Worcester, MA (May 5, 2026)—Pop-punkers Four Year Strong just wrapped up a busy spring, opening for The Devil Wears Prada on tour, and along for the ride was front of house engineer Jonah Kay, who made sure the band’s signature sound translated to the raucous crowds every night.
Using house boards and dealing with festival slots is a recipe for inconsistent sound, so to mitigate that as much as possible, Kay mixed the band on a 48-channel Allen & Heath SQ-5 digital console. The desk is small enough to be flyable, but it still ensures that the mix is the same, day after day. “Ultimately what it comes down to is consistency; I can basically just unmute the PA and like ride the master fader up,” said Kay. “I’m not worried about how I’m gonna get a mix to sound good in each venue.”
• Dialing in the Sound of SXSW
Carrying his own desk on tour also meant Kay was able to develop a daily workflow and have the features available at every stop, such as the desk’s 32-channel USB interface. “I record tracks from every show to my laptop,” said Kay. “That serves me if the band needs the recordings later, and it also lets me run a virtual soundcheck at the next venue.”
He also made use of the desk’s onboard DEEP processing plug-ins. “I’m using 16T compressor quite a bit across my vocal and snare groups,” he noted. “I also like the new BUS compressor for my drum groups and the Tube preamp models. I double up my vocals so that I can have one clean and one with that Tube saturation.”
Kay also programmed custom SoftKeys to trigger different preamp settings, and mixed in stereo guitar tracks to create a wider, more dynamic live mix when needed: “When we go back to the verse with just one guitar, I can jump back to mono with another key press to create that separation.”
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All that honing the band’s sound won’t go to waste: Kay will be out with the band and the SQ-5 again this summer for Vans Warped Tour performances in Montreal and Mexico City.
