WINNIPEG, MB – Christian artist Steve Bell's solo career began in 1989, but many of his recent performances have been anything but a solo effort. The Juno award-winning singer/songwriter has performed more than two dozen symphony concerts with 12 different orchestras in Canada and the U.S. in recent years, all the while using Neumann 105s for vocals.
Dave Zeglinski, Bell's manager and sound engineer of Signpost Music, said he's been using Neumann microphones since he started his own studio in the early 1980s. Primarily a studio engineer, Zeglinski's goal with live performances is to mirror the sound quality he gets in the studio.
"The last tour was all Neumann and Sennheiser," said Zeglinski. A grand piano is often featured during performances. For that, Zeglinski relies on either the TLM 102 or the TLM 170. For overheads on the drums, he relies on a TLM 102 and uses Sennheiser MD 421 IIs on the toms. And Bell's KMS 105 on vocals is accompanied a Neumann TLM 102 on his guitar.
Zeglinski first got a sound check on the KMS 105 when Bell was recorded by CBC Radio during the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra run. "The cool thing about it is ever since he started using it, all of his monitor problems went away," Zeglinski said. "This has translated to more confidence during his performances and is reassured that the audience is hearing the same thing he is."
Zeglinski said the Neumann microphones minimize the need for tweaking and equalizing for the live performances. "Our show is kind of a low to medium volume high fidelity show, so I'm not looking for screaming volume out of the monitors. My background is in the recording studio, so I wanted it to sound like the studio monitors would, and now that we are using Neumann, it's really hard to even think about going back to other stuff."
For more information, please visit www.sennheiser.ca.
