San Francisco, CA (July 22, 2014)—Following their 2013 Battle Born world tour, the Las Vegas-based band The Killers continue their tour circuit, making appearances at a number of music festivals this summer in North America and the U.K. Along for the ride is the band’s FOH engineer, Kenny Kaiser, who uses an SSL Live console to mix the band.
Kaiser works for Delicate Productions of Camarillo, CA, serving as PA tech or system tech for Selena Gomez, Train and as monitor tech and crew chief for Foo Fighters, among others. After moving to the Killers’ camp last year, he took over the helm for the 2014 tour. However, Kaiser was not fond of their previous FOH console and made a switch.
“Delicate is a great partner of Hi-Tech Audio [supplier of the SSL Live console for the tour] in San Francisco, where I’m based,” he says. “Louis Adamo, president of Hi-Tech, called to say they had a new SSL console, so I went down and played with it. I found it fluid and the surface very intuitive. I also had a chance to take a class for engineers and production companies. After I took the class, I found the console even more intriguing. One thing that stuck in my mind was actually taking it apart and looking inside at how it’s made; it’s built like a tank.”
“Because my background is a system tech, I’m an audio measurement and phase dork,” he explains. “Some engineers might have an eight or 10 dB boost or cut on an EQ band and my thought, if you have to do that, is that something is wrong – either the wrong mic or the console isn’t doing what the engineer needs. I now find that certain things I used to do, I don’t have to do anymore because the EQ does what it says its doing. When you’re on the first band and you want a cut at 120 Hz, it actually does 120. Some consoles say they’re doing 120, but then when you actually plug it in and check, it’s not quite there.”
The Killers recently headlined the Hangout Festival on the sandy beaches of Gulf Shores, AL where the console was put to the test of the weather. Kaiser notes, “despite the heat, high humidity, wind and sandstorms that we encountered that weekend, the console was just great.”
Solid State Logic
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