Front of house engineer Gary Bradshaw comments: "I did two UK and one European tour in 1993 and 1994. I was happy to be asked back for their first reunion tour 12 months ago, which led onto this one."
"There are seven musicians in the band, plus four string players," continues Bradshaw, "eight dancers, two of whom sing backing vocals, backing vocalist Lloyd and the four guys from Take That. We have a total of 67 inputs from the stage, 21 of which are radios. These include the main handheld vocal mics and two headset mics worn by two dancers, guitars and bass guitar, sax, all the strings and two radio percussion mics. Most of these radios also get used on the B stage which is usually positioned in the centre of the arena."
The choice for all of these mics were Sennheiser and Neumann. All the main vocalists used Sennheiser SKM 5200 UHF mics with Neumann KK104 heads, paired with EM 3532 receivers. Neumann KMS 104s were used for backing vocals while the guitar cabinets were mic'ed with Neumann TLM 193s, with 12 channels of signals sent via Sennheiser SK 500 G2 bodypack transmitters to EM 500 G2 multi-channel receivers.
The singing dancers wore Sennheiser HSP4 headset mics, while the microphone array was completed by Neumann U87s on percussion, Neumann KM184s for overheads and Sennheiser e908Ds and e908Bs for drum toms and the brass section respectively.
The entire band used Sennheiser monitoring too - 12 channels of Sennheiser EW 300 IEM G2 systems were routed through AC 3000 combiners and A 5000-CP antennae while four NET-1 controllers monitored the entire wireless system.
The tour climaxed on 31 December, at a sold out O2 Arena in London as Take That saw in the New Year while being broadcast live to an audience of millions on ITV1 on the programme Countdown To Midnight.
(Jim Evans)
