Alice in Chains, which has re-formed with new singer William DuVall replacing the late Layne Staley, did a promotional concert circuit for its new album “Black Gives Way To Blue” throughout September, with front of house engineer Tom Abraham deploying Heil Sound microphones for the band.
“Switching to Heil mics has allowed me to get the greatest gain before feedback of any other microphone that I have ever used, ” explains Abraham.
Heil Sound PR 30 microphones are housed in off-stage guitar isolation boxes for Jerry Cantrell and DuVall’s guitar rigs, while drummer Sean Kinney’s custom DW kit utilizes the Heil HDK-8 drum mic kit with additional PR 30s used for “underhead” cymbal micing use.
According to Abraham, “The PR 48, PR 20, and PR 22 kick, snare top, snare bottom combo is just awesome. I mean, perfect, really. And I am amazed by the PR 30s on the cymbals. Such separation and clarity.”
With the addition of DuVall, the band has two lead singers who, according to Abraham, are radically different in terms of style. Cantrell likes to sing from different fixed positions on stage while DuVall prefers to move about freely with the use of a handheld wireless.
To accommodate this line-up, two Heil PR 35s on stands are positioned at stage left and stage right and a RC 35 wireless capsule is used with a transmitter for DuVall’s “roaming.” The wireless also gets used center stage on a stand for portions of Cantrell’s featured songs.
To minimize problems and still utilize one wireless mic, a two-channel receiver is used with both channels set to the single microphone’s frequency. The outputs are then sent as two channels to the house and monitor consoles, allowing Abraham and monitor mixer Scott Tatter to easily control each singer’s equalization and fader settings separately.
Alice in Chains will also begin a European tour this month that will last until just before Christmas, with a U.S. tour planned for 2010.
