Keeping It Simple
Monitor engineer Greg Looper, who first joined TP & HB in 2005 as front of house tech before moving to his current role, does his mixing on an Avid VENUE D-Show, as does Scovill, who has an affiliation with the company.
Looper, a veteran of the United States Marine Corps, is coming up on 25 years in pro audio, getting his start working with some friends in a punk rock band in San Antonio, and since that time he’s worked every sound team role in stints with dB Sound in Chicago and Sound Services in Arkansas, among others, and a wide assortment of top artists, including The Allman Brothers.
Assisted by monitor systems technician Chuck Smith, Looper strives to keep things simple on stage, which is the way the band likes it. “The guys are such professional musicians and have played so long together that I’m basically just helping them along,” he notes. “They play great together and don’t have huge requirements, in some ways a throw-back garage band. I give them the support they need and stay out of the way.”
The microphone approach leans to old school. “The band has a very straightforward philosophy: If it doesn’t sound good with a (Shure) SM57 on it, change the source,” he says. “They’re all about having proper sources. Change the guitar and/or change the amplifier, rather than changing the mic or throwing a foot pedal into things to change the sound.”
So the band has heavy influence on mic choices. Looper says that he’s experimented with things like ribbon mics, and they notice any changes right away: “The response is always ‘where did my ‘57 go? They keep us honest.”
That said, there are mic changes from time to time, with Looper, Scovill and studio engineer/producer Ryan Ulyate, who’s also on the tour, working together on these decisions. Case in point is a switch to Telefunken M80 supercardioid dynamics for all vocals. Scovill favored the M80 in helping to get Petty’s vocal on top of the mix, and it’s proven to work out well for all parties.
There have also been some mic evaluations with Steve Ferrone’s drum kit. Four mics were applied to the kick at one point, owing to the preferences of each engineer, but that’s been standardized with a Shure Beta 91A condenser and Beta 52A dynamic. Shure Beta 98 condensers on snare and tom transitioned to Sennheiser e904 dynamics, and then another candidate went through a tryout but wouldn’t mount properly, so it was back to the e904s.
For overheads, Scovill has devised a scheme to use a split pair of AKG C414s in conjunction with a RØDE NT4 stereo condenser XY. He puts in a considerable amount of effort using (Rational Acoustics) Smaart and a custom snare drum with a powered loudspeaker in it to ensure that the snare’s arrival time is equal out to 12 kHz.
Mixing A Mix
Looper delivers his mixes to wedges and in-ear monitors, with some of the musicians opting for both. Mike Campbell and Ron Blair currently prefer to work without IEM, and Looper’s been tweaking Benmont Tench’s IEM mix, placing more vocals in his wedges.
Petty likes a full IEM mix, with his wedges getting only some vocal and acoustic guitar. “The wedges balance with the IEM so he’s not ‘lopsided’ with the vocal and acoustic, but he wants the full band in IEM so that when he wanders off center stage, he’s still got a mix in his ears, along with ambience of the band and the room.”
Future Sonics MG6PRO earbuds with 13 mm drivers are the long-time choice of the musicians who wear them, fed by Shure PSM 900 wireless personal monitoring systems that Looper notes are “solid, stable, and with great sound quality.” The Electrotec TD112 wedges are a long-time staple, driven by Crown I-Tech 12000HD amplifiers located adjacent to Looper’s mix position. “The TD112s are compact, work great and fit where we need them to,” he says. “Other monitors with equivalent performance are too large for some of the tight spaces we have available on stage.”