Any sound engineers here? Mandolin live.

[The Excession]

I'm after a bit of advice regarding potentially micing up an acoustic mandolin for a live pub band.

Scenario:

Irish pub band, playing cover songs

A. Mandolin - wired
B. 2 Accoustic guitars - wired
C. 2 vocal mics - really good female voice (balanced)
D. 1 monitor speaker - shared between all performers - (No EQ or messing done on the monitor channels yet - read on)

Amp: Phonic Powerpod 740
Speakers : Alto Elvis 10

Drum Machine: BOSS DR-880

So, not too shabby, but certainly not studio quality.

The Mandolin player is complaining that it doesn't sound like when he plays at home accoustically.

Now,I have to be honest in saying that it's about 15 years since I last did any live sound engineering. Further at their last gig it wasn't too appreciated that I had to crawl onto 'stage' beneath the band to to make some changes to their sound during the performance, but still they asked me to help out and it was my first time fiddling with their kit and sound.

Usual stuff for a first time ongoing live performance where you are expected to sort out the sound, I just flattened all the EQ and turned everyone down. We then had a bad lead giving a whole lot of hum which meant the gig stopped for a few minutes. That allowed me to get on stage and flatten all the EQ on the guitars, I don't think anyone noticed but it made things a lot easier when I went back to the desk.

Next I just did a couple of runs up to the desk on stage to pull down a bit of the mid and top, must admit I left one of the vocals a bit high, but between songs I managed to ask to the singer to step back from the mic 1/2 inch.

Finally the audience (friends) were saying to me that's a really warm sound, the band sound really great now!

So, to be honest, I'm really trying to get in with this band as they are very talented, and I'd like to do the sound for these people on a regular basis, but I've got this problem with the mandolin.

At the moment it's an electric, and he's not happy about the sound (though, I have to be honest and say that the sound that is coming out front house is not the same as the sound that is coming out through the monitor, so I'm not all together convinced there is a problem anyway).

I'm wondering can you mic up an accoustic mandolin and get it to the front house the way the player wants it to be heard?





Pure aside here, just as a tempter, I'm thinking we could run the mandolin through the DR-880 before sending it to the desk and get some really lovely sounds out. I witnessed a session that I was engineering where the mandolin player stepped on the wrong pedal (shared channel with his electric guitar) and the overdrive sounded so fking fantastic that they went back and rerecorded the whole song with an overdriven mandolin.

[The Excession]

patchst said:

It sounds like the mandolin player is your real problem rather than the mandolin. If the sound out front is ok and the audience like it then I'd just work on getting a sound the player likes through their monitor. The player needs to realise they aren't going to sound the same when amped.

How much experience has the player had going through a P.A? I remember the first few times I played the drums through a P.A and hated it, now I hate not being amped.

Edited by patchst on Tuesday 21st September 18:23

That's a great reply because you know what, I think you are are absolutely right. The band sounded A1 in the front house, not a single complaint, just lot's of different people saying they sound really good, some of those comments were directly to me, some were just overheard, you know in the toilets or outside having a smoke.

Having said that, I wasn't able toget to the 'desk' with out interrupting the band, not something that will be a problem if they allow me to dotheir sound again this weekend. It's a tricky situation,because people that understand PA don't always play instruments and people that play instruments don't often understand PA, and you question "How much experience has the player had going through a P.A?" is very pertinant, because their experience (I think) boils down to pretty much zilch.

So I think you are right, it's surely a case of making it sound like he wants on stage (through the monitor), and given the circumstances at the time there was no opportunnity to twiddle with the mix coming through the monitor. Having said that, I know there is also a huge degree of trust that has to be built up between the muppet doing the sound and the pros playing the instruments

Still, I'd love to mic up an accoustic mandolin for stage, I've never seen it done before, and that leads me to believe it's probably not a clever move.

Still, maybe I could just unplug everyone and sit them all around an omni mic? You know... see how just how well that works out!

[The Excession]

KB_S1 said:

Mandolins are tricky things at the best of times.

You can throw a mic up. For mandolin it will need to be something with good transient response.
For live you need good off-axis rejection. I would try and use one of the DPA small instrument series.

A balancing act. If you don't have access to a really good mic then DI is sometimes the way to go.
Perhaps he is missing some of the low mid stuff that can develop acoustically in a nice space?

Thanks fella good advice there, as said I can't EQ any individual monitor channels, I only have one EQ for house and one for stage with the kit we've got, still I'm hopeful I can provide a bit more for him the next time out, I'll warm up the madolin in the monitor mix, but really at the end of the day it is down to building up the trust that the musicians can have in the SE to make sure the front is right.

Thanks again, good advice.

[The Excession]

Actually, really thinking about this I'm going about it all wrong, we have balanced inputs so I'll just go out and buy a longer lead, then he can stand out front with me

[The Excession]

Just to follow up, seems we're nearly there now. We've done a couple of pub gigs and a wedding and things are getting much better to the ear.

I think I've been running a bit too much reverb through the vocal channels as a few people have come back and said the vocals sound 'muffled'.

That's easy to fix, the wedding gig was interesting, short front to back hall, but very wide. As we don't have very long leads, and nowhere to set up a sound desk in the middle or back of the room, it means I was sat at the side of the stage to twiddle knobs, or sat at the back of the room to hear the sound.

Sat at the desk I was hearing mid to high guitar reflections coming off the windows at the other side of the room (should've closed the curtains I know), but out in the house, taking a walk around, it sounded very good. Accoustically it was quite a nice and easy room to work in, even when full of people.

We've got another gig this saturday in a local pub which is very shallow from the stage, but wide, however the back wall is all soft timber wood, so the reflections aren't so bad.

I'll try a minimum of reverb on the vocal channels and see if we can sharpen it up a bit.

Thanks for all the input so far.

best
Ex