Jump to content
Why become a member? ×

mike257

Member
  • Posts

    1,832
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by mike257

  1. Proper pieces of kit! I never really spent time with the MPCs but for a brief period in my late teens I did a lot of work with an S6000. Akai were always head and shoulders above anyone else when it came to sampling hardware. Looking forward to hearing how you get on with it!
  2. Creating successful content on YouTube is a musical career path these days. It's just not one that existed when most of us first set out on our musical journey. The landscape has changed. If he made a successful TV show on a mainstream broadcast channel about bass that had over a million viewers, would that be different?
  3. The important thing here (aside from the fact that it sounds like your guitarist is loud enough to (1) cause his band members serious hearing damage and (2) ruin any hope of a decent FOH mix) is that you need to make sure you get the best possible fit on your earphones to block out as much of the outside noise as possible so you can have a clear IEM mix. The best you'll get is custom moulds, but if you're looking for budget wireless I'm guessing you're not keen to drop hundreds on that. Next best thing is to experiment with the different sizes of Comply foam tips on generic IEMs to see what seals the best for you. Sounds like the real problem is plugged in to the Marshall though, and addressing that will do you all sorts of favours!
  4. It'll never be cost effective printing in such small runs. The unit price comes down as the quantity goes up, so it's best to go bigger if you can, rather than multiple small orders. I use Ozzi at https://www.ozmerchco.co.uk/ a lot for merch printing, tour laminates etc. They work almost exclusively with touring bands, so know the market and know the margins. Saw Pins & Knuckles get a mention above, they're great too. Also just had some really good quality merch from BSI on a recent tour. Good advice above about simplifying the design to keep the cost down, I'd echo that. The ability to take card payments is essential these days. I've generally used Zettle for shows in the UK, but SumUp and Square are popular too. They all run regular offers to get the cars reader for next to nothing for new sign ups, and (depending on your phone model) you can also take contactless payments in the app without needing the card reader at all. The fees are relatively low (around 2-2.5% of each transaction) and the increase in sales you'll get from being able to take the card payments makes it absolutely worthwhile.
  5. Love to see it still in action! What are you up to with it? Yeah, the SQ is far and away the best option in thar price range for sure. Really not a fan of the TF and the X/M32 are showing their age. I think Soundcraft is a lost cause at this point, sadly. Nothing has really happened since Samsung acquired Harman, which they mainly did for the home entertainment end of their portfolio of brands. I don't think they've got any real interest in sustaining a presence in the pro audio sector, but it's a shame to see a historic brand run down like that. Maybe someone will buy it out, who knows?
  6. There's a real skill to hiding the mics discreetly in the costumes and still getting them in a good spot for the audio. The advantages they have on a West End stage is that they're working with top notch musical theatre performers who really understand how to project their voice, and the band are quiet, and below them in a pit (usually with the drummer in a box) so they're not fighting stage spill. They also mix the shows line by line, with the FOH engineer having every scene in the script blocked out with a corresponding scene in the console to recall mutes/levels, and riding the faders of every live mic with each line. It's a whole different art/skill set than mixing a band!
  7. If it worked that well, everyone would be doing it. They're a big compromise in a lot of ways. An omni headset mic will pick up loads of spill on a live band stage. A cardioid one will be very sensitive to positioning. Genuinely good headset mics are a lot more expensive than their hand held equivalents too. Unlike a mic on a stand, you can't back off or move in to control your dynamics if you're one of those singers that really belts it out. You also can't turn away from the mic to cough, catch your breath, call the next song, tell the guitarist the right chords or ask the drummer to slow down. It's always there, picking up every huff, puff, grunt, burp and muttered curse.
  8. Of the common brands, Zettle seems to have the best app features, reporting etc. Also has robust integration with WooCommerce, so if you sell from an online store too you can tie them together. Worth noting that if you tour abroad, none of these will work for you in other territories and you'll need a different solution.
  9. Marios is a good'un! I'm in the main room tomorrow on house mons. We've got Thrice in, which I'm very much looking forward to as I'm a big fan but have never caught them live. Won't be mixing anything all day as both the headliner and the support are self contained, so it's a day at work of mostly just watching good bands! Just got back home from a couple of weeks around Europe as TM/FOH with a pop artist from South Africa on his first headline tour up these ways. Smallest rooms I've done in a while but we had an absolute ball. Great shows, all sold out, and a lovely bunch of people to be on the road with. Took my trusty little SQ5 out for its first shows of 2024 and it did a cracking job. Doesn't get used too often these days but it's such a great little desk for the money.
