I've just met the most ignorant engineer ever!$%&!

[abyssofdreams]

Couple of hours ago we had a nice small gig in our local city but the guy who was to set up the sound for this evening (btw, if anyone knows a guy called Udo around the Cologne area will know who I'm talking about...) and people told me that he would know was he's doing since he's being around the "biz" for quite a while.

Now... we are a METAL band. But for some reason he thought he had to give us some kinda punky sound which means: no bassdrum, HUGE snare and no toms audible. Then his cable box caught my attention, lotsa Behringer stuff... from DI-Boxes to mics, pedals and so on... blah.

But the best part: Our singer has a nice SM57 for his vox which he always brings with him and it always makes him sound so good. However, when this pseudo-engineer saw the mic, he was like "You're not gonna use that one, do you?" and our singer said: "Why not?". -- "Because this and the SM58 are the worst mics on this fucking planet, they color the tone too much and this is also the reason they shouldn't be used in a studio or on stage anyways...".


WTF? I was so perplexed by this statement, I feared we would have the worst gig of our live soundwise...:Smug:

I mean, yeah, ok, you can have different tastes in equipment and favour this and that but how the hell can he say that about such a lengendary mic? It's like saying you shouldn't use a 5150 for metal guitars...duh!

Sorry, had to rant about it. I dunno how to handle such bullheaded persons... bad thing is, that he does most of the stage sound in our area...
bah.

 

[slashvanyoung]

Udo? Around Cologne? Good to know!

I've given up arguing with live sound engineers a loooong fucking while ago. It's just not worth it. Either he knows what he does or he doesn't. It's just not worth losing any hair about it.

 

[Mortal_Dezire]

I don't know how many times I have had gigs like that happen.

You show up to the gig only to find that there are no monitors, the mains are POS's from the 70's, the "board" is a 4 channel Nady or a Behringer, the mics are from Radio Shack, and (the best part!) the sound guy, (who I was told was a major bad ass...) is a half deaf casualty of the 60's who goes by the name of Ghost....:zombie:

And my band mates wonder why I got into a fist fight with the promoter......

 

[Auster]

Last weekend gig we did, the bar had one sm58 with one cable. And that only cable was broken .....
The opening band and us had bring 3 mics total and some cables, so we were able to mic the kicks and vocal...

Another one, the PA speakers and power amp were clipping way too hard, so i look at the board, the "engineer" had setup his EQ in a perfect "v" shaped curve... Imagine +12db @63Hz in a shitty underpowered 70's PA. I told him to lower the boost but it made his EQ look not good, so he prefered not to hahahahaha what an idiot!!

 

[Noumenon]

But the best part: Our singer has a nice SM57 for his vox which he always brings with him and it always makes him sound so good. However, when this pseudo-engineer saw the mic, he was like "You're not gonna use that one, do you?" and our singer said: "Why not?". -- "Because this and the SM58 are the worst mics on this fucking planet, they color the tone too much and this is also the reason they shouldn't be used in a studio or on stage anyways...".


WTF? I was so perplexed by this statement, I feared we would have the worst gig of our live soundwise...:Smug:

Fredrik Thordendal (Meshuggah) also thinks they suck

 

[abyssofdreams]

Fredrik Thordendal (Meshuggah) also thinks they suck

yah? why did he use it for his recordings then?

 

[grywolf627]

yah? why did he use it for his recordings then?

Sarcasm.

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

epic thread would read again.

Okay okay here we go...

Did a benifit gig for toys for tots (BTW benifit gigs are the worste and I just plain wont do them anymore). Sound guy must have had the worst hearing ever because the kick was clipping something fierce. I walk up to the board do a quick ajust and it becomes punchy. The guy had the lows maxed so yeah brought that down a bit.

We start playing he turns it back up, I guess the shitty clipped sound of a mushy drum is "hot yo".

My absolute favorite was when I was in the good old UK. Sound company shows up an hour and a half late. Sound guy says "I had to track someone down for money." He sets up in a total of 20 mins even though we had sloted him for 2 hours. We get up there and there is no monitors (I figured he knew what he was doing seeing how he is the owner of the sound company and all). So one of my friends gets up to find that they were not plugged it. Didn't matter though no matter how much of a retard we called him we still had no monitors.

Oh and to the original poster: What mic did he want you to use? Because I mean if he pulled out a beyer or something then... well I agree with him it's a better mic but if he wipped out some piece of shit then it's a hilarious story.

Although any moron who thinks the 57/58 is a bad mic for live use is a moron.

 

[noarin]

hahaha priceless!

Last week I played a gig and asked the engineer for phantom power for my pedals! phantom what?! so I pressed the phantom power switch on the table and asked him to put an xlr into my pedal; he then comes up to me asking: dude, then where should I put the other end of this XLR cable? lol

 

[flhctroll]

Not all live guys are douche-fags guys. I'll take any mic/rig someone throws at me. The older guys... lets say very picky.

