Stuart91

Sorry - I wasn't clear enough. The Penn custom panel service seems to have a maximum of 12 XLR cutouts per 1U panel. I assume this limitation is down to the tooling I've got a rack that I'm looking at re-doing, and it's already wired with 16-way panels. If I could have got the custom engraving done on a 16-way panel, I'd have jumped at it, especially at that price. 12, unfortunately, is just awkward for this particular job (it's four channel amps, with input, pass through, and two speakon outputs per channel) whereas a 16 way is perfect.

I'm with Tony and Paul on this one. We keep SM58-sized clips on all our stands. Inevitably some are taken off in the course of a gig (particularly for kick mics and small condensers) but they're usually well in the minority. Fortunately almost all of our mics will fit in a standard clip. I figure that this is a quicker way of doing it, and we break less clips on the stands than we would lose if they were kept separately. We store our stands in bags of six, and fold the booms so that the clip is facing upwards. This makes it easy to check at a glance whether there is a clip in place, and quick to replace any missing ones. I'm toying with the idea of finding ways of "padding out" smaller mics so that they can fit a standard clip. Occasionally this has had to be bodged at a gig with multiple layers of insulating tape, but that obviously isn't ideal. Possibly bulking them up with heat shrink or neoprene...

Those look like a very good option - thanks for turning them up. I'm sure I'll use them in future. My only disappointment is that it's not possible to fit 16 XLR cut-outs on a single U rack panel - twelve seems to be the maximum.

Hercules is a good shout - I'll check that out. We've got a couple of their keyboard stands which seem to have held up well, I'm annoyed at myself for not thinking of them. The RAT Jazz stands look good but are probably out of budget - I don't doubt that they're worth the money but they'll have a hard time justifying the cost compared to the £15/20 cheapies that they are buying at the moment. They probably won't be flight cased - which is another plus point for the RAT Jazz I suppose, since it folds down so neatly. I've occasionally put 8 or 10 in a spare trunk when I've been at a show myself, but a lot of the time there's nothing much in the way of production so things just go willy nilly into people's cars.

In similar fashion, I'm sure every PAT test minion opens every non-moulded plug and checks the internal connections before slapping the green sticker on the back of it...

Some analogue mixers even used soca for the link between the console and the PSU. (I vaguely remember Soundcraft Series 5?) Thankfully in that scenario it'd be hard to mis-patch, but all the same... It underlines the importance, as others have said, of labelling.

A customer of ours has asked me to find them some music stands. At the moment they have a collection of bog-standard cheap generic ones - something like this. They find those stands to be a bit of a pest when they are travelling for concerts, as they don't fold down very well and are quite breakable - particularly the plastic knobs and collars. They don't have an enormous budget, so my first suggestions of RAT stands or K&M drew a sharp intake of breath. I was wondering if anyone had recommendations of reasonably sturdy, tourable stands that are a bit less expensive? It's a bit hard to tell how durable or easy to handle something like this from just looking at online listings.

Doughty Engineering offer this as well. If I were getting some made myself I'd seek quotes from both Andolite and Doughty and see how they compare.

At the risk of sidetracking the thread, how does that work? I'd expect that a 10amp earth pin would rattle around in a 20amp hole? Do you have fuses in the plug top itself? (Like the UK 13amp plug). If not, what prevents, say, an overloaded multiway extension with a 10amp plug drawing 20amps from the outlet and melting?

Kramer presentation switchers are now available very cheaply (compared to their cost when new). Something like this might do the trick if it can handle the input signal. They accept quite a wide range so it's a possibility, probably best to check the manual. The rack mount format might not be ideal for strapping to the back of a monitor - depends on the size of the monitor I suppose.

dB Technologies are part of the same parent group as RCF. They share many components and are typically a little less expensive than the RCF equivalent. We're dealers for dB but have used a bunch of it in our own hire stock and have been very pleased with it. For small-medium size rooms the IG3T is a great box, good output and coverage and it's very hard to make it feed back.

If they're set on a projection screen rather than flatscreens, the only other option that might be worth considering is an ultra-wide projector. We've had good results with Hitachi and Epson models that use curved mirrors instead of a conventional lens. Sometimes they can get snuck into position that other machines (even with fisheye lenses) couldn't manage.

