As Sir Paul McCartney’s latest tour rolls out across America, Midas is once again the console of choice, both for front of house and monitors. McCartney’s longtime front-of-house engineer Pab Boothroyd is using an XL4, having been using the desk almost exclusively since its launch 10 years ago. Meanwhile, monitor engineer John Roden (pictured) is using two Midas Heritage 3000s onstage.
“I’ve always favored the XL4 for many reasons: sound, touring reliability and familiarity when mixing a multitude of tasks in a hectic live environment instantly,” says Boothroyd.
Roden is also a longtime champion of Midas consoles and has been using the Heritage since its launch, having relied on a pair of H3000s for the past few McCartney tours. “It sounds great and is reliable,” Roden says. “Money and space requirements are not an issue with McCartney. I can have whatever I need to do my job and the temptation to change to a digital format was strong, but we have done several tours very successfully using the two H3000s and the old saying ‘if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it’ kept springing to mind. McCartney is a very organic show to mix and I need to be able to see and do things instantly without pressing three or four buttons to get to where I want to be, so in the end the choice was easy.”
Boothroyd is also using a Klark Teknik Helix digital equaliser for his final system EQ. “I love the DN27 emulation, and it sounds really good and musical,” Boothroyd says. “It’s easy to use and to be able to grab and cut peak frequencies quickly. I’m also using a KT DN1248 Plus active splitter to feed mono and stereo buffered feeds from FOH to media, video world, the arena hearing-impaired system and anything else that needs to be fed and forgotten.”
For more information on the MIdas boards, visit www.midasconsoles.com.
