For the entire first half of the year, Lady A worked exclusively with touring sound provider Sound Image's L-Acoustics K1 line array system. Sound Image's Mike L. Adams, who handles the account, comments, "The K1 system is reliable, consistent and never lets us down. When we deploy this system, every night sounds incredible and we never get one of those late night calls. The peace of mind is invaluable."
For most of the group's performances, Sound Image flew left and right main PA arrays of 14 K1 plus four Kara down-fills, each flanked by six flown K1-SB subs. Out-fills were comprised of 12 Kudo per side, while four SB28 subs per side groundstacked below in cardioid configurations anchored the low end reinforcement. Four more Kara - two per side - were additionally deployed as stage front-fills.
K1 proved to be as flexible as it was great sounding with the band's long-time FOH mixer, Brett 'Scoop' Blanden, and Sound Image's Jim 'Fish' Miller as the tour's systems engineer able to perfectly configure the rig to exactly fit each venue. In some stops, as few as eight K1 enclosures per side were enough to fill the room; larger venues took the full complement, with 18 per side, and anything in between. Blanden estimates that they deployed an average of between 12 and 14 boxes per side each night, underscoring the range of room types the tour covered. Twenty-four L-Acouistics LA8 amplified controllers housed in eight LA-RAK powered the system. What never changed, though, was K1's sonic performance.
"The K1 is a really amazing PA system," lauds Blanden, noting that the speakers' frequency response is so full range that they were able to do at least one smaller corporate-event show in Tallahassee without subwoofers. "And when we did outdoor shows, the system would throw for days. It has tons of projection. With other arrays of similar size, you might need to use a delay array, but the K1 seems to out-throw them all. And its waveguide is really impressive, keeping the frequency response consistent at all times."
(Jim Evans)
