AP Tour- Continued
03/20/08 | by harfordsound
Another day, another dollar. Over the last 3 days we drove through AZ and played 2 pretty awesome shows there.
First up was the Rialto Theatre in Tuscon, AZ. This show was not looking good from the start. 242 presales the day before the show(ouch). But, we got lucky and ended up with 629 people as a final count.
Caution: Sound nerd stuff-
The PA system for the room was a little underpowered, but sounded great. It was an older Meyer system, with a Yamaha M7CL-48 out front. I love the M7cl, so I was looking forward to mixing on it. While the tops sound good, they are not right for this room. They cover the front bit of the crowd very well, but lack the ability to throw the sound all the way to the back of the room without straining. The end result is that you end up slamming into the limiters trying to get enough SPL at FOH, and the sound just starts getting sucked down. Yeah, not fun. So, I basically tried to keep my mix right on the verge of limiting. It wasnt as loud as I would have liked(98dBA @ FOH), but it worked for the crowd. There is talk of a JBL vertec rig coming into the place pretty soon, and that should solve the throw issues they have currently.
/Sound nerd stuff
This theatre was also plagued with issues. Everything that could go wrong, did tonight. Rian, for the first time ever, went through his bassdrum head mid set. He had to swap it with The Matches drum. Alex also had a ton of cable issues with his guitar. It kept cutting out. Finally, Jack’s in ears were buzzing like crazy most of the set. It was a very, very stressful night.
Sorry, no pics of this place…
Next up in AZ was the Marquee Theatre. We got a beautiful day for this show. So, we decided to throw a pool party.
Thanks to the fans for providing Alex with a pool for the party. We also bought a grill and cooked Burgers after the show.
Anyway, onto the show: This room is huge. The house PA was another EV line array, and it sounded great. Im really starting to like these boxes after mixing on them a few times. They have a very nice sound to them. This was our first “headlining” show, where we got to play last. It was nice to have plenty of time to soundcheck and get everything working before the show. It made life very simple once show time came.
This was another sketchy show with presales. There were only 400 the day before, so we were wondering just what was going to happen. But again, the fans came through and we had almost 1200 bodies in there. It was a very successful show. Everything worked flawlessly, and was much better then the night before.
Oh yeah, here’s the completed in ear monitor rig. We’ve added a few new toys:
We’re at Jillians tonight, and hopefully all goes well… You’ll know soon…
Back to the world of rock and roll.
