Enough Punch
Walden’s snare is mic’ed with an Audix i5.
“This is a great sounding mic for the snare as it represents the high end of the spectrum, really naturally, so there is less EQ-ing needed,” Findlay comments.
“The snare is mic’ed underneath with an SM57, which stops the strainer from sounding too aggressive on stage.”
The double kick drums are mic’ed with a combination of Shure Beta 52A and Beta 91.
Audix is deployed on the rest of the drum kit, including D4 hypercardioid dynamics on all toms, twin CX-112 large-format condensers for overheads, and ADX51 pencil condensers on hi-hats and ride cymbal.
Findlay takes advantage of the EQ and dynamics built into the Venue D-Show for channel processing.
Depending on the resonance of the stage and room, he sets the compressors on the tom channels to a “sort of gate” setting.
“In an ideal world I would never use gates on the kit,” he says. “I prefer the open ring-ey sound, but sometimes it’s the only way you can get enough punch out of the toms with out the ring turning into feedback.”
He then runs the entire kit through a group which he equalizes and compresses according to each song, saving the different settings in each song’s scene.
“I use the Sonnox GML EQ and the Digidesign (Avid) Smack! compressor before the signal is routed back into the left-right mix bus.”
Findlay prefers to keep Beck’s guitar flat with no filters, EQ or dynamics. “Jeff looks after all those elements by the way he plays and interacts with his amp.”
Beck is primarily using a small 15-watt Fender Pro Junior combo amp on stage, custom-loaded with a Jenson P-10 Alnico, the signature speaker from Fender’s legendary Super Reverb, mic’ed with a vintage Sennheiser “Black Fire” 509 microphone.
The secondary guitar amp is a Marshall JCM2000, sitting behind the back line and pointing away from the audience.
“This reduces the amount of guitar beaming off the stage into the audience, which gives me more control over the balance, particularly in the quiet numbers.”
The Marshall cabinet is loaded with Celestion G-12M “Greenback” drivers and is mic’ed with an Audix i5 dynamic mic. “This adds bite where necessary in the mix and is used by Jeff as a kind of backwash for the stage.”