MONTREAL – Veteran FOH engineer Anthony Pitcher has been with pop-punk outfit Simple Plan for several touring seasons and uses Sennheiser wireless technology for the band's vocals and wireless PMs.
The band has toured the world several times playing everything from rock clubs, to arenas, to festivals drawing hundreds of thousands.
"With Simple Plan, the guitar sound is paramount, and guitars sit at the front of the mix," said Pitcher. "The band gets the right guitar tone with high SPLs – so high in fact that the direct sound from the amps can potentially mess with the FOH mix if I leave them in the standard position."
Pitcher's solution is to turn the amps around so that they face away from both the band and the crowd. Depending on the backstage layout of the venue, the amps may be projecting directly into a nearby wall, with a lot of potentially colored reflections returning to the mics, or the amps may be projecting into open space, with no reflections returning to the mics at all.
The upshot is that Pitcher's microphone capture depends critically on the venue and changes rather dramatically from night to night.
"I always listen carefully to the sound we're getting, and I always allow time to try out plan B or plan C to get it just right," he said. "The reflections or lack of reflections can have a huge impact on the sound, even with close-mic'd amps."
In addition to Sennheiser's "standard" live guitar mic, the e 906, Pitcher keeps e 935 and MD 421 II cardioid and e 945 super-cardioid dynamics on hand, as well as e 965 condensers. He works with several mics on each cabinet, varying distances and angles to obtain the right sound.
"I've been a live sound engineer for over 20 years," Pitcher noted. "When I started, the only Sennheiser mics that were on stage were the MD 421 and MD 441, which are still around today. Sennheiser obviously made a very conscious decision to put more products on the map in the form of the evolution series. What impressed me is that they put a tremendous effort into research and development and kept sound engineers at the heart of that process. The result is a live microphone line that far surpasses anything else that's out there."
Simple Plan's drums are a case in point. Pitcher uses a Sennheiser e 901 paired with an e 902. Between the two signals, the engineer can dial in whatever combination of pillow, thump, and pop is needed for the band and the venue. Simple Plan's snare cuts through with a Sennheiser e 905 on top and an e 904 on the bottom. The 904 is housed in a clip-on body. For hi-hats and overheads, Pitcher turns to Neumann. A handful of classic KM 185 small-diaphragm condensers provide a shimmery high-end that is present, but not overbearing.
For vocals, Simple Plan uses Sennheiser SKM 2000 wireless microphones with MMD 935 1 cardioid or MMD 945-1 super-cardioid dynamic capsules. The choice of capsules depends, like the guitars, on the venue. All five members of the band use Sennheiser ew 300 IEM G3 wireless personal monitors.
"The technology for personal monitors has come a long way, led by Sennheiser," Pitcher said. "In contrast to other manufacturers, Sennheiser technology has always been user-friendly, and the new G3 series takes that to another level. All of the parameters are quickly accessible, and the G3 allows scanning and synchronizing that is really helpful. It's fast and reliable around the world."
For more information, please visit www.sennheiser.com .
