LONDON – Adlib Audio's Richy Nicholson served as FOH engineer for the New York-based Emo band, Brand New, for both the band's last two U.K. and European tours and for a recent one-off show at Wembley Arena. Adlib also supplied gear and additional crew for the show.
The FOH system was teched by Tony Szabo and monitors were looked after by Marc Peers, who was also Adlib's crew chief, overseeing two additional Adlib crew members, Kenny Perrin and Michael Flaherty.
Nicholson needed to produce an edgy, loud sound, but with enough finesse for the words to crawl clearly above the mix, which included three screeching guitars and ample dynamics and attitude. His other challenge was to fill the cavernous interior of Wembley.
Nicholson chose an L-Acoustics system, with 12 V-DOSC speakers per side for the main hangs, augmented with three dV-DOSC underhangs, plus 10 of Adlib's recently-purchased KUDO elements per side for the side hangs.
"You're under massive pressure doing a large one off like this," said Nicholson. "There's only the one chance to get it right, and I knew that V-DOSC was right to get the sound that both I and the band wanted throughout the space".
For subs, Nicholson chose 11 arc-delayed L-Acoustics SB28s per side, which were ground-stacked to produce a bottom-end glow, well-suited for fattening out Brand New's sound.
Four L-Acoustics ARCS cabinets per side were positioned for front fills, together with 2 dV-DOSCs on the front lip of the stage.
The rig was driven throughout by L-Acoustics LA8 amplifiers, and processed by Lake DLPs and the new Lab.gruppen LM26.
As usual, Szabo also used his Meyer Sound SIM3 acoustic analyzer for measurements and time alignment.
Nicholson's console of choice was an Avid Profile, the same as he used for Brand New the last time he mixed them six months ago. He uploaded his show files from that tour, which accelerated the process of establishing some of the settings and proved a time-saver.
This time around, Richy also used an Avid Pro Tools system to record the band on multitrack, which he'll use to fine tune the mix for upcoming shows.
While the band's set has changed, Nicholson's familiarity with the console enabled him to program the one-off quickly and efficiently.
He primarily used the Profile's onboard effects, with the addition of 2 BSS 901 frequency-conscious compressors. One was used to help control lead singer Jesse Lacey's vocal – he has a penchant for screaming loudly right into the mic – and the other for a distorted vocal that's produced using a guitar pedal.
Nicholson also used a D2 tap delay for some specific "specials," and an old Yamaha SPX gated reverb for a particular moment during "At The Bottom" to vary Lacey's pitch. Nicholson describes it as an "active" mix, with improvization in each show.
At the other end of the multi, in monitor world, Adlib's Marc Peers assisted band engineer and production manager Mike Babcock. He chose a Yamaha PM5D as the console, which Adlib supplied, together with nine d&b m2 wedges and a dV-SUB for the drum fill.
The monitor system was driven by d&b D12 amps, with LA8s for the side fills, which consisted of a combination of L-Acoustics ARCs and dV-SUBs.
Brand New supplied most of their own Sennheiser mics, with Adlib pitching in with two Sennheiser G2 PMs for Lacey and drummer Brian Lane.
"A great crew is important for this band, and we are so lucky to have that in every way," said Ari Martin from the band's management company, Nettwerk Management. "This was their biggest U.K. show, and I was confident that Richard Nicholson would do a great job at FOH. He didn't let us down."
For more information, please visit www.adlibsolutions.co.uk.
