of the desk, we use a Soundcraft Spirit FX8. Its sturdy but the fx are a little on the unpredictable side. I'd like to move back to the Yamaha EMX series as we used at Dr Wu's. Or perhaps one day on to a digital desk. Imagine that!

Mic wise we use some cheap dynamic mics at the moment. The performers often accidentally switch these off when they're fiddling between lines and then they begin gesturing at me (and look pretty sheepish when I step over and move the big slide switch back to 'on'!). We're planning to upgrade these very soon to some Shure PG48. Hopefully these will gives us more distortion free headroom. Fingers crossed.

Well I've got to get to band practise, more on these updates as and when they occur!
Cheers, Big-O