Hi everyone - haven’t checked in in a long time but wanted you all to know what the towers have been up to. As some of you know I have been hosting house concerts for the past five years and using the Bose system. We recently went more public and started having these shows at a local church which seats about 100 people. We convert the altar to a stage (gotta love the altar on wheels!) and I run two Bose L1’s with two subs per side. I run all signals through a Yamaha 01v digital board which has really good FX and clean mic pres. I set both L1’s to 00 on the presets.
Back in September we had two singer songwriters from LA - Shane Alexander and Brent Shuttleworth. Both are fantastic performers and used to playing large venues opening up for internationally famous artists. Shane was underwhelmed when I told him we were using the L1’s as his previous encounter with them was not to his liking. Once he heard ours in action he was satisfied with the sound and the show went extremely well. Granted it was not the 10 gazillion dollar monitor mix he was used to but it was sure good enough for him to feel comfortable and relaxed and deliver a knockout performance. The audience commented on how beautiful the sound was after the show.
Last week we had blues legend Duke Robillard and his four piece band. Duke told me he was always intrigued by the Bose approach (L1’s) but never had the nerve to actually use them! Fair enough - Duke brought an upright/electric bass player, tenor saxophone/harmonica, and drummer using a pretty standard five piece kit. Duke and the sax player had vocal mics, bassist had a mic on his amp, drummer used a kick mic and one Crown condenser in back of the kit, and Duke had a 57 on his guitar amp. Also had a 57 on the sax.
Usually these guys use a standard PA with monitors. Duke said that each player wants a lot of themselves in their personal monitor in most situations. They were all very apprehensive about having no monitors. With the help of my good friend Alfred running the Yamaha board the band enjoyed a well balanced mix and performed better than I could have hoped. That church was swingin! Old school band embraced new school technology - it was a beautiful thing.
Back in November guitar great Jeff Pevar came and played that venue with four local players I picked and it was nothing short of magic all night long. All loved the sound we were getting out of the L1’s and the FX from the 01v really shined.
We have keyboardist David Sancious coming in June. He is currently on tour with Jeff Beck and will be doing some shows with Sting prior to coming back to play at our venue. David uses a Yamaha Motif8 keyboard. Our plan is to use the same rig we have been using only this time we won’t need the Yamaha board. I will line out from David’s Motif directly into the towers and run one vocal mic direct as well. After he’s done playing with these big hitters and their world class monitor mixes I will be curious to see what he has to say about the Bose experience. I’ll keep you all posted.
Hope everyone is well.
Ed.
Hi edpas,
Thanks for the very uplifting news!
It’s great when people open up, have success with, and accept the change.
Too many have had bad experiences with L1s when someone else was handling the controls for them.
I see that in a lot of forums.
The David Sancious show should be great…the Motif is an excellent keyboard.
I have a clip of a friend of mine, Robert Sampson, playing a Motif and singing thru my L1 Model II.
He wrote this and plays all the parts (except for the dubbed guitar) via the onboard sequencer.
Here is the clip.
Thanks Drumr - The way I see it is that all the folks who don’t like the system for whatever reason wind up selling them cheap on E-Bay! My good friend Rob picked up a whole system with two B1’s for 800.00. Gotta love that!.
Peace - out.
Wow Edpas, those are some great artists! I think the way you did this is perfect – a lot of handholding and expertise the first time out. We did this approach at the Folk Alliance conference a few years ago and it was also a big success.
I’m really pleased also to hear that your house concert series is becoming more and more of a success. I think you’re providing an outstanding service to your community. Hurray!
Ken
Thanks Ken. Maybe you should come up here sometime
and check it out. I used to drive by the Mountain all the time when I worked in Ma.and it’s only a 3 plus hour drive from there to here. And yes - you can get here from there. This morning I dropped a line to Pat Simmons from the Doobie Bros. about a show in August. Hopefully he will agree to do it.
It’ll be a dual Bose rig for him too. You could be worse places in the summer than this area beleive me. Perhaps it could be a business trip for you!
Cheers.
(ahem…conference host…)
