FOH engineer Mark Kennedy has been on the road with rock legend Robert Plant and an SSL L500 live console, supplied by Solotech and Britannia Row Productions.
in the US and across EuropeThe current Robert Plant tour, according to Kennedy, has an ‘organic’ approach that works well. It is by no means a silent stage, with 15 monitor wedges plus side fills in use, and in-ear-monitoring has been put aside. ‘It’s a very real show,’ he says. ‘There’s no playback, and quite a few acoustic instruments – banjos, mandolins, acoustic guitars – and almost everybody sings.’
Kennedy’s approach to the console and mixing the show has been back-to-basics: ‘I turn everything off and start with a blank slate – the simplest set-up I can create. Then as I need to I turn features on. Apart from the normal channel processing, I use the SSL’s Bus compressor, reverbs, delays, the VHD Saturator, and the 31-band graphic EQ from the FX rack.’
Before this tour, he had used an SSL live console on Faithless’ 20th Anniversary Tour: ‘Since I have been using the SSL, a lot has changed. There have been a lot of small updates that have made it easier to use. The input and output routing, for example, has improved a lot. It has got better and better since I first used it. But the main thing has always been the sound. The clarity and the dynamic range is amazing.’
