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[Matthew Knischewsky]

Your boss has the final word.  If he tells you to take control, that's what you have to do.  When the sitting operator gets offended, you tell him it was your boss's decision, not yours.

In this case if the "boss" wants me to mix, the boss is the one to tell the guy. I'm just there to take over. As system tech I'm there to keep the gear working and to mix if necessary. Someone farther up the food chain can make the decision about who mixes and who doesn't. (and deal with the BS associated with it)

Matt

[Othmane Alaoui]

In my world by mean doing both ( House tech director ) and PA/lights owner on weekends. I use to be pretty harsh on this but I changed when I understood the benefits.

In both situations, my job is to provide a pleasant sound rig as easy, tuned, clean, loud ...
so the BE comes in and comes out with only great things to say about me, job, my rig,
the venue ... that way, they come back and sometimes even hire me to mix with them or on their behalf.
When less experienced BE comes in place, I try to help them by giving them all about what is wrong and good.
It doe's happen that some persons thinks they know better, they are better and do not need any help. Well, its up to
them and their ''boss''. I remember working with a SYS80 from Inovason, complex board back in the days. the BE came in
with 0 Knowledge, did not want to learn about how to use the board. His ''boss'' came to me ans asked me, can you help :
I said yes, and the best solution was to remove the Inovason and replace it with an ML5000 I had as backup. The producer came to me with some
Extra $$ because of my patience and sense of professionalism. And I will never touch the mix of someone else unless I am invited. This is very like sleeping with your wife or girlfriend to some people. It becomes very very personal !
My 2 watts !

Othmane

[Colin Miller]

I am by no means a professional with years of experience, but anytime I am out of town and someone else is brought in to mix, my (they are mine, actually) cables and mics are never put away the way I left them before going on holiday. That really chaps my ass. It's not a big deal to simply put the mic back into its pouch and zip it. Apparently it is. There's a bin with thirty XLR cables are wrapped in ~15" loops as examples, so you think it's okay to coil them any way you feel like?

/ rant over

But these are not professionals, so I can't expect professional behavior.

[Taylor Hall]

We started instituting an "administrative fee" for things like that. All our gear has handy visual aids to show you how and where to pack it, and if anything deviates too far from those guidelines then they get dinged. Some people bitch and moan about it, but in the end they only have themselves to blame when we show them that specific bolded line in their contract and on the packing sheet making the fee clear.

[Justin Bartlett]

I work full time for a municipally owned performing arts center. I maintain, oversee, and occasionally get to mix shows in a building that houses five performance spaces, plus an art gallery and banquet hall; and contains well over $2 million worth of professional sound system components. We do shows that run the gamut from A level touring musicians, to Broadway, to community theatre, to local arts presenters, to talking heads.


My job is to facilitate the shows that our clients bring in. Sometimes they bring acts that have their own engineer, sometimes they hire their own local engineers to run their shows on our equipment. And, sometimes I mix the shows myself. I train the tech staff for the user groups and our union stage hands in the operation of our equipment. But I step out of the way once they start running the actual shows. And I certainly do not hang over their shoulders and tell them what kind of EQ, compressions, or mix choices they should be making. Sometimes the engineers that the clients bring in, or that come with the acts that they bring in do a good job, and sometimes they don't. That's between the presenter and the act.


If your client wants you to mix a show, then that is a discussion they need to have with the talent that they bought.

+1 to all of that.

[claude cascioli]

i always let bands use thier own tech. if i see they dont know what there doing ill show them.if dont listen ill ask them to leave. we once did a show with a big act and thier sound guy was an idiot half way thorough the frist song he said there no vocals coming thorough the system . when i said try taking the mutes off the vocal inputs he turned to me and said i dont know what i am talking about. at that point i had him escorted away from the board by the police. in the end the manager fired him and gave me a tip for mixing the show. and asked me to go on the road with them .i declined being i had a company to run

[Ray Aberle]

i had him escorted away from the board by the police. in the end the manager fired him and gave me a tip for mixing the show. and asked me to go on the road with them .i declined being i had a company to run

All's well that ends well, but what if calling the police backfires on you?

[Steve M Smith]

All's well that ends well, but what if calling the police backfires on you?

In what way?


Steve.

[David Morison]

In what way?


Steve.

Getting cautioned for wasting police time, presumably.
I mean seriously, who'd expect the police to step in when a guest mixer claims the sys tech doesn't know that they're doing?

David.

[Steve M Smith]

I don't think it would get that far.  They wouldn't even turn up after being told what the 'problem' was.


Steve.

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