This adventure started with me meeting Bink in the parking lot of the Veterans Building near Lake Merritt in Oakland late at night after Mike Pyle's demo ot the Speakers. We succesfully put two tops two wedges and one sub into my car.
My apologies for taking so long to write this up and further regrets that I can't spice up my report with a bunch of nice pictures like Bink does.
But now, weeks in the making welcome to...
"Grampa's Truly Excellent Adventure with the ADRaudio package" or "Back to High School"
My test drive with the ADRaudio speakers originally intended to be three very different shows collapsed into one show over two days when the Venezuelan Jazz Singer got sick and the Chinese Pipa player and her ensemble canceled their tour.
So it was down to a benefit performance in an circa 1933 high school auditorium with cabaret singer Debbie Decoudreaux
http://www.debbiedecoudreax.com.
I was originally called about this show by old friend and colleague Brian Connoly, who among his other jobs, does sound for the San Francisco version or Teatro Zinzanni.
http://\love.zinzanni.org/Debbie, who has done a couple of runs as "Madame Zinzanni" in that show had been asked to do a benefit concert for her old high school in the Oakland hills and asked Brian to make sure the sound was right.
Brian called me asking if I was willing to help out not knowing that my wife, known hereabouts as "Mrs. Grampa" not only was a graduate of the same school, but was in the same graduating class as Debbie.
So how could I refuse?
First technical note. My wife's yearbook from that year shows the auditorium with a pair of University column speakers. They are still there :-0! Although the amplifier has been upgraded to a TOA 900 series mixer/amp sometime in the last 37 years.
Brian's original plan was to bring in a pair of Yorkville TX3 speakers for main FOH but when the U 103s became available I suggested that we use them instead.
Although most of the band was locally based SF Area musicians, Debbie's collaborator/pianist/conductor from New York was coming out for the show and she wanted to rehearse the day before the concert. Brian was committed to another job so on Wednesday I loaded up the trusty Honda Accord and headed up the hill to the school.
Brian and I decided that I would take the ADRaudio rig for the rehearsal day and he would bring in a snake, some more monitors and IF I decided that it was needed the ATA 118 sub in his van the next day.
Yes, all both of the U 103s and both of the M 1225 wedges fit in the trunk of a 2000 Honda. The mike and speaker stands rode in their bags in the foot well of the back seat, the Allen and Heath MixWiz and the small rack with my dbx Driverack480 and the all important Rock and Roller cart rode on the back seat. The microphones, duffle bag of cables and my "everything else" backpack rode on the front passenger seat.
Upon arrival at the school I found that the "easy" load in was up six stairs to the front doors and then up 14 more stairs to the hallway at the front of the auditorium.
The only elevator on site is in the convent and is reached by driving further up the hill into the school yard, through the cafeteria into the convent.
I decided, given the amount of time before the desired rehearsal to just carry everything up the stairs. The U 103s are not light but the handles are in a good place balance wise so it wasn't all THAT hard. The M 1225s are nicely light and balanced.
The auditorium itself seats about 400 people on the main floor and another 100 or so in the balcony which wasn?t going to be used for this show. It's walls are either granite, or concrete nicely finished to look like granite and was live, but not painfully so. The seats were unupholstered wood, so I knew that there would be a lot of "mellowing out" acoustically when bodies filled those seats.
The setup on stage was a nice BIG Baldwin grand piano center stage with the drummer on a tall riser upstage, the bassist far stage right behind the pianists bench and the guitarist/accordion player and multi reed player stage left of the piano.
Behind the seated guitarist and the sax player was a three level choir riser for the student vocal ensemble that would join in on two or three selections.
So I went to work setting up the "rehearsal PA the U 103s went on Ulitmate tripods on the down stage corners theM 1225s were spaced about 3 feet apart on the down stage edge.
The available AC power consisted of the one outlet under the above mentioned TOA mixer/amp and another all the way upstage left under a workbench. Not what Dave would call "Varsity" but happily well enough grounded to power all four EONA powered boxes for this show along with the small guitar, bass and accordion amps.
I put the mixer and the 480 in front of the stage near the stage left stairs.
I miked the piano with a pair of Sennheiser MD504s on Mic Eze clamps. Not my first choice but something I"ve found works well when the lid must be fully closed on the piano for any number of reasons. Here it was for sight lines to the drummer and to provide an ample table for a number of props and other items used in the show.
The sax got a Shure Beta 57a, the guitar amp an E609, and the accordion and bass went direct. The star vocal was a Shure UHF with a Beta 58 capsule and the pianist got a Sennheiser 835 for his vocal mic.
After determining that theU 103 mains would be more than enough as house sound for the next evening's concert I turned the stage left box around so that the guitarist, saxophonist and drummer could hear the vocals better. I assured them that more monitors would be coming the next day.
I also reassured the choral ensemble that there would indeed be microphones over them on the show day.
I also concluded that the drums would need very little reinforcement for this cabaret level performance and that the subs would not be a good idea. This was definitely NOT rock 'n roll.
The next day Brian and I met up half past noon to finish setting up. He brought his brother Tom to help and since we had more time than I had the previous day and even more gear we took the "long way around" to that elevator in the convent. It's a SMALL, OLD elevator so it meant multiple trips up to "auditorium level" but it beat the stairs.
To what I had loaded in the previous day we added Brian's outboard rack to replace my dbx driverack, tour Yorkville E10 wedges for the pianist, bassist, guitarist and saxophonist and a Mackie SRM450 for the drummer. A snake got Brian to a FOH position in the first "wheelchair pull" of seats halfway back on the left side of the auditorium.
We added an AKG D112 on the kick and a Shure SM81 over the drums "just in case", an additional piano mike - AKG 451- and put a pair of Neumann KM84s on TALL K&M stands over the choir risers.
We had to be done by 3 pm so that the school orchestra could do their regular rehearsal on the floor in front of the stage, but since the call back for the musicians wasn?t until 6 pm we went out for a nice lunch.
Back to the venue before 5 we rung things out and got ready for the sound check. I'd like to report some drama, but the biggest issue was Brian convincing the star that she didn?t need the foam windscreen she had requested and that she really could work right on the mike if she wanted to. We also fiddled with the positioning of the choir mikes. Probably should have had more than two, but space was tight up there and we only had a 16 channel mixer to work with.
Now to the review...
The U 103s effortlessly put out more than enough quality audio to please nearly 400 alumni and supporters who heard a pretty dynamic show. They sounded sweet at low volumes on the ballads and did not sound strained or distorted in any way on the up tempo ?belters?. Mighty impressive for boxes that small. From the back of the auditorium they looked like shoe boxes on sticks, but they filled the room.
We even put the drums in there more than we thought.
Debbie, and Brian and I were all impressed with the M 1225 monitors. The only "tech note" here is that the plastic feet slide around REAL easily on nicely polished hardwood stages.
Something a little more ?rubbery? might be more in order for the wedges.
Ales and Bennett, you have some very nice product there.
I'm sorry I couldn?t give the subs a workout with the Cajon at that Venezuelan singer's gig or hear how the whole rig reacted when fed a mix of jazz and traditional Chinese instruments.
And best of all my wife got to hang with her old classmate AND actually drink a glass of wine in the library of her own school.
Any gig that makes the Mrs. willing to wait for me while I load out is a good one, eh?
Cheers,
Gramps
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Topic: My first ADRaudio speaker gig (Read 56756 times)