J
jonwade92
New member
So, I front a symphonic black metal band currently based in the Portland/Vancouver area (we just moved out here from the middle of nowhere) and we're trying to compact our setup down to save on time (we have some theatrics that take a while to set up) as well as give ourselves more options and control. We've been majorly screwed by incompetent FoH engineers (something especially annoying to me being an engineer myself) and want to keep that from happening at future gigs. We've devised a setup that we think will work but I wanted to run it by you guys to see if I'm missing something before I go and blow money on a bunch of stuff that wont even work.
Part of ensuring our gigs is running IEMs for all of us out front (4 piece band, drums, guitar/vox, guitar/backing vox, bass) and a line back to our drummer. We saw Allegaeon doing something similar to this but ours is going to be slightly more complex due the the backing tracks we run off of a laptop for our orchestras/clicks.
What I have mapped out right now is a roadcase with a mixer on top. Channel assignments will be:
Lining those up is a nightmare but you get the idea!
Everything will be through our board first, where we have auxes 1-3 going to wireless transmitters for our belt packs and 4 being a direct line to the drummer's little headphone mixer. After that the drum channels, vocals, and backing track will be taken out of our board and into the house snake.
Underneath that we'll have the obligatory furman power conditioner followed by our rack gear which will be replacing our half stacks.
Our lead guitarist (backing vox) is currently using a Rocktron Chameleon which only takes up 1 rack space so he was gonna buy a cheap processor for sonic maximization and maybe EQ. The bassist and I will both be using GSP 2101's for the time being until we're able to upgrade to whatever the latest Axe FX units are out when we can afford it (like that'll ever happen
). Lines will go out of those to our mixer and to the FOH snake from our units as well.
Underneath those we'll have our wireless receivers and transmitters (total of 6) which I would appreciate some advice on make/models cause I haven't messed with them a whole lot. The smaller the better obviously but we also want quality. They don't need to be the best but they need to be reliable as we are a touring band.
Anyway that takes us back to our backing track rig, which is a macbook running mainstage currently (we might switch to a PC running PT because they're more reliable), out into an interface. The click is panned hard left and the orchestras panned hard right. Both channels go to their respective channel on our mixer. Our old drummer used kick and snare triggers but we have a new guy now and I'm not 100% familiar with his setup ( I just got his kit info for making the input list last night). If triggers are involved it won't be a huge change, just a drum module running into the board rather than mics.
So I guess my first question would be, will this work the way I have it laid out?
Second is should we just run everything into the board and then use the channel out to send to the snake with faders at unity or is it a better idea to do what I posted above and have the extra outs running from our units to the snake? I feel like the former would save time but the latter leaves more circuitry out of the loop which is playing it safe (although you never know when you're gonna run out of functioning outputs on older gear).
Anyway, I'll post more questions as they pop into my head, but any input is much appreciated!
Part of ensuring our gigs is running IEMs for all of us out front (4 piece band, drums, guitar/vox, guitar/backing vox, bass) and a line back to our drummer. We saw Allegaeon doing something similar to this but ours is going to be slightly more complex due the the backing tracks we run off of a laptop for our orchestras/clicks.
What I have mapped out right now is a roadcase with a mixer on top. Channel assignments will be:
Code:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
k snr HH R1 R2 FLR OH OH Bass GTR GTR Click Backing track VX VXLining those up is a nightmare but you get the idea!
Everything will be through our board first, where we have auxes 1-3 going to wireless transmitters for our belt packs and 4 being a direct line to the drummer's little headphone mixer. After that the drum channels, vocals, and backing track will be taken out of our board and into the house snake.
Underneath that we'll have the obligatory furman power conditioner followed by our rack gear which will be replacing our half stacks.
Our lead guitarist (backing vox) is currently using a Rocktron Chameleon which only takes up 1 rack space so he was gonna buy a cheap processor for sonic maximization and maybe EQ. The bassist and I will both be using GSP 2101's for the time being until we're able to upgrade to whatever the latest Axe FX units are out when we can afford it (like that'll ever happen
). Lines will go out of those to our mixer and to the FOH snake from our units as well.Underneath those we'll have our wireless receivers and transmitters (total of 6) which I would appreciate some advice on make/models cause I haven't messed with them a whole lot. The smaller the better obviously but we also want quality. They don't need to be the best but they need to be reliable as we are a touring band.
Anyway that takes us back to our backing track rig, which is a macbook running mainstage currently (we might switch to a PC running PT because they're more reliable), out into an interface. The click is panned hard left and the orchestras panned hard right. Both channels go to their respective channel on our mixer. Our old drummer used kick and snare triggers but we have a new guy now and I'm not 100% familiar with his setup ( I just got his kit info for making the input list last night). If triggers are involved it won't be a huge change, just a drum module running into the board rather than mics.
So I guess my first question would be, will this work the way I have it laid out?
Second is should we just run everything into the board and then use the channel out to send to the snake with faders at unity or is it a better idea to do what I posted above and have the extra outs running from our units to the snake? I feel like the former would save time but the latter leaves more circuitry out of the loop which is playing it safe (although you never know when you're gonna run out of functioning outputs on older gear).
Anyway, I'll post more questions as they pop into my head, but any input is much appreciated!
