During an early leg of this year's tour supporting their latest release, We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, the band found it difficult to hear themselves properly and decided they needed better monitoring equipment.
"When you're using mismatched gear and whatever the local house has, it's a roll of the dice every night," says monitor engineer Myles Kennedy, who was pleased to learn that Taylor, Michigan-based Thunder Audio was bringing a set of new Meyer Sound MJF-212A high-power stage monitors on the tour.
"I had never used these monitors before," says Kennedy. "I really enjoyed it. I appreciated the clarity, and the profile was great because I could focus the horn and get it right into the band's ears. Plus, with these all being self-powered, we can easily play smaller rooms where there's limited acreage for amp racks and processing gear."
The monitoring system comprises 10 MJF-212A cabinets. Two of them are used for each of the two guitar and two bass players. The two drummers both receive one MJF-212A each stacked atop a 600-HP compact high-power subwoofer. One more 600-HP compact high-power subwoofer and a CQ-1 wide coverage main loudspeaker per side serve as the on-stage side-fill.
"The guys really like to play loud and push a lot of vocal," adds Kennedy. "So they need high performance from their monitors. When I fired the monitor system up, their first reaction was 'Wow, you can keep giving me more?' Plus, it's just so consistent, regardless of the stage or venue size. They sound very organic, so an acoustic guitar or a fiddle sounds like it should, with less EQ and tweaking."
(Jim Evans)
