DDA serves Jamiroquai's Son

While Jamiroquai chose Midas XL3s for FOH and monitors, support band Original Son were looking for a smaller desk but similar quality. Britannia Row suggested the DDA QII, which is now also used for the on-stage DJ and to supplement the main band's FOH capability.

Britannia Row's Bryan Grant commented: "Committing to DDA was a very comfortable decision for us, because it comes from the Midas and Klark Teknik stable. It's incredibly compact and has loads of facilities." Rick Pope, FOH Engineer for Original Son, concurs: "I've not seen a board of this pedigree with this amount of features in this price bracket before — I'd be happy to use this on any tour I'm involved with."

Jamiroquai and Original Son began their world tour last autumn, with the sound system for all dates supplied by Britannia Row.

PAG Direct. (Contact Details)

Garwood into the limelight

Garwood in-ear monitoring is making its first forays into the theatre world. Two major West End openings have built IEM systems into their sound specification, and several other touring shows are taking advantage of the benefits.

Richard Ryan, Sound Designer of Jesus Christ Superstar, chose Garwood's new compact receiver, the LV1, for the new Lloyd-Webber blockbuster. The low profile LV1, which weighs just 65g, is easily hidden under your camel hair tunic, while its wireless performance complements the Superstar direction, enabling, for instance, Judas Iscariot to sing while swinging on a rope above the stage — presumably before he hangs himself.

Sir Cliff Richard's sell-out stage version of Wuthering Heights is using five Garwood Radio Stations. With 12 additional receivers, every cast member of Heathcliff is tuned in with in-ear monitors.

Garwood Communications Ltd. (Contact Details)

Martin — come on, come on

Come December, as surely as the country's tired Christmas decorations are hoisted up for another festive season, so too does one Mr. Gary Glitter dust off his lairy suits, and spruce up his chest hair and embark on another Christmas tour, where his 'gang' enjoy their old favourites and bask in another, simpler age, where people apparently didn't care how they would look or sound. Capital Sound Hire used the Gary Glitter Gang Show tour to give their newly-acquired Martin Audio Wavefront 8C system its first full scale national concert tour outing.

Said Capital Sound boss Keith Davis: "Having done several small jobs with the Martin system, we decided it was ready to do an arena tour. It's a very good system and the new MAN flying bar makes rigging really quick. It looked brilliant when we rigged it at Wembley for the Benny Hinn Mission of Mercy Crusade, producing a nice even curve and a good overall coverage."

The full system — 24 flown boxes a side, 12 ground-stacked bass units, and some infills — was carried through every major arena in the UK between December 7th and 23rd, with capacities ranging from 5,500 up to 13,000. It was used with Martin F2s providing the delays and two BSS Omnidrives.

Martin Audio. (Contact Details)

Midas – Older & Unplugged

For his recent MTV 'unplugged' special, George Michael performed the entire show without the benefit of sequencers or samplers. Roger Lindsay, his engineer, also joined in the unplugged spirit by dispensing with outboard equalisation and plugging (or 'unplugging') George's vocals directly into his Midas XL4 console. It was the audio quality and in particular the 'natural-sounding' EQ, which led him to specify the Midas from rental company Britannia Row.

Over the years, Lindsay had seen several failed attempts to transfer 'studio technology' to inappropriate live applications and believes that 'features' can never compensate for a shortfall in engineering skills by manufacturer or operator. He nevertheless found himself drawn to the XL4's automation to save and recall complex set-ups.

"Being able to program the work of resetting the board between songs allowed me to concentrate on the mix in hand," he reported, "and despite my reservations about the roadworthiness of automated systems, the Midas didn't glitch once, even when rehearsals were interrupted by a power cut" — not that that should really worry an 'Unplugged' session anyway!?!

The XL4 will now be the board of choice, used in full MIDI configuration in the event of a future plugged-in George Michael tour.

Mark IV PAG. (Contact Details)

I'm too sexy for my PM3500

The very latest in the line of Yamaha PM FOH consoles, the PM3500, continues to find favour amongst hire companies and end users. LMC Audio Systems Ltd have now supplied the console to several customers, including hire companies RG Jones Sound Engineering and Euro Hire.

RG Jones Sound tried out a PM3500 on the production of Puccini's La Boheme at The Royal Albert Hall in February and were sold. Amongst other assignments, their own stock model has now been used during The Classical Spectacular Series for promoter Raymond Gubbay and The National Television Awards at The Royal Albert Hall on 8th October.

The PM3500 supplied to Euro Hire of Farnborough saw plenty of service on the road during the two month Richard Thompson tour earlier this year, and has been used extensively on Right Said Fred dates across the UK. According to Euro Hire's Mervyn George, the console is now regularly specified due to its "wide range of facilities and automated mute control".

The latest series of UK sales of PM35000, both by Yamaha-Kemble's authorized dealers, LMC and Marquee Audio, and under the company's recently announced Direct Sales initiative, pushes this year's worldwide sales total to almost 350 consoles — in both FOH and monitor configurations.

Yamaha-Kemble. (Contact Details)

Mic de Burgh

Chris de Burgh has been on tour using a Sennheiser SKM5000 radio mic and a Sennheiser SK50 guitar beltpack with EM2004 receiver.

Having completed successful tours in South Africa, Canada, and the UK, Chris de Burgh has been in Germany as well as Switzerland and Poland before Christmas.

Chris de Burgh says: "For all of 1996 I have been touring in a very unique way for me. Half the shows have been with full philharmonic orchestra and the other half with just myself and a string quartet. Sennheiser radio mics and radio guitar system have given me a quality and flexibility, which a few years ago, I would never have thought possible."

Sennheiser. (Contact Details)

A&H Sydney sale

Allen & Heath's Australian distributor, AR Audio Engineering, report that A&H GL2000 consoles have recently been employed for two major productions at Sydney's historic State Theatre. The GL2000 was used for performances by the Shanghai ballet at the theatre, and also at a special performance given at Canberra's Parliament House. A 16-channel GL2000 was also used during a month long run of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Pictured is the GL2000 sight-seeing in Cornwall before flying to Sydney.

Allen & Heath. (Contact Details)

B&H light up with EAW

Woking-based PA hire and production company, B&H Production, has recently purchased EAW SM122 and SM155 stage monitors from Lighting Technology Projects (LTP).

The EAW monitors were chosen after trials at a number of venues against four other monitors. "We were looking for a compact, mid-priced monitor that had a respectable brand name," claims B&H Production Managing Director, Andy Callin, "and the EAW stage monitors fitted the bill. We have been using them for many prestigious London hotels such as The Dorchester and Grosvenor House as well as for light music, jazz, orchestral events, and multimedia shows."

In fact, B&H production are so pleased that they have purchased a further four EAW SM122 and SM155 monitors from LTP.

Lighting Technology Projects. (Contact Details)

TLA Indigo Kula Shaker

TL Audio are experiencing 'huge' demand for their recently introduced Indigo 2051 mono valve voice processor, two of which are being employed by rising stars Kula Shaker on their latest tour of Europe and the US, following the outstanding success of their latest album K.

Front-of-house Engineer Graham Pattison specified the 2051 to shape the band's vocal sound and wasn't disappointed: "The 2051 is great — it has all the warmth and clarity a live engineer could ask for. After hearing the vocals without the 2051, I realised just how much work it was doing — it's very transparent and simply sounds great."

TL Audio products have also been helping Eric Clapton, Bush, AC/DC, East 17, Courtney Pine, and Lynyrd Skynyrd on recent tours.

Tony Larking Pro Sales Ltd. (Contact Details)