  10. I've just got home from two-and-a-bit weeks on tour, and judging by the way I found the kitchen on my return, I'll be considering myself a dishwasher for a fair portion of the evening 🤣
  11. Yes, I'll always put ambient mics out when I'm mixing monitors for IEM. Usually a small condenser mic at each side of stage, firing up in to the room (you often see them pointed straight at the crowd, but I find you get too much "front row chatting" that way). Some people like them subtly in the mix, most likely them just pushed up in between songs so you can get the vibe of the crowd that you can't hear naturally because of the isolation. Yep, they're in the outer fringes of Manchester. If you speak to Mike at Cosmic, feel free to tell him Mike Prosser sent you along and he'll look after you! @AxelF the usual advice is that because our ears keep growing throughout our whole life, any custom fit IEMs or plugs are generally only good for 4-5 years before the fit won't be quite right and the isolation suffers. Low end response is the first thing affected if the fit isn't right. If your Cosmics are 10 years old, I'm not at all surprised if the bass feels lacking to be honest! @Higgie I've had a couple of artists on the 6B, but generally speaking I don't think there's any need for more low end than the standard 6P gives you. The response is great, and I've used them to prep FOH mixes with multitrack recordings, and the low end has translated really well once I throw it in the PA. If you really feel you need it, you can always bump a little low shelf on the EQ but there's plenty bass in the standard models. @Sharkfinger They'll only guarantee the fit if it's from an approved audiologist. Cosmic use second-bend impressions, which are a little deeper down the ear canal than some others use, and they issue specific guidelines for audiologists to follow when taking the moulds. They will accept moulds that aren't from their approved people, but if you use the approved ones and the fit needs tweaking, I think (if I recall correctly) they'll do the first adjustment for free. If you're up north, their in-house person does weekly appointments at Cosmic's place in Manchester, and their recommended person in London is Gisele who does the fitting for all the majority brands for all the big artists and is wonderful.
  12. My go-to recommendation for a UK manufacturer is Cosmic Ears. I'm a touring monitor engineer so spend an enormous amount of time with them stuck in my head. I've been very happy with the service I've had from them, and with the IEMs themselves (CE6P), they sound fantastic. I had an issue with the cable connector and they were very responsive and got it sorted quickly too. Moulded IEM are a big investment, but they're night and day compared to generic-fit models. The isolation is fantastic. One thing worth bearing in mind is that getting high end IEMs will expose the limitations in the rest of your monitoring setup! You'll likely want to add ambient mics to your mix as the isolation from outside noise is so effective.
  13. Lovely stuff! I've been back at the "wrong end" of the multi doing FOH again this month. A few in-house shifts at Manchester Academy on their Quantum225..... ...and then back out on the road with an S5000 for a lovely chap called James Marriott and his band I'm out on a little club tour in a splitter next month so I'll be giving my little SQ5 its first run out of the year on that, hasn't been out of the case for a while!
  14. Video wall works great when treated as a big lighting fixture. Don't be afraid to keep it simple, to use big solid blocks of colour, and to leave parts of the wall blacked out to create shapes behind you. Maybe have a look at live videos of bands playing with video wall behind them and get a vibe for what people are doing - there's a lot of really great show designers out there who integrate it really nicely along with the lighting rig. If you can afford it, getting a good lighting engineer and a good Resolume operator involved to "play" it along to your performance (or to preprogramme it for you and timecode it if you're playing to click) would be a great shout.
  15. If you're planning to just record, I'd echo what other people have suggested and look at an amp modeller. If you buy an amp, your recording quality is still going to be dictated by the microphone choice and placement, the acoustics of the room you record in, and the quality of your mic preamps/recording interface. If you're not well equipped with recording kit already or well experienced at dealing with those things (and without jumping to conclusions, I'm guessing you're not super experienced at recording if you're asking if an 8x10 is overkill) you'll get acceptable results much quicker from a modeller. Lots of recorded bass tones are a good quality DI signal with no amp involved at all. Guitar tones are shaped much more by the amp sound, with the frequency response and performance of guitar speakers being a key element of it. I'd suggest you'd be better off with something that gives you good guitar tones as a priority, rather than buying something bass-focussed and trying to make it work for guitar.
  16. Did you miss the bit in the original post, with a helpful link included, saying they've launched a WD40-branded switch cleaner?
  17. Just realised this week that their office is in the same building as mine - might have to knock on and see if I can have a go 🤣
  18. Go listen to some isolated bass tracks from Motown records. Exactly the same, beyond glorious in mix, all clank and finger noise in isolation. If it sounds right in context, it doesn't matter how it sounds on its own!
  19. Found a couple of pics... This was when I was working with a touring orchestra show playing rock tunes, with the whole string section on electric instruments and playing through loads of gnarly distortion and effects. They'd been laying out pedals, DI boxes, stage power etc every day and it was a faff, with things getting damaged and going missing, and everyone was on a variety of mic stands/music stands/iPad clamps for their sheet music. Built seven of these boards that all mounted in to a single flight case for transport. They all had a power in and thru connections on Neutrik True1 so they could be linked across the stage in one run to save cable mess everywhere. Wasn't my choice of effects units, I heavily campaigned to ditch them the whole time I was involved 🤣 The mount and stand are a standard K&M part made for ceiling-mounted mics, and came with Allen bolt fixings which I swapped out for chunky knurled thumbscrews that could be easily popped in and out with no tools.
