What is your live set up?

[Doc Tonewheel]

I wonder if there's a correlation to age and size of on the road rig?
For instance, when I was in my twenties, it was a Hohner D-6, a Korg Poly 61, an MS-10 and MS-20, a yamaha CP-25, and a Korg Lambda. A hammond also went with me for a bit there.

Now, it's either the Korg CX-3 OR the JX-8P. One time I got adventurous and midi'd the TX-7 to the JX, but with all the extra cables it was too stressful, let alone the fact I had to bring a mixer along then. THat increased the weight of my cable bag around a pound. Looking at my above list from my twenties makes me want to cry or take a muscle relaxant at least.

LOL! I hear ya! I went from carrying a Hammond, Wurlitzer, Roland Juno-60, Moog Rogue, pedals, effects, stands, mixer, amp, and Leslie to today where I play a Hammond XK-3c and P-85 with sound module and an Eon15G2. Takes one trip from car.

[CZ Rider]

What is your guys' typical load-in / setup time?

Some of you with very large rigs must need a lot of time to get everything wired up.. ?

Takes a little more than an hour for me! Running around like a mad man, it's a labor of love. I usually get all the analog synthesizers powered up first so they have ample warm up time, while I figure out all the audio, MIDI, footswitches, etc.
My live rig has shrunk considerably since I started back in the 70's. Although I should probably upgrade to some newer models.

[MarkM]

A great collection of gear! If I am not mistaken, that appears to be the WXPN-FM studio.

[Stab Frenzy]

Some complicated setups here, I can't help but think that all that gear isn't entirely necessary.

We used to play live with an MPC1000, Desktop Evolver, Juno 106, Microkorg, Poly-800 + EA1, YC-25D and a Bass (+ mixer and FX) and it used to take me about half an hour to set up everything, and then the shows didn't always sound good cause if I had bad monitoring I couldn't mix stuff properly or a lead would come out or go dodgy or something. It did look really cool having all that stuff on stage and four people playing it though.

Now we're just a two-piece and we play live with a laptop running Live controlled by an MPD24, me playing the MEK through a Timefactor and the other guy playing a Micron through a wah and delay and singing through a delay. Everything has its own DI and we get a good engineer to mix the shows for us properly from FOH, rather than having me submix a lot of stuff like I used to. Everything sounds a LOT better now, and it's quicker to set up than most bands. Although there's less gear on stage things are still as live as we can make them for a two-piece band, and we have visuals projected over the stage for the audience to look at rather than a big heap of machines and cables.

At the end of the night we pack things into their cases and they fit in the back of a cab, so we can both drink at shows! It also (just) fits into checked luggage for flying so we've played lots of interstate and international gigs without having to use a sub-set of our normal gear or borrow stuff or drive. Seeing as the next closest city that we play in is a 12 hour each way drive from here this is a very good thing.

I'll see if I can find some pictures...

[th0mas]

Everything has its own DI and we get a good engineer to mix the shows for us properly from FOH, rather than having me submix a lot of stuff like I used to. Everything sounds a LOT better now,

s**t.. that sounds like a really great idea after the last few shows we've played and my monitors made me think I was the only person audible and I turned down the synths .. Thanks for writing this!

[ronP]

Now we're just a two-piece and we play live with a laptop running Live controlled by an MPD24, me playing the MEK through a Timefactor and the other guy playing a Micron through a wah and delay and singing through a delay.
I'll see if I can find some pictures...

oo


WoW! Morning gear lust! . . . Love to see the DSI MEK live on stage! . . . I am sooooo close to acquiring one of my own. I'm not quite there in the bank account, yet . . . but closing in fast!



p.s. any Youtube clips?


oo

[Stab Frenzy]

Everything has its own DI and we get a good engineer to mix the shows for us properly from FOH, rather than having me submix a lot of stuff like I used to. Everything sounds a LOT better now,

s**t.. that sounds like a really great idea after the last few shows we've played and my monitors made me think I was the only person audible and I turned down the synths .. Thanks for writing this!

No worries! It's funny how many people that play synths submix themselves on stage when your FOH engineer really is in the best position to decide what sounds best. I suppose guitarists turn themselves up and down a bit sometimes, but that's pretty easy to account for.

WoW! Morning gear lust! . . . Love to see the DSI MEK live on stage! . . . I am sooooo close to acquiring one of my own. I'm not quite there in the bank account, yet . . . but closing in fast!



p.s. any Youtube clips?

Yeah the MEK is pretty awesome to play live, I used to use a DEvo live but that's kind of a two handed proposition for tweaking. Even though there's all those knobs I tend to do most of the control with the modwheel and aftertouch, and just use the knobs for stuff like tweaking the envelopes. I really recommend the MEK if you like the Evolver sound, it really opens up the sound engine and makes programming a breeze.

No live clips on youtube that I know of sorry.

[masstronaut]

It's funny how many people that play synths submix themselves on stage when your FOH engineer really is in the best position to decide what sounds best.

In the best position perhaps....

[modulator_esp]

my set up varies from gig to gig, depending on style and occasion

for the last one, which was improv ambient /drone I just used a Nord G2, with a Repeater to loop and mangle textures, an SP-404 for some pre-recorded drones/transitions/samples all through a Boss DD-20 and RE-20 for delays and reverb

for my next gig I'm doing a more Cosmic/Berlin School type thing and will have my Andromeda, Voyager, Prophet VS, Nord G2, Proteus 2000 and Evolver, with a P3 to sequence stuff live off the Andromeda and P2000

[Mandolin Rail]

2 tier original Apex stand with a Roland A33 controlling the JV1080 for piano & organ and the Alpha Juno 1 on top controlling the JD-990 for synth leads and pads. I like to run 2 channels (stereo) to the FOH or the band's mixer through a small Boss six channel keyboard mixer.

[rhino]

for amature theater work:

A;esis QS-8 (previously Kurtz. 1200) for piano, strings, bass
Alesis Quadrasynth for brass, organ
Ensoniq SQ-80 pads, sound FX.

for childrens theater, i often bring my multivox mx-2000 for "comic" sounds

edit: several posted about a correlation netween age and total mass of ones gear. At my age...and since this is free work.... i get the younger actors/stage hands to schlep the stuff. roller cart helps, too.

[Analogue Crazy]

In my band i play my Wavestation EX and Alesis Andromeda, they're together on a two-tier stand. The Korg is on the bottom tier and the A6 on the top, and i have a microphone coming over the Synths for backing vocals.

The bassist in my band also plays an Alesis Micron, controlled by a taurus like pedal controller.

[michael stein]

There are four of so.......

member 1: Korg Mono/poly, Univox Minikorg, EHX memoryman, roland phase shifter
member 2: Roland rs-09, SCI sixtrak, Farfisa Fast 3, Moogerfooger phaser
member 3: SCI Sixtrak, Arp Odyssey, EHX bass synthesizer
member 4: Roland SH-101, SCI Sixtrak, .COM/MOTM modular
member 5 = Akai MPC1000, FR mobius, m-audio midi router, encore expressionist, oberheim matrix 6R & 1000

myspace.com/survive2009

[clusterchord]

here's a new incarnation of my live project, have a new line up w three of us, plus a VJ. here's a few gear pic from last week rehearsals in my studio, and shots from this friday's concert in Ljubljana, Slovenia:

[Joey]

waht does the MPK control?