 

[blueswede]

Fredrik Thordendal (Meshuggah) also thinks they suck

His opinion regarding what sounds good has lost its value since they have not made anything listenable since "destroy erase improve" so ....

The sound on ObZeN kills your ears after 1 minute listening. Crap ,crap and crap.

Regarding retarded engineers, we had some guy at Markthalle in Hamburg that tested the monitorssystem with AC/DC at blasting volume while i was on stage unloading. I kept disconnecting the speakercables until he got pissed. "Why are you disconnecting my cables", "Well, you keep playing music at deafening volumes even though I told you to wait until I`ve got of the stage.

 

[jesterroot4]

i must of had a million gigs like this lol. i once played derby uni, and ended up doing most of the whole night myself with a kid from another band. the engineer who baught all the equipment down, said its only what he had left from doing massive festivals etc, but he realy hadnt a clue about what he was doing.

other than that night, i think the best thing to do is accept what sound your given and dont give adive, you'll only get moaned at or something. just let them do their job, unless theres somehting really wrong!

 

[Aaron Smith]

His opinion regarding what sounds good has lost its value since they have not made anything listenable since "destroy erase improve" so ....

Seriously!?

 

[FalseMessiah Mike]

Not all live guys are douche-fags guys. I'll take any mic/rig someone throws at me. The older guys... lets say very picky.

I've done live sound before, and to be honest many bands don't make it easy for sound engineers.

Situation #1. A band is sound checking they sound like Enter Shikari (vocals, 1 guitar, 1 bass, drums, and trance samples and loops). I think to myself “great only one guitarist this should be simple and won't sound like a cluster fuck.”

The guitarist is using the house amp with his Zoom multi effects pedal. After they finish playing through one song the guitarist starts complaining that he can't hear his guitar over the drums. I go over to the amp to see that he has scooped all the mids out. No wonder he can't hear himself. I turn up the mids on the amp and tell the guitarist not to touch the EQ ever again.

Situation #2. An Indie band consisting of a bunch of 13 and 14 years. The singer is a fuckwit and moans quietly into the microphone. Give it some energy you sad fuck. The singer also plays rhythm guitar. During his band's set his guitar cuts out I go on stage to find out what the problem is and the singer/guitarist is telling me that the lead is broken. I pick the lead up and go plug it back into the amp. It starts working again. WOW THAT WAS MAGIC! Stupid fucking R-tard.

 

[ahjteam]

Not all live guys are douche-fags guys. I'll take any mic/rig someone throws at me. The older guys... lets say very picky.

If you have even a bit of experience from gigging, you can pretty much tell which places have a guy who knows what he is doing. Being fast getting a good sound is usually one and choosing an appropiate mic for the instrument is one of the basic ones (unless you tell them what you want).

I consider to be generally pretty nice guy and SM57 usually works pretty much for everything if you don't know what you need to use, but if someone really does something like give me a SM57 for the fucking kick and a pencil condenser for the guitar like once happened, I will seriously question the house-engineers expertise, sexuality and intelligence. Usually at the point where I might talk out loud what I thinking, usually at shouting volume.

Another example was that the guy who brought in the PA said that he had a measurement mic and some RTA and if I wanted to listen pink noise from the speakers so I can setup the EQ. Ok, generally an OK question, but A) there were customers already in the bar and pink noise would be annoying as hell to a great majority of them B) I would really much rather listen to music than fucking pink/white noise. And of course they didn't have a CD player there at the console.

 

[Executioner213]

We have a venue in town where the bar owner thinks he's a soundman, and fits the description of owning cabs from the 70's but has a fucking huge board mounted flat against the wall behind the stage thats from that era as well. There was one time my friends band was playing there, and I showed up early to help set up. They started sound checking and the snare was so hot, it was melting everyone's eardrums in the bar. I go up to him and say "hey dude, that snare is MIGHTY hot and really loud". He says "I'm running sound, not you" and walks off. About 2 songs into thier actual set, he runs up and turns the snare down but doesn't do anything with the graph on it. Real genius.

Another scenario, there are a few guys here who own a ton of gear and really think they are 'engineers' but are simply water heads. One guy prides himself on having "3 garages full of equipment" and an Audix distribution deal where he can get any Audix mic he wants for cheaper than anyone...yet he couldn't mix a drink or dial a phone, let alone mix/dial any sort of sound. We had a gig here where the Headpins (old classic rock band from Canada) headlined the event. The Headpins had in thier rider a specific gear list, as they had thier own soundman/tech to run thier own sound. He said he had all that when they signed him up, which is why he got hired. When they showed up, this guy had none of the equipment they had asked for or even any of the type of perameters (4 monitor sends, etc) that they needed on any of the equipment he did bring. He also had fucked up stuff while setting up. About 30 minutes AFTER the show was supposed to start, the Headpins tech told the guy to yank everything, and then told him what to start plugging in and where. Then, he ran sound for the whole show and told our sound guy to go sit down/stay out of the way. PwNd! He was pretty embarassed, but tried to save face later by saying "he was just helping me get things going faster" and shit like that.