  20. I did similar on a bunch of pedalboards for a project I was involved with. You could replace the grub screw with equivalent threaded wing bolts for manual tightening and make it even easier!
  21. Many countries require you to present an A1 certificate to the entity that are paying the fee (usually the local promoter) for each person, which can be applied for on gov.uk and is proof you're a UK taxpayer, otherwise they'll hold a proportion of the fees back as "witholding tax" to cover any liabilities that a local taxpayer would have been subject to. To complete an A1 application you have to be able to list the countries you're visiting and when. Currently there's a bloody enormous wait time for a form to be processed, but promoters will often accept a proof of application in lieu of the actual cert. Doesn't answer your question, but is useful info to get ahead of for your situation, because the tour manager will no doubt be asking you for one!
  22. Lovely stuff, what were you up to with it? I stuck with my contemplations from my last post and decided to take a dLive out on the road for a couple of tours. Spent most of September out around the UK with Lovejoy, took an S5000/DM48 out, with Shure PSM1000 IEM. Here's my youngest son teaching me how to drive it properly.... Currently in the middle of a UK run with The Pigeon Detectives, got a C3500 out on monitors for this one, a little bit more compact. I'm also mixing FOH for the touring support artist, Ellur, on the C2500 that we're carrying for Pigeons, haven't got a decent picture of that though, I'm always in too much of a rush to soundcheck my second band of the day by the time I walk to that end of the multi! Enjoying it though - all but two of the tours I've had this side of lockdown have been at monitors, it's fun to have a change of scenery and head down the other end for a bit!
  23. Just got an Instagram ad for UAD giving away a new LA-2A plugin. Native too, doesn't need UAD hardware.
  24. My most regular touring role is as a monitor engineer, so this is my typical approach if I'm starting from scratch with an artist/working as an in-house monitor engineer. For a wedge mix - I'll start off with each persons own instrument/voice in their wedge, plus anything that isn't making its own loud noise on stage (keyboards, sample pads, backing tracks, acoustic guitar, lead vox etc). I don't tend to put drums or amplified electric guitars in to start with unless its a large stage/festival stage and you're sufficiently far enough away from the person at the opposite end to not hear them well. I'll usually throw some kick in the bass players wedge, and some kick/snare/toms for a drummer. If there's multiple vocals that need the lead/each other as a pitching reference I'll make sure that's in there too. Basically, I'll fill the gaps around the sound that already exists acoustically in the space. That's usually a good starting point for most folks, and then I'll adjust to taste as requested. I avoid putting a full "FOH" mix in immediately as it's just adding more noise on stage and clouding what's going on if there's already guitar amps roaring and a drummer going full tilt. For IEMs, if you're wearing custom moulds you've generally got a very high level of isolation from outside noise, so I'll start with more of a general balance of the whole band with each persons own instrument/voice pushed up on top, plus a splash of ambient mics, that I'll ride up further in breaks between songs or in parts where there's a lot of crowd participation/singing. Again, this is usually a good starting point, but I can often end up miles away from this once an artist has made tweaks for their preferences. As a general note, if someone's struggling to hear something, it's better to find what's getting in the way and pull it back to make space, rather than continually turning things up until it's all a bit of a mess. Also very much endorse what @Bill Fitzmaurice has to say about low end in wedges - I'll slap a high pass filter over every wedge mix and get that low end gone. It makes for a muddy mess on stage otherwise, and can ruin the day for whoever's mixing FOH too. Happy to have my brains picked about monitor mixing if anyone's got questions (there's not much in there to pick though!)
  25. Got a few favourites, most of them have had a mention here! The Beta58a is a reliable standard that works just about everywhere - it's not sexy but it does the job and you know what you'll get. My go-to all rounder in my own kit was the AKG D5 until very recently. I've got about 8 of them and they're ace, tight pattern and great sound, and very affordable too. Work on most singers I've thrown them at. I've recently been sent a batch of SE V7 to test drive though, and they've definitely jumped to the front of the queue for me. I'd tried them briefly a couple of years ago and they very much didn't suit the singer I was working with at the time, so I'd steered clear, but I took a bunch of the wireless capsules on a tour for a bunch of rappers earlier this year and they were head and shoulders above the Sennheiser 845 caps I'd had on previously. Currently using the regular wired ones for lead and BVs with an indie rock band on a tour I'm looking after and they sound great. Comparatively cheap too!
×
×
  • Create New...