“I especially like the Venue for the plug-ins and the Virtual Sound Check,” he comments. “I can set up and breakdown with just one stagehand, and the foot print is promoter-friendly when I mix Front of House.”
Kimball’s plug-in choices reveal a different approach. He inserts a URS 1970 compressor on his mix outputs, and also uses Trillium Lane reverbs.
A Bomb Factory Fairchild 660 compressor is assigned to vocals, acoustic guitar and bass.
“The Fairchild is my favorite plug-in,” Kimball states. “It responds nicely to heavy compression if needed.”
He uses their Slightly Rude Compressor on electric guitars and Purple 77 on snare, along with Digidesign’s Impact on kick drum. On keyboards, Kimball simply relies on the Venue’s on-board compression, which he adds, “sounds great as well.”
The tour is entirely on IEM, with Thomas using the new Jerry Harvey Audio JH13 PRO custom ear-molds, along with bass player Al Carty and two of the background singers. The other members of the band have previous Ultimate Ears UE-11 drivers.
The BGs and multi-instrumentalist Matt Beck receive hard-wired mixes supplied by an 8-channel 10-watt Lectrosonics single rack-space PA8 amp. Drummer Abe Fogle also relied on a pair of Lab.gruppen LA48-powered ButtKicker thumpers.
The rest of the band and backline techs got wireless mixes from Sennheiser’s new SR2050 dual transmitters. “The Sennheiser IEM system is my favorite,” Kimball adds. “The RF sounds incredibly close to the console outputs.”
Thomas sings into a Sennheiser SKM 5200 handheld with a Neumann 104 capsule, used with an EM 3732 dual receiver, while the background singers use Sennheiser e935 dynamic mics. The band also employs Sennheiser G2 wireless systems for guitars.
Background singer and guitarist Marc Von Em employed a Digidesign PQ Controller that allowed him to easily control his mix as he changed acoustic and electric guitars.