PILTON, England – England’s Glastonbury Festival is unquestionably Europe’s biggest festival. In fact, there is no event like it anywhere in the world, not only because of the 150,000 visitors who make the pilgrimage to the sleepy hamlet near Oxford. What makes this gathering unique is its countless stages big and small, outdoors and in tents. The three-day festival featured some 500 bands, artists, and DJs representing every conceivable style and genre, among them acts such as Jay-Z, The Verve, Franz Ferdinand, Joan Baez, Leonard Cohen and Massive Attack.
The John Peel Stage is one of the main attractions at Glastonbury Festival. Named in honor of the late, great radio DJ and talent scout par excellence John Peel, who had passed away in 2004, this venue affords gifted bands the opportunity to strut their stuff in front of a large audience. Forty-three bands took to the John Peel Stage in 2008, including The Cribs, Friendly Fires, Patrick Watson and The Futureheads.
The John Peel Stage’s monitor tech Mike Taylor, from Emarty, used HK Audio stage monitoring products for the first time in 2008. Fourteen CT 115 ConTour Series high-/midrange units, biamped with DSM 2060 controllers and LABgruppen FP 10000 power amps, served as front monitors. Two CT 112 enclosures and four CTA 118 units provided the drum-fill, and one ConTour Array with two 2 CTA 208 and CTA 118 enclosures made up the side-fill system.
Commenting on the performance, Mike Taylor noted, “I’ve been an HK Audio user for quite some time. Because the cabinets that we used last year didn’t work out so well, this year I used the CT 115 from HK Audio, which satisfied all the demands, and performed and sounded excellent. With 43 bands and 20 minutes each changeover time for the entire stage, you need monitors that handle this kind of action. I was tremendously satisfied with the CT 115 units. The ConTour Array side-fill was so accurate it felt like being in a studio. And the CTA 118 and CT 112 combos for the drummers were a real hit! The low end came in big and bold, and the high-end was so super-clean that every drummer left the stage after the gig with a smiling face. The Wedges really rocked."
Commenting on the EQing, Mike Taylor says, “At this very festival, you encounter minor problems, usually in the guise of a band’s own audio engineer who doesn’t know the system and insists on tweaking it to his taste. This year, not once did I have to re-EQ, and that’s quite remarkable when dealing with 43 bands in three days."
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