Geoff Kakoschke with his E-Series desk.
UK - Top American band Wheatus have completed a low-key tour of the UK, playing smaller club and university venues to try out material from their forthcoming album. The London-based front-of-house engineer and programmer Geoff Kakoschke had to deal with some challenging acoustic environments, but none more so than the venue in Hull, in the north of England.

"The PA was just awful," recounts Kakoschke. "It was ancient - I've never seen any of the components before. It looked as though it had been built in someone's garage about 30 years ago! There was a 16-channel console that was so old that there were no markings left on it." Kakoschke called to Soundcraft for help, and a new MH3 console was despatched to Hull. "It was an absolute life-saver, it actually enabled me to get a decent sound out of that dreadful PA system, and it's confirmed me as a Soundcraft fan. For the last show of our tour, Adlib Audio provided a PA which included a Series 4 and that was also brilliant, I loved it."

Small enough to carry, a Soundcraft 12-channel E Series desk made the whole tour with the band, providing a solution to the problem of lack of channels on the small in-house consoles and limited space at the mix position. "The E Series was mainly used for the support band, but for Wheatus it was incredibly helpful to be able to sub-mix the key channels and my Logic Audio set-up from 11 into 2."

(Ruth Rossington)


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