Another 'engineer' here tends to talk big and gets told to shove it quite often. The only good thing I've ever heard him offer up was when I was playing bass for a shitty cover band, he offered to let me DI my bass with his Radial DI instead of the shitty Behringer DI box I had. Too bad it was FRIED! Ended up using my Behringer anyways. My current band's first gig, this guy showed up at the venue to advise the bar owner (another mix wonder specialist, who fits in the 'Behringer EVERYTHING' bracket, and is notorious for blowing up speakers at almost every show because he seriously thinks he knows what he's doing) on how he should run sound for the night...and not blow up horn drivers and shit. We had just set up, just turned on, the bar was dead, and the first thing you do is play a couple of riffs to make sure you have sound coming out of your amp, right? He comes running up and says "You need to stop playing NOW, I am trying to help run sound!" So my other guitar player, who isn't usually very oppositional towards anyone...at least not to thier face...told him to go shove it and told the bar owner that if this guy is running sound then we will not play, because every time he's ever done a show and that sound guy shows up everything gets ruined. The gig was ALMOST cancelled right then, but everything ended up being fine...blown horn drivers too!

Anymore, when we play here in our hometown, I run our own sound. Usually on borrowed equipment, too...meaning I'm not very familiar with what I'm using. The venues are always like "We have a p.a.!" and I say "Yeah, but at least if we sound like shit, I know it's my fault and there is nobody else to blame." They've gotten the idea that I think they can't mix shit, not that I think I'm better but that I cannot trust them at all.

OH YEAH... the aforementioned Behringer-Deluxe bar owner/self-proclaimed engineer! He also thinks it's a good idea to have wet t-shirt contests ONSTAGE with p.a. equipment because he forgets water and electricity makes for horrible sound in the long run...more worried about getting attention than avoiding destruction. Pure genius! He also did us a big favor by putting 2 kick mics onstage once, because the band after us had 2 kicks...and forgot to mute the one not in use while we were playing. We kept asking what the fuck was feeding back the whole time and he said we were just playing too loud. After we tore down, we saw an extra kick mic on the floor pointed right at the drum monitor. Priceless. He's like "oh, oops".

 

[Notuern]

My old band was playing at a festival on a pretty big stage, we where told that they had amps and stuff for our music.
We where supposed to play the second day, and on the second day, i read the newspaper and found out that alot of shows hade been screwed up totally because the engineers didnt know how to mute/unmute channels on the mixer, so they had spare microphones feeding back, some channels that where muted that wasnt supposed to be etc.

And when we go up on the stage to do our soundcheck, i see a Marshall JCM800 and i think "sweet", and plug my guitar in.
When i start playin on the fucking thing i hear that a preamptube has gone shitfaced, its just rumbling, feeding back and having almost no distortion at all(Less then Hendrix), so i call the enginers up on stage, and they start saying stuff like "im not responsible for the amps, you should have brought your own"(When we where told not to.).
Finally these guys pull some talker out of their asses coming up to me claiming that the amp should sound like that. :Smug:
Luckily my dad could drive home and get my amp quick as hell, and i didnt get to soundcheck my rig, but atleast we got to play.

Oh, and we told the guys to boost the treble on the kickdrum a bit, just to get a little klick so that the kickdrum wouldnt have to have insane levels, that made the "enginers" start laughing and claiming that kickdrums does not produce any highs. :zombie:

(Adition to the post: We where told that we would be playing on Hammerfalls gear.)

 

[Russtopher]

Nothing beats the engineer who fucking cut a hole in my front kick head while I was talking to some people off the stage, with my back to him.

"But bro....... it'll make your kick sound HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE!"

But Bro.... you owe me $40 for a new kick head that you just vandalized. Pull out your wallet. Asshole.

 

[Notuern]

Nothing beats the engineer who fucking cut a hole in my front kick head while I was talking to some people off the stage, with my back to him.

"But bro....... it'll make your kick sound HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE!"

But Bro.... you owe me $40 for a new kick head that you just vandalized. Pull out your wallet. Asshole.

Omg.
My dad actually knows a guy who had the same experience, with his guitarspeakers, because apperantly that makes an awesome distortion(Yeah, right.).
This happened sometime during the 70's.

 

[Zuranthus]

like was said before...no use arguing with them
i had one dude who wouldn't let me plug my amp into his extension box, so he tells me to plug my guitar straight into the mixer...just the guitar
lucky for me one of the guys had an extension chord in his car, or we would have been playing the first acoustic metalcore show ever