Gear Talk

Excruciating Detail, In Too Many Words

Ours is a non-standard system. A typical self-contained IEM setup involves running everything to a splitter/mixer rig and handing the FOH engineer a snake with all your inputs to patch into their stagebox. That system is great if you're headlining, or if you have a lot of time and like cables. But if you're sharing equipment it quickly becomes a repatching nightmare. 

Our current rig is the result of a long evolution that started with a standard splitter-and-tails setup. One by one, instruments were removed from the splitter as the rig was simplified. 

We ditched splitting the drum mics first, instead putting an SM57 under the kit as a sort of bastardized room mic. The best thing that can be said about it is that it's not as bad as you'd think. There's usually enough stage sound from the drums that tone doesn't really matter for IEMs. As an upgrade, we can have the tech send us a drum mix that replaces the 57. 

We were still splitting everything else at our rig, which was especially a pain when sharing a bass amp. To eliminate that, we added a DI to Breanna's pedalboard so we can get a copy of the bass before it goes to the amp. 

To split the synth, we simply put a second mic on the amp. We use an e906, which hangs by the cable. The cable is permanently attached to the amp with a zip tie so the mic always lands at the same place with no fuss. (Shoutout to Damian from Cold Fame, I stole the idea from him.) For a while, we ran the amp mic through our splitter and gave techs the option of setting up their own mic or taking the output from the splitter, but they invariably chose to use their own mic.

Vocals still have to go through the splitter. Yes, we could use Y cables, but that opens the door for ground loops. in the past, we ran the mic cables back to the splitter and had the tech take the outputs directly from the rig. That method is fine, but involves running a lot of additional cables. Instead, we now have a sub-snake that essentially brings the splitter in/outs to the front of the stage. We can quickly repatch the mic through the splitter, and the tech doesn't need to interface with the rig at all.

At the end of the day we can roll up to the gig, set up, and start playing without a soundcheck, confident that our monitors will sound pretty much how they did in rehearsal. Techs are generally happy because they don't have to worry about monitors. The stage is tidy, because everything that lives downstage is routed through the sub-snake with the vocals. The system has been tested at shows ranging from a medium sized festival to a bar with only four XLR channels on the FoH mixer, and it worked equally well for both. -RH