Battle of the FOH's

T

Tom Manchester

Senior
Jan 11, 2011
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Delaware
www.electrosoundsystems.com
Way back in 2004, 2 enterprising young sound engineers joined forces and created 2 companies the likes of which the mid Atlantic region had never seen. Flash forward 10 years and some amount of disposable income later, and we have faithfully recreated our original circa 2004 FOH setups in a test to see if we could break free from the digital realm and go back to our roots. This weekend's Labor Day festival marks 9 years since our first "big" outdoor festival gig. Quite frankly it's the only place that such a setup would be permissible.

The setup is as such: each vintage FOH receives a hard wired split of the 16 channels from stage. The outputs of the console are matrices through a Dolby lake processor. The Dolby lake has no function other than switching and routing. The rules of the game are that all EQ and compression must be done on the original 31 band eq's and consoles.

Let the games begin!
 

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Re: Battle of the FOH's

Believe it or not the mids are still doing fine! Circa 2004 All Time Low is not here, so Evan has nothing to blow it up with.

So here's the gear:

Tom:
Mackie CR1604 original
Roland SRV2000 reverb
Behringer MDX1400 Autocom pro compressor
dbx 166XL (Grey face)
Peavey QF131 EQ
SKB 6 space rack

Evan:

Peavey RQ2318
dbx 266xl
dbx 166xl (green face)
Peavey QF131 EQ
Alesis Quadraverb
Homemade wooden rack

Each setup has been faithfully recreated down to the packaging and wiring. I actually had to buy several of the rack items in my rack on ebay to find the one that was in the right condition and correct variation of the model.

The original 2004 main PA was JRX115's and Yorkville LS608's.

I have recreated this by using the closest thing I had in the shop; a pair of D&B M4's as mains, and 4 D&B C4 subs. The C4 subs are actually pretty close in design to the Yorkvilles.

We wanted to be faithful to what the old Live Audio Board suggested in 2004, so our subs are clustered in a line in front of the stage, off to one side to avoid those damn power alley effects.

I mixed the opening band, a local 4 piece young rock band. The CR1604 is nice because there is very little apparent gain structure. You just sort of throw the faders up until it's loud enough.

Evan is mixing the current band, an Accordion and Cajon combo. The Shure inline pad has already come out to handle a clipping mic preamp...
 
Re: Battle of the FOH's

Tom Manchester said:
The original 2004 main PA was JRX115's and Yorkville LS608's.

I have recreated this by using the closest thing I had in the shop; a pair of D&B M4's as mains, and 4 D&B C4 subs. The C4 subs are actually pretty close in design to the Yorkville
Click to expand...

Yeah. Next time a rider calls for M4's, just send the JRX. No one will notice
 
Re: Battle of the FOH's

A good engineer can make bad equipment sound good but even good gear can't help a bad engineer!

There some gigs I will take a 1604 over an M7 any day!
 
Re: Battle of the FOH's

FWIW

At a big deal wedding last Sauturday my associate Ted was confronted by a frozen, would not respond digital console less than one half hour before the guests arrived.

Luckily for him the venue "boneyard" in the basement includes their old Allen and Heath GL series monitor console and most of the old outboard gear from "pre digital". While the monitor guy finished dealing with the band on stage (they were by the way over an hour late for their load in and the stage plot sent by the leader was both wrong AND useless) the A&H , EQs comps and a Lexicon reverb were carried upstairs and installed before anyone knew that anything was wrong.

The post fader monitor sends took the place of the matrices that usually feed the front fills, and three different zones of balcony fill.

As my old Tour Manager would say, "we got home, we got paid and no one got hurt".

BTW the A&H and "antique" outboard sounded just fine.
 
Re: Battle of the FOH's

Shawn Keck said:
A good engineer can make bad equipment sound good but even good gear can't help a bad engineer!
Click to expand...

We had some really good mixes going throughout the day. We did cheat a little and decided to use some of our more premium microphones, and of course speakers. If you just have a fixed hi-mid-low eq on each channel, and 3 channels of comp / gate it's all you really need if the source and PA is good!

It's also a good exercise in mixing when you have so few options available, you spend more time listening and less time fooling with a compressor plugin for the whole set.
 
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Re: Battle of the FOH's

Tom Manchester said:
We had some really good mixes going throughout the day. We did cheat a little and decided to use some of our more premium microphones, and of course speakers. If you just have a fixed hi-mid-low eq on each channel, and 3 channels of comp / gate it's all you really need if the source and PA is good!
Click to expand...

It was certainly fun trying to figure out how to make something sound with very limited tools available. At least this time around we knew how to optimally use everything!



Evan
 
Re: Battle of the FOH's

Tom Manchester said:
It's also a good exercise in mixing when you have so few options available, you spend more time listening and less time fooling with a compressor plugin for the whole set.
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That is one of the problems with digital consoles. People are to interested in "playing with the toys" rather than actually MIXING!
 
Re: Battle of the FOH's

Ivan Beaver said:
That is one of the problems with digital consoles. People are to interested in "playing with the toys" rather than actually MIXING!
Click to expand...

The best mix of the day was probably the "combined FOH" mix in which Evan handled drums and bass on his console, and I handled vocals, guitar, and steel drum on my console. Two times the number of engineers = two times the mix!
 
Re: Battle of the FOH's

Tom Manchester said:
The best mix of the day was probably the "combined FOH" mix in which Evan handled drums and bass on his console, and I handled vocals, guitar, and steel drum on my console. Two times the number of engineers = two times the mix!
Click to expand...
I would disagree with that.

I did a festival back in the late 80's for a local popular band. I was running monitors and noticed that the "sound" of the PA had changed-so I went out to FOH.

I quickly found out why :0

There were 2 "sound guys". One was operating the mixing console and the other was "operating the PA".

The second guy was adjusting the house eq ALONG WITH adjusting the crossover freq and house eq--------------------------

I DON'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I pushed the second guy out of the way and adjusted the eq and xover to where I last remembered it and returned to monitor world.

A little while later the PA started to sound different-and yes he was up to same "playing".

That was the last gig that I had the xover at FOH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was moved right after that gig.

Luckily no gear was damaged.

How could you possibly mix with somebody adjusting the PA rather dramatically at the same time????????????

But this was an "art" festival-so all sorts of things go. Like a steam powered guitar machine-but we won't go there.
 
Re: Battle of the FOH's

Tom Manchester said:
The best mix of the day was probably the "combined FOH" mix in which Evan handled drums and bass on his console, and I handled vocals, guitar, and steel drum on my console. Two times the number of engineers = two times the mix!
Click to expand...

I had a slammin' rhythm section mix. :)

Funny thing, we probably got more compliments on mix quality at this gig than anything else I've done this year! Hell, some kid was blown away with the "fancy" gear we had at FOH. Maybe this is the ticket for me! :lol:




Evan
 
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