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On the Road: The Producers

Currently out with Mel Brooks' musical tour of The Producers is Dustyn Peiffer, who is mixing in a wide range of theaters and working with a full ensemble

Photo: Joan Marc US

Currently out with Mel Brooks’ musical tour of The Producers is Dustyn Peiffer, who is mixing in a wide range of theaters and working with a full ensemble of musicians.

How much gear are you carrying?
I currently have a Yamaha PM1D with two engines in mirror mode that feeds eight Aviom A-16 personal mixers as the mixing sections. We carry 16 Meyer M1Ds, 12 Meyer UPMs, two Meyer CQ1s and two CQ2s as the main speaker rig. For mics, we use a Shure Beta 52, SM57s and SM58s; Neumann 184s, U87s and U89s; and Sennheiser MKH-40s and 604s in the pit. We also use 34 DPA 4061s to mike the cast. They are then transmitted through 34 bands of Sennheiser that are then routed to a listening station and the PM1D.

Do you have a miking technique?
On the men, we mount a DPA 4061 on an ear rig that comes straight out to about the peak of the cheek bone. On the women, we mount DPA 4061 on an elastic headband that comes down to the peak of the forehead, without being too low for sight purposes. In the pit, we use a lot of small-diaphragm condensers to close-mike the sources. We have two 57s on the snare: one on the top head and one on the bottom that is 180 degrees out of phase with the top mic. We also use a virtual orchestra that comes out of a Mac digitally in stereo. Each channel then hits a PreSonus converter and from there it goes to a tube direct box. The reed players all have two mics: one small-diaphragm condenser for the clarinets, flutes and oboe; and a large-diaphragm for the saxes, as well as a U89 about two or three feet from the bell of the trumpet.

Where can we find you when you’re not on the road?
I toured with this show for 10 months last year, had a six-week vacation at home. I also rented a cabin in northern Michigan for a week that my friends and I converted into a rogue recording studio, where we used extemporaneous recording techniques of improvisational music.

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