The Sun Inn - Stockton

During the summer I was chosen from my class and asked to work at The Sun Inn during the Stockton festival period. It was a brilliant experience! Not much hard work because the venue already had a dedicated sound system, so I effectively worked as an engineer, simply operating and maintaining equipment.    

The Sun Inn is a great little pub on Stockton highstreet

The venue effectively organised a festival type of show, where there was a massive lineup, all day long, for a weekend. It was pretty well organised and was packed full of people. I occasionally pop in every so often to see some bands and help the sound guys setup/pack up. I have a mate that claims to "work" there every weekend now setting up the PA but I really don't see it as a job, it's just It's a good little place to have a pint with some mates and see some bands. The people that put these gigs on don't get any money from it, they do it for the fun and they just want to see bands play. Great people! 

 This large Peavey system was the FOH monitors was is loving referred to as "Stone hedge". It might have something to do with the size/weight/shape of them! We placed them on top of a small crate in order to give them a more optimum angle of sound projection (it's no use having a Godly amount of wattage available on tap, or even having a really efficient speaker design if your going to aim the speakers at peoples feet!)

We used an active Laney floor wedge that also powered a second passive floor wedge on the other side. It's a simply little setup but it worked nicely. The power amp rack was ridiculusly heavy! So much so that I wouldn't consider purchasing one, even if it was cheap. I believe gigging should be fun! I don't want to worry about breaking my back trying to carry those over a long distance.

 We simply used a couple of Shure SM58's as the vocal mics. They may not be my first choice but they certainly get the job done. I'v heard some interesting points about the SM58 in the live sound world, that even if you purchase a better microphone for vocals, at the end of the day, people WANT to see a 58. At least in smaller venues like this, I can understand that I guess because people want to see that old trustworthy mic and know that the equipment the sound guy is using is at least industry standard.

At the moment I'v got my eyes on the Sennheiser e845 because it is a superior microphone by miles! I might do an A/B test if I get chance, I'v heard good things about the AKG D5 but (and tbh this might be a stupid reason) I don't like the physical look of them... a mate of mine has the AKG P5 and loves them but (to me) they don't look as professional as I would like.

We used a Yamaha MG124CX mixing desk. It's only a little thing but again, it did the job. Me and some other techies lovingly refer to it as "The retard proof desk" because of it's ON buttons that glow, as opposed to normal mains buttons on a desk. It's just a way of making fun of ourselves however, because as musicians and music techies, we don't exactly see ourselves as amazing academics. 

This is the view from the stage area. It's a cozy little back room, filled with a number of great people.