British glam rock group The Sweet, who’ve been making music since the 1970s with multiple UK Top 20 hits throughout the decades, is touring with an Allen & Heath SQ-5 compact mix system chosen by Daniela Seggewiss, the band’s long-time monitor engineer.
“The first consideration for me when planning to buy a console was the size and weight as I needed the setup to be able to fly,” explains Seggewiss. “As a monitor engineer I also need a good number of outputs, and the SQ5 with a DX168 (stagebox) provides me with 32-in/20-out in an incredibly small setup. But of course with all that processing power under the hood, that is not small at all.”
The SQ-5 and DX168 stagebox both fit together in a iM2950 Pelican Storm case, keeping things compact and below the weight limit for most major airlines. Seggewiss also points to the workflow of SQ, specifically the dedicated Mix buttons in the master section that control which bus the faders send to, as well as the customizable fader layout.
“The fact that I can change the surface layout to anything I need is especially important when using a small console,” she says. “I need to be able to have the most important channels always at my fingertips to make quick adjustments without having to look at the console for too long.”
Seggewiss has upgraded the SQ with the Dynamic Trio Pack, which provides dynamics tools such as Dynamic EQ and a Multiband Compressor as well as a De-Esser. These optional RackFX add-ons can be inserted on input channels, groups, auxiliaries or the main mixup (up to eight instances) as needed. “I very much like to use multiband compression on IEM mixes,” she adds.
“The best feedback I get from the band is nothing at all,” Seggewiss concludes. “I was able to create the sound they are used to on SQ, with the added bonus that this sound now travels with us due to the small footprint of the setup.”
