John Grant tours with d&b V-Series

Technical production rental specialist Entec provided audio equipment and crew for singer-songwriter John Grant’s recent run of UK concerts.

The tour represented a unique collaboration with the Royal Northern Sinfonia orchestra, and saw Grant deliver material from his two albums Pale Green Ghosts and Queen of Denmark.

Entec’s system engineer James ‘Kedge’ Kerridge worked alongside the singer’s own engineers Gabriel Nicotra (FOH) and Matt Pengelly (Monitors), along with Matt Grounds, who mixed the 29-piece orchestra. Also onstage was a regular electronic band comprising drums, guitar, bass and keyboards/synths.

Nicotra specified a d&b V-Series system with flown V-SUBS and Q-Series as fills. The standard system configuration for most venues was eight V8s a side with two V12s at the bottom of each array, plus four additional ground stacked V-SUBS and a cardioid-mode stack of three B2s each side. Four Q10-s were utilised for front fills and four Y7s deployed to fill other spaces when required.

For the London gig at the Royal Festival Hall, two side hangs of six d&b Q1s each were added. The system was powered via d&b D12 amplifiers throughout. The two FOH consoles were Yamaha CL5s – one running the orchestra and the other mixing the band, both running over Dante. The monitor desk was a Soundcraft Vi6.

Onstage, Entec supplied a pair of M4 wedges and 12 sets of Shure PSM1000 IEMs for monitoring.

Apart from the conductor and one cellist, none of the orchestra members were put on monitors. However, they were wired up with a series of close-mics, mainly DPA 4099s for the strings, 4061s for the woodwind and brass and a mix of Schertlers, contact and condenser mics – amounting to a total of 96 inputs to the monitor desk.

From the full orchestral mix, specific stem sub-mixes of the main elements were sent to the FOH console, bringing 30 inputs down to eight.

Mark ‘Magic’ Ellis Cope, Entec’s head of sound, said: “This was a great tour to prove the flexibility of the systems we can offer. From a control side we could site the FOH consoles either right next to each other at FOH, or we could move the orchestra desk to anywhere in the venue with the help of some near field monitors, so Matt could still generate his feeds for Gabriel to add in to his mix.

“We also managed to fully duplicate the touring PA system and add some venue specific elements to the London show, which meant that the truck not arriving from the previous venue at load-in time was not an issue … and made for a more relaxed day.”