Engineering for Deep Purple was Doug Hall, long-time FOH engineer for Iron Maiden: "I first used this system on Iron Maiden's Brave New World tour about four years ago. I'd tried out different options, but the KF760 gave me everything I needed in terms of pressure, headroom and sonic quality. Being horn-loaded, it's more sensitive than competitive systems, and the slightly narrower dispersion means you can fly the boxes closer to each other without interference. Above all, I love the potency and clarity of the sound from such a small box. It has all the throw you need and I've never run out of headroom or felt I was overdriving the system. With Deep Purple, we were just cruising with it - it sounded fabulous."
The system was configured in two main left and right hangs of 12 EAW KF760 long/medium-throw cabinets and three EAW KF761 downfill cabinets per side, plus outer left and right hangs of eight KF760 and three KF761s per side. The low end was handled by 12 EAW SB1000 subwoofers per side while nearfield coverage was via four EAW KF300z cabinets.
Both Hall and Frampton's engineer Steve Cross were using the purple Midas Heritage 3000 consoles for FOH duties, while an XL3 looked after monitors. Hall said: "It sounds great - the EQ is extremely musical, yet surgical at the same time, and it has great mic preamps too.
I can drive it hard, yet there is always plenty of headroom and it sounds like it's doing no work at all. I have any number of routing options, and it's versatile enough that I can do a live mix with audience and make a top-quality multitrack recording on my own with no other hands on the desk or OB trucks involved."
Cross was similarly complimentary. "I'm an XL4 man myself, and probably the only engineer on the planet who had never used a Heritage 3000 until this tour! I confess that I was apprehensive that the H3000 wouldn't measure up to the XL4 but, in fact it sounded every bit as good. It was the ideal complement to the EAW system."
Lighting was in the nands of Purple's long-term designer, Louis Ball. He told L&SI: "I've been Purple's lighting designer for some 20 years, having started with them on the Perfect Strangers tour in '84. I left for a while in the late 80s/early 90s to do Judas Priest and Wet Wet Wet, among other projects, and got involved again in the mid-90s - and I've been there since!"
The UK design evolved from the rig that Ball used on the band's North American tour. "I had the backdrop painted by my good friend Alan [Chesters] at Hangman, who I use to do all my drops. As the album's title was Bananas I was going to use various trees on stage but decided that would be a bit of a nightmare! It's basically a jungle scene with various banana trees . . ."
For his rig, Ball needed something that would fit into all the venues and also have a distinctive look to it: he chose a mixture of moving lights, having grown to like the Robe AT1200, Martin MAC 2000s and High End Studio Colors, along with some MAC 600s as truss toners. He also used audience Moles and aircraft bars for that old 'rock and roll' look.
He told us: "I also like to use the Moles as huge stage washes; not only does this mean that the focus time is very short - a lot of the moving lights were pre-rigged so it was fairly quick to get in the air - but as we had Peter Frampton, Thunder and Dean Howard on the bill, it meant everyone had a chance of sound-checking!
Ball use a Wholehog 2 with expansion wing for control, having used LSD's Icon console for many years. Of the Hog he comments: "I must say, it's definitely my desk of choice. In fact, I take one with me everywhere we go - which with Purple can be some very strange places."
Sarah Rushton-Read
