Best Seat in the House

Yesterday I got to do something I rarely do:  run sound at church. It's not that I can't, I'm just always doing something else [playing bass, singing, supervising our TV production crew, doing TV audio, MBWA (management by walking around)], etc.

Our PA engineer hasn't had a weekend off in a long time, and all of the other engineers we use were busy, so I got the call. Here are the pics:

From my vantage point to the stage: 

And a little lower so you can see the console:

Here's a shot of this past weekend's lighting operator, George. He's a smooth Romanian who just became an American by marrying into the fold. Great guy.

Here's Jeff.  This was his first weekend training on Presentation, and he nailed it on the first go-round. Welcome aboard Jeff!

On my other side was the other Jeff, my boss, the pastor of the church. He's a great singer, and big-time music lover, and he knows what sounds good. No pressure there!

By the way, he's playing shaker with a small tin of Altoids.

The Yamaha LS-9 is a GREAT little console. We just added some channels on the digital side with two Presonus DigiMax LTs (you can see them in the rack) running through an ADAT card. Our eight wireless mics sound amazing through the LTs, as do our eight tracks lines.

All in all, I thought things went pretty well. I got a few compliments, and no glaring looks.

That counts for something, right?

The End of an Era

OK, remember a while back, I blogged about our PAS cluster horns blowing? Well, as of 11:09 am CST, they're gone. A local audio company has worked us a deal on replacing them with a NEXO rig.  Paul McCasland and his guys came over this morning, and within an hour, we had these suckers down (by means of two hand cranks located above the ceiling - yikes!), apart, and on the truck. In a couple of weeks, the NEXO PS15s will be in place and we'll be a rockin'! We currently have a pair of PS15s and a Pair of PS8s temped in, and we're running full stereo (the way God intended).

This change represents the official end of all the gear of the previous regime, all the (old and antiquated) gear I inherited when I got this job. We how have all new QSC amps (3 years ago), Shure PSM-600 wireless in-ear monitors, a new Yamaha LS9 console, and the NEXOs are on their way. We're also about to do some major stuff with our TV audio, but that's a post for a later day...

Progress. Nothin' like it.