Date: January 2007

DIGICO D1 FLIES WITH GUILLEMOTS

Avant-garde indie rock/pop band Guillemots spent November supporting the Scissor Sisters on a UK arena tour, taking in dates at Manchester, Exeter, Bournemouth, Newcastle, Glasgow, Sheffield and Cardiff.

Having enjoyed the flexibility and performance of the DiGiCo D1 console on previous tours, monitor engineer Ben Byford naturally requested a D1 from audio supplier Concert Sound on this series of key, profile-raising dates for Guillemots.

“Having done a demo session at Concert Sound and then used it on past shows, the D1 was by far my first choice,” says Ben. “Its ease of use, the orchestra fader mode, the layout, EQ and preamps are all superb. I love it!”

The dates proved an interesting challenge for Ben, as he started the dates with a mix of wedge and in-ear sends, but by the final dates all the band were using wedges. “I originally had the drummer and bass player on in-ears, but they were saying the felt isolated,” says Ben. “So we reverted to an all-wedge system, but it was a challenge as double bass is very hard to get loud in wedges.”

In the end, the D1 was providing seven mixes for 11 wedge positions, two wedges each for the singer, bass player, drummer and horns, plus one each for the guitarist, keyboards and woodwind. “It was very experimental, but it worked out very well. It’s been a good tour.” Ben continues.

As for the D1? “It was an absolute life saver on the first few shows,” says the monitor engineer. “We had no soundcheck, we just plugged in, did a quick line check and straight into the gig. It would have been a nightmare with a different console.”

As well as saving copious amounts of time, there are many other features of the D1 that Ben is impressed by. “It’s flexibility is great. The way that you can take any input channel, route it and add effects, plus the snapshots, are features I really like,” he continues.

“And the console is so intuitive to use. Even though it’s small, you can recall so much on channel banks. It’s really handy, I made up my own customised channel banks and did the entire show with no stretching at all. I’m very impressed with how much you can customise it.”

The D1 did have one edgy moment when Exeter’s Westpoint Arena was struck by lightning. “Our Act of God moment,” smiles Ben. “It was a surreal experience, the desk just freaked. But once we’d restarted it, it was absolutely fine. I guess it’s not often that a D1 is electrocuted and it coped with the experience really well.”

With the Guillemots tour now over, Ben is looking forward to getting to grips with the D1’s new operating system in January and is hoping to tour with a D1 again in the spring.

[ENDS]

Press Contacts:

David Webster at DiGiCo
Tel: +44 1372 845600
Email: webby@digiconsoles.com
Web: www.digiconsoles.com

Sarah James at Gasoline Media
Tel: +44 1372 471472
Email: info@gasolinemedia.com
Web: www.gasolinemedia.com