ADLIB supplied sound and lighting equipment and crew to the recent John Barrowman UK tour.
FOH sound engineer Walter Jaquiss (whose current clients include the Sex Pistols) has worked with ADLIB on many previous occasions and comments, “As soon as I knew ADLIB was providing the production, I knew that everything would run like clockwork.”
He worked closely with ADLIB’s systems engineers James Neale (FOH) and Ben Booker (monitors) on this tour.
Jaquiss chose L-Acoustics dvDOSC for the left and right arrays, 12 mid-high boxes a side, along with 4 dvSUBS and 8 of the new L-Acoustics SB28 subs, all of which were ground stacked, and they used 8 ARCS cabinets for infill.
“It sounded superb,” says Jaquiss, “It was the perfect system for the largely cabaret style show,” which was playing primarily concert hall and theatre venues. He explains that he wanted a clean, smooth sound with minimal colouration to deal with Barrowman’s wide repertoire of songs that covered a huge range during the 2 and a half hour performance.
They took two Soundcraft Vi6 consoles, used for both FOH and monitors. They needed consoles with plenty of power and inputs, which also had a relatively small footprint and to keep the truck pack expedient. It was the first time Jaquiss had used a Vi6 on tour, so he took it out on another ADLIB gig beforehand, and found it was extremely easy to learn and use. “It’s a good sounding desk,” he comments, “It’s designed to be user-friendly an not over-complicated.”
He used all 64 inputs, while at the other end of the multicore, Ben Booker was running 31 monitor mixes by the end of the tour. They used no external effects at FOH or monitors, with the console’s 8 inbuilt Lexicon reverbs proving a great asset for the show.
They ran a standard ADLIB drive rack for processing and EQ with Lake DLPs and a wireless tablet controlling the whole system. It was powered by Camco LA8 amps, with the standard VDOSC presets.
On monitors, Ben Booker used a combination of ADLIB MP3 wedges and in-ear mixes for the 7 band members and Barrowman. In rehearsals, they were all offered the choice between the two monitoring options, and initially Barrowman went out with 3 pairs of wedges to cover his different singing areas. However during the course of the tour, he was converted from using the wedges to relying on his Ultimate Ears IEMs, which tidied up the stage considerably.
They ran 8 channels of Sennheiser G2 IEMs, and a selection of Shure hard-wired packs, ADLIB’s own U4 radio system and a full compliment of other mics including Sennheiser, AKG and Barrowman’s singing mic - a Shure KSM radio.
Lighting was designed by Dave Hill and operated/directed on the road by Neil Trenell, working with ADLIB Lighting’s Andy Rowe and Stuart Gray.
The fixtures were rigged over 3 trusses - front, mid and back.
The back truss featured 3 Martin Professional MAC 700 Washes and 4 MAC 700 Profiles, 2 Martin Atomic strobes and a 40ft starcloth backdrop. The mid truss featured 4 MAC 700 Washes and 4 MAC 700 profiles, plus two Atomics, and the front truss had seven 10 degree Source Four profiles for key lighting, 2 MAC 700 Profiles and 4 MAC 700 Washes and 5 2-lite Moles.
On the deck were 8 of the new Clay Paky Alpha Beam 300s, which are similar to a moving ACL fixture. Upstage centre was a 5K fresnel, used for silhouetting, and ADLIB also supplied 2 Lycian 1.2K follow spots.
Trenell ran all this from a Hog iPC console. The rig was “Extremely well designed and thought-out to fit the venues and the show perfectly” comments Andy Rowe, adding that everything went extremely smoothly, including the traditional ADLIB lighting/sound camaraderie.
Ends.
Date of issue : 15th May 2008.
For more press info. on ADLIB Audio, please contact Louise Stickland on 01865 202679 or 07831 329888 , or Email ‘louise@loosplat.com’, Contact ADLIB direct on 0151 486 2214 or check www.adlibaudio.co.uk.
Crew Photo Caption : L ? R Neil Trenell LD , Walter Jaquiss FOH sound , James Neale PA Tech , Andy Rowe Lighting Tech, Stuart Gray Lighting Tech.