Mercury Rev hit the road in March for their headlining tour in support of their new album “The Secret Migration”. Lucky me, for this short run of the UK we are carrying all PA, and our Tour/Production Manager hooks me up with Skan, and I’m mighty happy he did.
Skan (out of Reading) was able to supply my wish list for the tour to a T. Scott was my systems tech and a fine tech he was. Wish we could have done this for the entire tour…
Midas Heritage 2000 48chn
Control:
(3) XTA Stereo 31band Graphic EQ’s – house L/R, downfill L/R, support main graphic.
(5) XTA Processors – main L, main R, subs and front fills, and 2 backups
Sony CD Player
Laptop PC with wireless for XTA control and Smart.
Powerbook G4 for set list notes, recording/playback, and MIDI program changes.
Effects:
PCM-81, TC D-2, Antares AVP, TC M-3000, PCM-91, SPX-990, SPX-2000
Inserts:
(2) dbx 106xt Compressore, dbx 160sl Compressor, BSS 402 stereo comp/de-esser, (2) Distressors, (3) Drawmer stereo gates, (2) FMR Audio RNC Compressors
Support inserts:
(2) dbx 1066, Drawmer quad gate
Here we see Oliver, our monitor engineer at Barrowlands. He made use of an Inovason rented from Goldfrap (who he had also worked with). All the band were on IEM’s.
Oliver used a PCM-91 for vocal reverb and the bands Sennheiser G3 system with Future Sonic ear pieces.
Some d+b wedges and amps for the support acts and there’s monitor world for ya.
The PA for most of the gigs:
(6) or (7) dv-Dosc per side
(3) dv-Sub per side
(3) SB-218 per side (on an aux send)
(2) Arcs per side for downfill
All of the shows with this configuration were ground stacked.
The two pictures below are from the Manchester Academy. I’d been in here before, both times with the Martin W-8 rig, and needless to say, this time with the dv’s was by far the best.
Scott tells me your not supposed to stack more than 6 of the dv’s….. but the coverage was perfect in the venue, and it worked really well at keeping things off of the low ceiling.
For our last two show in the UK we flew the dv’s and had 14 per side. In aftersight we probably should have had some more subs too, but we made due.
On the right we see Scott getting the rig ready to fly at the Hammersmith Apollo in London. And the picture directly below is from there also. The rig worked out really well and at the Hammersmith we could fly more dv’s than v-dosc due to the weight limits of the hanging points.
The picture below and to the right is from our last show in the UK at Guild Hall in Southampton.
Audiosquid 