ADLIB continued its relationship with maverick German rockers The Scorpions', supplying lighting and audio for their recent UK tour.
ADLIB's Hassane Essiahi and Otto Kroyman babysat the band FOH and monitor engineers Achim Schulze and Glen Schmeling, and ensured their JBL VerTec system rocked to the required extremities.
They carried VT4889 mid highs and 4880A subs, for the larger shows flying ten 89s with 4 ground stacked subs a side, all of which sounded loudly impressive as required. Infills and outfills were a mix of ADLIB FD2 and AA122s, with these and the main stacks driven by a combination of Camco Vortex 6 amplifiers & Crown I- Tech 8000's.
Processing and EQ was achieved using Dolby Lake Processors and a tablet remote, as is standard with most ADLIB rigs. Schulze also used BSS 902 graphics.
Schulze ran 40 channels into his Midas Heritage H3000 FOH console, picked for it's classic rock 'n' roll sound and operational intuitivity. The FOH set up included the integration of a complex set of custom outboards that have been developed and built by Schulze over many years of mixing the band, along with ADLIB's dbx 160A and BSS 402 compressors and Drawmer gates.
The effects rack contained a Yamaha SPX 2000 Lexicon PCM 81 and a TC D2 delay amongst units.
As with any exceedingly loud, in-the-face rock band, one of the challenges was dealing with the guitars blasting out onstage, "Achim is a real expert at this," states Essiani adding that after working with the Scorpions for about 20 years, he's well au fait with how to engineer the best sounds out of them whatever the venue or the system! "He takes a very classic approach to rock 'n' roll mixing - listening intensely to each instrument onstage and then EQ'ing each channel to it."
The stage noise level containment is helped by the fact that all 5 band members have their own Sennheiser IEMs, with 5 stereo mixes fed into monitor engineer Glen Schmeling's Yamaha PM5D console, plus 3 technical mixes for the backline crew.
All the supports - which included former Scorpions members Michael Schenker and Uli John Roth – were mixed from one of ADLIB's Yamaha LS9 consoles.
For the openers, ADLIB's package also included AA152 wedges and a drum fill powered by Crown Pulse amps, dbx Drive Rack control and a selection of Shure, Sennheiser and AKG mics and stands.
They had an L-Acoustics ARCS/SB28 stack stage left and right for side fills that were used by all bands, driven by LA8 amps.
ADLIB's Otto Kroymann also took the opportunity of polishing up his German during the tour, which went down a storm with both band and crew - despite now being distinctively tinged with a Scouse accent!
Lighting
Lighting was designed by Rainer Becker and tech'd for ADLIB by Tim Spillman and David Hall.
The rig was based on classic large, simple and expressive rock looks and based on three 30ft trusses, together with an upstage LED wall that tours with the band.
The rear truss was pre-rigged with 10 bars of 6 PARs and two 4-cell Moles along with 5 Martin Professional MAC 700 Spots and 4 MAC 700 Washes. The mid truss was the same with 6 MAC 700 Spots and 2 linear Moles, while the front truss featured 5 bars of 6, 4 MAC 700 Washes, a single MAC 700 Wash and 3 linear 4-cell Moles.
The ‘rock lighting' picture was completed with 4 MAC 700 Washes on the floor, positioned downstage left and right of stage, and upstage centre of the band's riser ramp set. These were complimented with 5 MAC 700 Spots, 2 each side of the ramp riser and one in the centre behind the drums.
There were also 18 DWE Moles built into the riser ramp which were hooked into the Hog iPC console running in Hog 2 mode that Becker used to operate the show. Copious quantities of rock-volume of smoke were delivered from a combination of DF50 and ZR33 machines and distributed about the stage by an AF1 fan!
ADLIB's ability to supply both lighting and sound as one cost effective production solution, plus its previous work with the band and their management team ensured this was another successful collaboration for the Liverpool-based company.