Currently on an extensive European tour in support of her Ultimate Collection compilation album, singer-songwriter Anastacia’s summer finds her at multiple festivals – with a comprehensive package of Sennheiser wireless mics, instrument mics and wireless monitoring.
Supplied by Clare UK, the Sennheiser package includes e 901 and e 902 microphones on the kick drum, e 904s on the snare and toms, e 914s on the hats and cymbals and a pair of e 906s on the electric guitar. ‘We are using Sennheiser because Horst [Hartmann, monitor engineer] and I both get on very well with the equipment and how it sounds,’ says FOH engineer, Chris Madden. ‘It enables us to have clean RF every day and we don’t have any problems.’
The stage set-up uses a Sennheiser SKM 5200 with MD 5235 capsule for Anastacia’s vocal and female backing vocalist Maria Quintile, with male backing vocalist DeeRal using an MMD 945 head on a 2000 series wireless system.
‘I’ve used the 5235 a lot with female singers and get on really well with it. It’s always worked. I used it with Jessie J and really like it,’ Madden says. ‘It’s meant for loud stages and has really good rejection. Anastacia’s previous guitarist wasn’t using an amp and the drummer played behind a screen. I think drum screens look awful, so I wanted to get rid of it, plus we wanted to move full-time to in-ear monitors to make the stage look much cleaner. I thought the 5235 would help reduce spill down her mic, which would make using IEMs less of an issue, and it has worked really well.’
The wireless set-up is eight channels of EM 3732-II receivers and eight 5000-series handheld transmitters. ‘We’ve also got a 2000 series with 945 head for the guitarist’s backing vocals, because he’s so close to the drum kit. That has also helped an awful lot in reducing the amount of spill from the (incredibly loud!) drummer,’ Madden says.
An unusual aspect of the tour is the pair of mirror-image microphone trees, located one each side of the stage. Each supports three ambient microphones. ‘We tried lots of different combinations and settled on each tree having a 914 pointing 45° outwards towards the side, a long MKH 70 rifle mic in the middle, pointing straight down the back, and a shorter MKH 60 rifle pointing at the pit. The combination of the open 914 and highly directional shotguns gives us scale without picking up everything,’ Madden explains. ‘Horst is riding that all the time to get the effect of the crowd between songs, while I use some of it if I need to send a broadcast mix.’
‘I like the sound of Sennheiser mics, particularly the 5000 Series. I think it’s the best vocal mic they make, particularly for female artists,’ adds Horst. ‘The 184MHz bandwidth gives me a lot of channels to choose from, meaning I can go all over the world with just one system and still find the frequencies I need.
‘The G3 wireless IEMs are the same. People like the sound and so do I. We use them along with an AC 3200-II antenna combiner. I think they’re the right choice for rock music and their 40MHz bandwidth means that, again, it’s easy to find frequencies – which is always an issue these days. Overall Sennheiser wireless systems are a very reliable product, they sound good and are easy to use.’
‘It has been a pleasure to support Chris and Horst, both long-time users of our product, on the Anastacia tour,’ says Phil Cummings, Artist Relations for Sennheiser. ‘Everything has worked perfectly and it’s great to see Anastacia back out on tour in 2016.’
More: www.sennheiser.com
