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All Access: Queens of the Stone Age

“The Queens are one of the best rock bands on the planet. The source of my sounds are great, and that makes my job a lot easier.

“The Queens are one of the best rock bands on the planet. Thesource of my sounds are great, and that makes my job a lot easier. TheP.A. we’re using is provided by Rat Sound,” says FOH engineerHutch. “It’s V-DOSC with front-loaded Rat cabinets with two 18sin them for our low end. We have been playing a wide variety of venuesizes, so the amount of boxes really changes. We’re ‘bottomfeeders,’ and I usually double the low end provided in most houserigs. We’re extremely loud onstage and I need infield fills to give thekids something other than guitars. Rat makes a great low-profile fillwith two 12s and a 2-inch horn that really kicks butt. Four of theseacross the front make a big difference.

“I’m using an old Midas board with 30 inputs, half-a-dozeneffects, subs and infields on auxes; it’s pretty straightforward. I’mnot a book-smart engineer: I’m really the anti-tech. I’ll try thingsfor the sake of trying, even if it’s not common practice. Sometimes,you discover new things this way.

“Across the front end, I’m using a Fatso Jr., vocals getDistressors; I have an old [DeltaLab] Effectron with jammed buttonsthat gives me a great vocal double; Eventide for my tripped outeffects; TC stuff for echoes; my reverb is a Demeter Spring, [dbx]1066s for drums, [dbx] 160s for bass; and on my guitars, Little Labs’IBPs: They’re an amazing sweepable phase adjustment, and when doublemics are used, it allows you to find the sweet spot without physicallymoving the mic.”

“I’m using an InnovaSon Compact Sy40,” says monitorengineer Matt Field. “This is 40 into 27 buses, all processing inthe console so my setup consists of one Edison power cord (110 to 240volts) and I am pretty much good to go. All EQ and dynamics areonboard, so I have no requirement for any external racks of processing.This means that we can achieve consistency even with the most far-flungshows and the shortest festival changeovers. I have 8-band parametricEQ on all outputs, gates and comps — all onboard.

“The band is on wedges. My preferred monitor — whichwe’ve been using most of this year — is the Rat-designed RadianMicrowedge 12. We’ve been using these on all of the legs of the tour,where we have carried production and just slimming down to console andline system for festival runs.

“I have [drummer] Joey on a pair of Microwedge 12s with an18-inch sub and a pair of Aura shakers mounted on a steel drum throneplate that I designed and had built specially for his purposes, and toincrease the efficiency of the shake effect. For the kick drum, we havea Shure Beta 52A and a Yamaha NS-10 low-end speaker [woofer used inreverse as a transducer]. On snare, it’s a Shure Beta 57A [top] andSM57 [bottom]. Shure KSM137s are on hi-hat and ride, the toms areSennheiser MD604s and Shure KSM44s are the overheads.”

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