Scottish rockers Biffy Clyro rounded off a highly successful 2010 with a series of UK arena dates to promote their latest album, Only Revolutions. Taking in Aberdeen, Glasgow, Hull, Nottingham, Plymouth, Manchester and London’s Wembley Arena, the three-piece was accompanied – as always – by an array of Sennheiser equipment.
The band’s Sennheiser gear includes wired e 945 microphones on Simon Neil’s lead vocals and James Johnston’s backing vocals, e 901 on kick drum, e 904s on toms and woodblock, e 905s on snare top/bottom and e906s on guitars. All three band members are on in-ear monitors, Sennheiser ew 300s being the systems of choice.
“The band has owned and used Sennheiser equipment for several years,” says Front of House engineer Jonny Lucas. “Personally, I’ve been using Sennheiser right from the first recording projects at I did at college.”
“I’ve been using Sennheiser products as long as I’ve worked as a monitor engineer,” adds monitor man Dan Speed. “I particularly like using them because they require very little EQ to achieve a good natural sound.
“Interestingly, although the band owned them, the in-ear systems saw comparatively little use until the arena tour. Here the gear really came into its own; playing on a larger stage, and the thrust out to a B stage in front of the PA, meant IEMs for all of the band were a must.”
While the band had enough of their own Sennheiser mics to cover the normal 30 input setup, the addition of the B stage meant that there was an extra drum kit, keyboards and more vocals to take into account.
“Production company Skan PA Hire filled a few holes for us and Mark Saunders at Sennheiser kindly loaned us the B-Stage mics,” notes Jonny.
Although the band is only three in number, it doesn’t mean that Biffy Clyro gigs aren’t a demanding environment. This is confirmed by Jonny, who says, “The Biffy stage is an intense place and the equipment we use needs to be able to keep up. I’ve found Sennheiser’s gear to be sturdy enough for the job night after night in sweaty clubs and on dirty festival stages, as well as in the more ‘sterile’ environment of arenas.
“The e 901 is a highlight for me. It sounds great and is very practical/ruggedly designed. I like the integrated pre, allowing XLR connection, as opposed to the alternatives. I also use it in a Cajon (box-shaped percussion instrument) when we do acoustic sessions.”
“Sennheiser gear has a lot of good qualities, the two most important for me being reliability and sound quality,” adds Dan. “The feedback rejection coupled with the sound quality of the e 945 is superb. In addition, until the band moved to IEMs the stage was incredibly loud. My job was to get the vocals louder than the wall of guitar and the e 945 made it a lot easier to achieve!”
The equipment’s reliability means that he and Jonny haven’t had to call on Sennheiser’s technical support very often, but they know a huge amount of instant backup is there, should they need it.
“We’re very happy with the gear, but I have always felt well loved and looked after by Mark Saunders and, previously, Phil Cummings,” says Jonny.
“I don’t think we’ve ever had a mic fail, so have really had little contact with the tech support,” concludes Dan. “They probably feel we’re neglecting them!”
Biffy Clyro recently won Best Live Band at the NME Awards is in the middle of a multi-date headline tour of the US and Canada, which featured headline shows in New York, Los Angeles and Toronto, and will be appearing at the Teenage Cancer Trust Benefit at London’s Royal Albert Hall at the end of March.
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