One crucial difference is that the church won't have any kind of premises/entertainment licence. So the sort of issue we're discussing here won't even be on the radar of those in authority, and they're unlikely to have a council inspector pull them up about it. I've seen quite a bit of downright dangerous stuff in churches - both electrical and rigging/structural - and trying to get it addressed is often an uphill struggle. There are circumstances in which a 10m truss span could be done safely. We've twice built goalpost trusses between balconies, but they've been properly rated (not a random eBay buy) and fixed to pillars for lateral support. Doing it properly will probably cost about the same as the price difference on a projector with a long-throw lens, though. The arithmetic was different a decade or so ago...

That could also be handy for wireless IEMs. Sometimes I've had to resort to having an individual transmitter sitting at the performers feet.

Certainly looks interesting. I wonder when they will actually be shipping? Two mixes from one unit is a very clever idea. That, and the fact it can hook straight up to a console with no additional boxes required, means it'll likely be a game-changer in terms of price. I expect they'll sell a bucketload into the church market.For some touring/function bands, it could be a decent solution, far better than fiddling with a phone app during a performance.

If you can get the musicians onto IEMs, that'll transfer between the rooms more easily and consistently than mixes on wedges. Whilst wireless IEMs are often a bit of a stretch for the typical church budget, it's possible to use wired packs that are much less expensive.

Do you know of any that will? Macbooks are pain with protection on, and it would be nice to have a one-box solution rather than putting something else in line.

Indeed - I wasn't a fan of their approach. Couldn't see how they would be able to sustain the business on those prices. Of course, the problem now is that their former customers have become used to those sorts of rates, budgets are set accordingly, and there will be some in very tight spots for their upcoming productions.

You'll be doing well to get anywhere close to the prices that Light the Way seemed to be offering...

That's a fair enough point, but I think what the OP is trying to do is find a way to save their friend (the hapless worker) from the drudgery of sifting through hours of footage. That seems like a worthwhile endeavour to me.

Good point - I'd missed that. Although there's no cost-free solution here, hopefully if money could be found for midi controllers etc. a small desk for submixing wouldn't be out of the question. If they're like many churches I've seen, there's probably one gathering dust in a cupboard somewhere. Multicore lines might be another matter, though. Depends so much on the player, unfortunately. If they're consistent hitters, and have reasonable stylistic awareness, then no problem. But more granular control of the kit can help enormously sometimes. One worship band I dealt with at a conference had a basic Roland kit, set up with just a single stereo out. During the brief soundcheck, it sounded agreeable enough. Once the session started, the drummer decided to play with an open hi hat, which now sounded like someone emptying a bottle bank. Stuck at FOH, there was nothing I could do about it. EQing out the harshness sucked the life out of the rest of the drum sound but was the best compromise.

You don't even need MIDI - you can simply have some triggers plugged into one module, and some into the other. So find a DM5 (or even an original D5) on eBay or similar. I've done this before myself, putting kick and snare into one unit, toms and cymbals in the other. All hard-panned so that I got four discrete channels on the desk. Whilst it would have been nice to split down further, this gave me more than enough control to get by.

I'd try to keep the supply to each amp separate (i.e. easy to grab without having to dive inside a rack). That way you can split the rig over different sockets/supplies and hopefully avoid overload any one ring main. It might be worth adding a small standalone distro that can power them all together from a single 32amp CEEform, but don't set things up in such a way that it's the only option.

They'll all work happily together, make sure however that they are all on the same frequency band. There are several to choose from and some of the units turning up on eBay can be on bands intended for use abroad etc.

And of course, the vast majority of shows with over-tired crew happen just fine. Near-misses get forgotten. So it becomes the norm, until an accident happens. Similarly, decades ago there were plenty people who thought they could drive just fine after four or five pints, because they hadn't crashed - yet. And if you were foolish enough to make a habit of it now, chances are you would get a good few drunken journeys in before something critical happened. It took a lot of dedicated campaigns to make people aware of the dangers and shake the complacency surrounding it. The biggest problem is that there's no breathalyser for tiredness. A few years ago there was a house guy who turned up to a 12pm call, reeking of booze and clearly unfit. I had no hesitancy raising the issue with the venue management, since it was blatantly obvious to anyone within sniffing distance. It would have been a bit harder if he was sober, but dog-tired. He might not have been any better in that condition, but it would have been much harder to bring it up.