VERBENA, AL – On what is possibly its last tour, the David Crowder Band has been using Sennheiser wireless products on the road for the duration of its 2011 road trip. The band is using Sennheiser 900 Series microphones, both on instruments and vocals. This year the band has also been touring with two TRUE Systems PT2-500 preamplifiers, using them to capture material for two albums to be released in the coming months, including a Christmas album titled Oh For Joy that's due out in October.
"Our live package consists primarily of the Sennheiser e901, e902, e904, e905, e906, e914s, e935 and e965 wired microphones, but we also use the MD 421 II and the MD 441," said Rob Albert, tour operations manager for the band. "The tone on everything is just great," he added, also crediting the gear for durability.
"We've used other mics on kick drums before the e902, and you'd never know if they were going to work or not," said Albert. "On the snare drum, we use an MD 441 on the top and either an e905 or e904 on the bottom, with e904s on the toms. These clip right on the toms and you don't have to worry about – the tone that comes from them has no coloration and is extremely crisp and accurate." A pair of overhead e914s is used above the drums.
"We work with professionals who are very on top of their tone," noted Albert. "With all these mics, we are getting exactly what the guys are putting out, and people notice." The band uses e906s on their guitar and violin cabinets. On vocals, the entire band is using e935s. "Each of the vocalists is comfortable with these, and they help deliver overall consistency to the mix."
The band also counts on Sennheiser for their wireless personal monitor systems. "A couple of years ago, we tried the Sennheiser G2 Series, and there was just a huge improvement in tonal quality and reception," Albert said. "Just in the last few months, we moved up to the G3 Series, and the guys have been really happy – they get the gain and the clarity they want each and every night. We've never had a problem with RF and we've been able to find frequencies for everybody.
"Night after night, when we pull a microphone or IEM package out, we know it's going to work and we know what it's going to sound like," Albert continued. "Night after night the stuff works and it sounds exactly like it's supposed to and we are happy with it. Everything we are using – microphone or RF or hardwired – is all Sennheiser because we believe and trust it."
The audio quality isn't just a boon to The David Crowder Band's live performances. Earlier this year, the band toured the country with 10 other Christian music artists as part of Winter Jam. While on tour, they had two TRUE Systems PT2-500 preamplifiers on hand. They used them to capture material for two albums to be released in the coming months, including a Christmas album titled Oh For Joy to be released this October.
The 2011 Winter Jam began in January and included stops at basketball arena type settings and other environments each day. In addition to their live sound touring rig, Albert also specified a small remote recording rack for the band to capture recordings while backstage prior to the gigs. The rack consisted of two TRUE Systems PT2-500s, a Lynx Aurora converter, an API 500 series Lunchbox, a small Pro Tools rig and mics including Sennheiser e 935s, e 906s, MD 441s.
"We needed to get started on a record, so we took a little traveling studio rig with us and used it every day in the green room," recalled David Crowder Band drummer B-wack. "We finished the bulk of the Oh For Joy recordings during the tour and did a lot of recording in interesting spaces like locker rooms and showers backstage, where there was tons of reverb — it was a lot of fun and really made for a different sounding record."
B-wack says TRUE preamplifiers sounded great and allowed for flexibility. "We had to be really portable but uncompromising with the sound. The PT2-500s are each single channel and have two instrument jacks on the front and an XLR input on the back. The unit has an instrument "thru" jack, which was handy especially when we wanted to send the signal out through a pedal board, like, say for a violin, we'd have two channels: one would be the pedal board signal and one would be the direct. That ultimately gave us a lot of sonic options."
Even with a small and simple recording chain such as the one they used backstage, accuracy and precision were important factors in the recording's overall success. Using the PT2-500, they were able to ensure common recording levels among the two units using the stepped potentiometer dial: "There are so many steps on the units that it makes it really easy to find a spot you want," B-wack says. "It was reassuring knowing that we were able to get the exact same gain on both channels.
"The PT2 is a relatively flat and transparent preamp, and it gave us more of the sound that was in front of us rather than coloring it," B-wack added. "We were forced to monitor in interesting spaces and on headphones, so we wanted to spend less time carving EQ or thinking about everything too much; we just want the equipment to sound like the source and let the music happen."
For the recording, the band's arsenal of Sennheiser mics included the e 906 for guitar mics, "which you can drop it over the side of an amp and it just sounds great," B-wack noted. "For vocals, the e 935 has been David's live vocal mic of choice for the last couple of years so we used this as well. On the snare, I used a Sennheiser MD 441, which I love and have been using for years."
B-wack added that, when they weren't working on "Oh For Joy," they were using their TRUE rig to record bluegrass songs for their upcoming album, tentatively called "Requiem." "One day, we decided to set up a couple of mics, get in a circle and record about nine bluegrass songs. Some of these are going to end up on our new record that comes out in the spring, and others are going to end up as bonus material."
All in all, the recordings are being well received by their colleagues, "Everyone so far is very pleased with what we captured – the word is that Oh For Joy is among the better things we've made."
For more information, please visit www.sennheiserusa.com.
