Ole!
It’s that time of year again where the theatrical halls echo with the sound of stamped foot – not me missing donuts but this year’s Flamenco Festival.
I’m always bemused by just how much kit a cajon, two guitars, 3 vocals, a couple of claps and a dancer seem to require (yep, I’m generalising again). For a musical style that has a marked absence of electronic and electrical instruments, it does seem that a lot of electronic and electrical boxes are required. Still I take the rider and get it all to fit.
[Shop Talk]
The kit list for this years festival (less than two weeks) hire cost is more than some peoples salaries and includes –
Our Midas as the monitor desk. This is something of an odd choice as with only 12 mixes, the options for onstage monitoring, sidefills, and effects can get quite tight. Yep, it has group and matrix outs but these aren’t necessarily the most practical in this instance. And as we have a Heritage 3000 out front …
Outboard at both ends is the fairly standard dbx and XTA compressors, Lexicon, TC and Yamaha effects and BSS and KT equalisers. The only non-standard is the pair of Avalon 737 valve pre-amps adding some warmth to the lead vocals in the FOH rack.
Microphones again are a standard mix of Km185, Beta 58 and SM98 with the odd MKH416, MD421, SM58 or C414 covering specific instruments as required and there’s a bunch of PCC160s under the floor for those stamping feet. Compared to the last couple of years, there’s a higher reliance on radio mics this year with DPA 4061s being used on guitars and violins that move around and DPA 4066 on most vocalists. We are trying out the Neumann KK105 handhelds this year around in place of the Beta 87 but as only one company has so far needed them, it’s been a litle tricky to notice much difference. Beltpacks are the ever popular SK5012 (we like packs that are easy to hide) with a 1046 receiver system. For a supplemental system just needed for a couple of days we ended up with the larger 3063 packs on Sony receivers. This was the first time that I’ve had mixed brands on radio and we didn’t have any rx problems, which was nice.
All the hired speakers were, as often, d&b branded. C6 monitors for individual musicians onstage and E9s on sidefill detail powered from P1200 amps. A pair of B2 subs replaced our in-house martins and our main EAW system has been powered down in favour of a ground stacked Q1 array powered from D12 amps. I have to say that I’m impressed with the sound. It’s carrying evenly throughout the stalls (enough that we’ve turned off the delays there also) excepting right at the front where we are having to use our in-house front fills (just). There’s a little HF loss as you head into the circles so our delay lines are still in use but overall I’m liking it. I still feel that a point source system is more appropriate to our auditorium but it has been nice to have something else for a bit.
[/Shop Talk]
I’m looking forward to next week though – there’s only so much tap-tap-tapping that you can take – and I’ve got holiday time to use up before Easter!
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