WORCESTER, MA — Maceo Price, production manager for Lil’ Wayne’s "I Am Music" tour, shown here, chose CAD microphones for the tour after extensive A/B testing. Reliability factored into the decision for the touring shows, which feature moving set elements.
Asked about specific mic choices, Price said he “loves CAD mics for drums. We’ve got CAD TSM411s on the snare tops and bottoms and rack toms, and the CAD M179 on overheads and floor toms. My favorite is the CAD (Equitek) e60 on the hi-hat.
"I don’t know if you’ve seen the show, but the drums are monstrous. It’s toms and snares all day, and the snare cuts glass. You get a lot of pressure out of them without the mics cracking up.”
On the warmer side of the spectrum, Price opted for CAD Trion 7000 ribbon mics on the bass and guitar amps. Prerecorded string parts were recorded right off the bow of the cello with the 7000, put in ProTools and blended together for a thicker sound.
Asked about the tonal quality Price looks for with the Trion 7000, he said that “The ribbon mic is really warm, and because of its rejection, you can isolate it and get every nuance out of the microphone.
"CAD mics are nice and sensitive,” he added. “I have a lot of hi hat coming into my snare because of the way the kit is set up with the two snares surrounding the hi hat. So you’ve got to play with the gates a bit to make sure there’s no bleed through. But when you need it, it’s there.
"We also used CAD D189s for talkback. These are really important for our show because of the expanded space our guys work in. They play from 55 feet up down to 0 feet, and each one passes through side arrays, front fills and wedges on the upper decks. The CAD talkback mics keep working for us because their rejection characteristics are so effective.
"In critical situations I can always hear everyone crystal clear,” Price said. “No matter what’s going happening. Musicians talking to the monitor engineer, or me eavesdropping on the music director talking to the ProTools operator, letting him know when to skip a song or start one late—what we call ‘audibles’. With CAD, I hear only what I want to hear.”
The demands put upon the audio gear for this tour are significant, with a dynamic stage presentation involving set elements in motion. Each band member is on an 8-foot-by-8-foot moving deck with video panels and surrounds weaving around and between them. The show also features pyro effects, and Wayne moves all over a 60-foot-by-48-foot “rolling” stage below.
For more information, please visit www.cadmics.com.
