Helix Floor: Any way to EQ just the headphone outs?

[ian_dissonance]

You should film that! Show the pedal weenies that they don't have to ruin everyone else's time (especially at an open mic night!!!) by futzing with their pedals for 20 minutes.

There's no way at one of our clubs that we would be switching between the house mixer and ours in 10 minutes

If you’re playing with your pedals for 20 minutes during changeover you’re a dick, imo, and no ready for a blues jam let alone a multi-artist bill. The neat part is if you plan for it, you’re setting everything up as part of changeover and can have your stuff completely separate from the house for monitoring. Our drum mics are already on the kit, cable snake ready to go, everything else is a DI line to our mixer. If FOH is good, they can grab out split and do their own mix, if they’re not all I need from them is 2 lines. Obviously this isn’t going to work the same for like a program music at a resort type situation versus a 4 band bill. But I consider setup and tear down a part of rehearsal and show prep.

 

[pipelineaudio]

If you’re playing with your pedals for 20 minutes during changeover you’re a dick, imo, and no ready for a blues jam let alone a multi-artist bill.

you’ve met guitar players before right?

 

[BahamaDada]

We can do a full band changeover with our rig in well under 10 minutes if needed. As long as the previous act isn’t assholes, anyways.

Same. We are full Helix/Fractal/Bias on our own IEM mixer. Drums are set up for the whole night and all bands (just swap the snare, kick drum pedal and cymbals). So if we have a gig and I see 2 other bands entering the venue with big amps and cabs I get a bit enraged. Not bc of the gear. I LOVE amps and cabs, but bc I just KNOW they gonna need so much time setting up and occupy a whole shitload of space on an already tiny stage.

 

[ian_dissonance]

you’ve met guitar players before right?

For sure, and you can bet I’m putting an earworm in the promoter about not booking us with these unprofessional dicks next time.

 

[ian_dissonance]

Same. We are full Helix/Fractal/Bias on our own IEM mixer. Drums are set up for the whole night and all bands (just swap the snare, kick drum pedal and cymbals). So if we have a gig and I see 2 other bands entering the venue with big amps and cabs I get a bit enraged. Not bc of the gear. I LOVE amps and cabs, but bc I just KNOW they gonna need so much time setting up and occupy a whole shitload of space on an already tiny stage.

That’s why I consider the shuffle part of rehearsal. If your changeover takes longer than your set, stay. the. fuck. home.

 

[pipelineaudio]

That’s more the type of situation we’re in, sure the band can setup pretty fast, but replacing a whole mixer? No way

 

[ian_dissonance]

That’s more the type of situation we’re in, sure the band can setup pretty fast, but replacing a whole mixer? No way

I guess I’m not sure why you need to replace it? You’re not removing the house mixer from the system, you’re dropping a split to them with the channels they need just like a normal changeover or in worst-case scenarios you’re bypassing their system with yours. But either way your IEM rig is part of the changeover.

 

[pipelineaudio]

I guess I'd need to see details of what you mean. It doesn't sound to me like you wouldn't be unplugging their mic cables

 

[ian_dissonance]

I guess I'd need to see details of what you mean. It doesn't sound to me like you wouldn't be unplugging their mic cables

Sorry had a show this weekend and forgot to get back here (one of those super fun local fests with 12 bands on two stages in a 150 cap venue, lol). So basically we scale our setup for the venue. If the place is small we’re not mic’ing drums besides kick and maybe snare, but everything goes through a splitter with one side to our IEM and one side to FOH. I’ve yet to have a FOH complain about switching over XLRs at their stage box, but I guess I could see it being a problem if someone is very disorganized and can’t keep track of their lines. For places that we are mic’ing a full kit we have mics clamped on to the rack and drums before they go on stage with a loom hanging on the rack so it’s just a matter of connecting it to our split and letting FOH do their normal thing with the split. If the FOH is even slightly knowledgeable we just give them out tablet and take two lines to FOH and they mix off our xr18 and leave our auxes alone. If the FOH is not knowledgeable we take two lines and I go out front and line check/quick mix from the tablet. I guess I can see how it COULD be a hassle, but preparing for eventualities and communicating with the venue ahead of time whenever possible seems to make this go smoothly. I should have recorded it, but we were on stage and line-checked in about 12 minutes on Saturday. With two stages we basically had 20 minutes to fuck around before we did a 30 second mix and went for it.

 

[pipelineaudio]

The venue has a split box where you are at? There's no way in hell these pake bastards would ever splurge for something like that, and there's even less chance they would ever let you unplug a mic cable. It would be awesome if you had a video of you guys doing it though, so I could shame the local scene

 

[ian_dissonance]

The venue has a split box where you are at? There's no way in hell these pake bastards would ever splurge for something like that, and there's even less chance they would ever let you unplug a mic cable. It would be awesome if you had a video of you guys doing it though, so I could shame the local scene

The split is in our rack, they just get the output loom. After my first decade of gigging and fighting bad rooms, bad monitors, bad soundguys, and bad house equipment I’ve taken as much of it out of their hands as possible in every scenario. I will say if a FOH engineer can’t deal with swapping some cables between bands they should probably find a new line of work and someone should probably slap their uncle/dad/brother that keeps hiring them.
If you want to see this stuff in action go see any touring modern metal band, lol. This is pretty much the baseline, if they’re not just hijacking the drive lines and doing the whole show themselves off an X32 in one of their own racks.

 

[pipelineaudio]

I’d really love to see a video of this setup and maybe some simple drawing diagrams. As we are more and more becoming the main game in town as the PA providers at this level, I’d love to be able to encourage and accommodate bands who want to work like this. My company really has no interest in the types of places that my band would play at but I’d like to see if there’s some way my band could pull this off given the type of setup at the places we do play.

 

[Vic Winters]

I’d really love to see a video of this setup and maybe some simple drawing diagrams. As we are more and more becoming the main game in town as the PA providers at this level, I’d love to be able to encourage and accommodate bands who want to work like this. My company really has no interest in the types of places that my band would play at but I’d like to see if there’s some way my band could pull this off given the type of setup at the places we do play.

 

[pipelineaudio]

I understand this in theory but I really want to see someone actually swap this stuff out at a multi band show in real life.

 

[ian_dissonance]

I understand this in theory but I really want to see someone actually swap this stuff out at a multi band show in real life.

To be fair, I don’t count the time we’re standing around waiting for a soundguy to get his shit together, lol.