ADLIB continues its busy autumn season – adding to its increasingly diverse client base – supplying audio & crew for American Country Music legend Toby Keith’s recent UK and European tour.
The venues were a selection of theatres and Wembley Arena in London. ADLIB’s crew of Ian Nelson and Otto Kroymann worked closely with Keith’s own engineers – Dirk Durham (FOH), Bill Collyer (band monitors) and Russell Fischer (Toby Keith monitors) together with their systems tech, Scott Halle.
Durham specified JBL VerTec which he uses when touring in the USA, so ADLIB supplied a total of 24 VerTec 4889 speakers with 12 VerTec 4880A subs and 10 x L-ACOUSTICS KARA for front-fills and lip-fills.
For Wembley, they added side-hangs of another 10 x VT4889s left & right, plus four additional subs a-side.
The FOH console was a Midas XL4 which was also Dirk’s board of choice, complete with a substantial array of outboard. These included Drawmer gates and compressors – six channels of DS 501, six channels of DL241 and one DL 441, complete with dbx160a’s and 160 SL compressors, plus one ADL 1500 tube compressor.
On the effects side, they included a TC D-TWO delay, a TC M6000 multi effects unit and a Lexicon 960L.
The PA was processed, EQ’d & time aligned using Lake LM26s and an LM44, supplied with a standard ADLIB tablet remote for the convenience of being mobile while fine tuning.
Driving the system were Camco Vortex 6 amplifiers on the VT4889s and PLM 20000s for the subs and fills.
The first of two monitor consoles was a Midas H3000. This was used exclusively for Toby Keith’s IEM mixes, complete with inserts and effects in the form of eight channels of Drawmer DS201 gates, eight channels of BSS DPR402 compressors, four channels of dbx 160a compressors, a Summit TLA100 valve compressor and two Yamaha SPX2000 multi effects devices. These elements were mixed by Russell Fischer.
The band were on IEM systems too, and were mixed by Bill Collyer using an Avid Profile. ADLIB purchased the latest Shure PSM 1000 systems for the tour, together with three Shure P6HW hard-wired IEMs, amounting to 16 IEM mixes in total including spares. There was also a selection of Shure radio mics including KSM9s for Toby Keith and the backing vocalist and three wireless Beta 98H/Cs to cover the brass elements of the band.
It is a precise, detailed mix which has to be spot on. The system delivered an amazing sound and met the criteria of being flexible enough to run in various configurations according to venue size, always delivering consistent results.
Everything was co-ordinated in the ADLIB office by Dave Jones through production manager Ashley Swann, tour manager David Milam and Russell Fischer. Says Jones, “Everyone connected with the band has been a real pleasure to work with. We were very proud to have the opportunity to work with such a profile name in Country music”.
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