The tour took in arenas at Aberdeen, Birmingham, Bournemouth, Cardiff, Glasgow, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Plymouth. A highlight was the two London shows - one at Wembley Arena, the other at The O2.
"As the band's first tour of big venues, the first thing we discussed was in-ear monitors," says Richy Nicholson, the band's front of house engineer. "We contacted two of the major manufacturers and Phil Cummings from Sennheiser got straight back to us. He and Mark Saunders came to one of the early rehearsals and they were also really proactive about the microphone side of things."
The result was a comprehensive Sennheiser package, which The Script will be taking around the world for much of the year, including a range of summer festival appearances.
Lead singer Danny O'Donoghue's vocal microphone is an ew 500 with the new 965 true condenser capsule with switchable pattern, chosen by testing a number of different models.
"We tried it out, Danny popped in and we did some A/B testing of a few things, which he ended up enjoying," says Nicholson. "Between us we agreed it was the best solution. The band hates 'TV' mixes, where it sounds like the band isn't there. It's not just Danny out there on his own and this gives the best sonic results, both for his voice and for blending it in with the band."
Sennheiser UK followed up by providing a full mic kit, including e 906s on guitarist Mark Sheehan's rig and e 904s, 905s and 914s on drummer Glen Power's kit.
Meanwhile, as well as the band all using ew 300 G3 IEMs, their backline techs are also using them, which carry a mix identical to that of each respective musician. Monitor engineer Paul 'Mini' Moore also had a pair of Sennheiser MKH 416 short gun mics in the lighting truss, pointing at the audience. These were used for audience noise, giving Danny and Mark some in their monitor mixes as well as being routed to a multitrack ProTools rig, which was used to record every show.
(Jim Evans)
