Despite not having toured since 2002, electro-pop duo the Pet Shop Boys played to an exuberant crowd at San Francisco’s Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in early November. Mix stopped by the Fundamental tour, where we asked front-of-house engineer Colin Boland and monitor engineer Seamus Fenton about the LD Systems-provided system.
The Electro-Voice X-Line P.A. is flown 10 boxes per side, carrying a total of 16 sub-bass boxes, although Boland says they rarely use that many. The system is augmented with two X-Array boxes and two d&b boxes per side for inner and outer front-fills. Boland mixes on a Yamaha PM5D. “I find some of the facilities onboard are more flexible than the 1D,” he says. “Practically all processing and effects are onboard and the only external unit being used is a Lexicon 300 for vocal reverb. We are also using a variety of computers running the Iris system software, Lake processors, some analyzer programs, Pro Tools for recording and iTunes for walk-in music.”
Colin Boland (left, FOH) and Seamus Fenton (monitors)
According to Fenton, Neil Tennant and three backup vocalists sing through Shure SM58 capsules on the new UHFR wireless systems. For in-ear monitors, Tennant has two pairs of Ultimate E5s; all the IEM systems are Sennheiser G3s. “Chris Lowe prefers Sony headphones and a Shure hardwire system for parts of the show,” Fenton continues, “but mainly relies on his pair of L-Acoustics MTD108P near-fill monitors, which sound amazing.”
Lowe plays a Korg Triton, which runs a Mac-based patch change system with two Virus Access rackmount modules. All the keyboard patches are submixed through a Yamaha 01V.
