The band, whose album, Dirty Words, was released on 13 June, has played over 100 shows in the last nine months. With no let up, they have dates, including support slots with Duran Duran, lined up throughout Europe until September, after which they embark on a headline UK tour, followed by a US tour and a further European stint.
With a few days respite before the summer's first European sprint, FOH engineer John Delf, took the opportunity to equip the tour inventory with a full complement of A-T mics. "We played Sonicmania 05 in Japan this year," he states. "The festival is sponsored by Audio-Technica, so we played with a full A-T mic kit. I was especially impressed with the AT4050 on the guitar cabs and dual element AE2500 on bass drum - they gave me a sound I'd been after but had never got before."
On returning to the UK, Delf contacted Audio-Technica Europe about achieving similar results for the band's upcoming tours. "It's such an intensive schedule, it makes a real difference having a complete mic kit to travel around with. It keeps the sound quality consistent, knowing you're getting the same signal quality down to the desk every time. Even big PAs don't always have the mic selection you want. I'm especially looking forward to using the AT4050s every night, rather than whenever we can get hold of them."
With a singer with a strong voice, Delf is free to concentrate on bringing out the quality of the vocal signal, feeding the mic into an AMEK Vocal Channel, pre-amp/ compressor. "We used the Artist Elite AE6100 (high quality, hypercardioid dynamic) in Japan, and that gave us the real quality of his voice, so we've gone with that. It has the major added advantage of having an exceptionally tough grille. He drops his mic a lot, and the grilles on the previous mics we've been using have actually been splitting!"
(Sarah Rushton-Read)
