Post by ashcatlt on Nov 6, 2010 10:13:28 GMT -5
I've been wanting to post this for a while now, and finally got around to it.
This is the Circadian Nations live rack, all the gear we need to play an electric show, save the PA itself. It's the most recent iteration of my "Silent Stage" concept. There are no individual sound sources on the stage, so there's very little bleed, which allows greater gain before feedback in the vocal mics. Another bonus is that we all hear essentially the same mix, and can play to that mix, rather than standing in front of our own amps wailing away blissfully unaware that we're drowning everybody else out and stepping on each other's toes. We can take this from the studio to the stage to even somebody's living room plugged into their stereo and sound almost exactly the same everywhere.
What are we looking at, how does it all work together, and why?
Let's start with the vocals.
I've got two mismatched mics.
One is an Audio Technica (space reserved for model number) which I acquired about 6 years ago in one of my family's "studio consolidations". If you'll forgive a bit of profiling, it looks like something you'd stick on a guitar amp or snare drum. I started using it on vox, though, when my AKG condenser went weird. Turns out it sounds pretty darn good for my voice. It works pretty well for Josh (our "lead" vocalist) as well. It's focused directionality would probably help us with gain before feedback, but that's not much problem with this setup.
The other is a Shure SM58 which belongs to Dave (guitar, mandolin, and "backing" vox, except when he sings "lead"...). This is the standard vocal mic in live sound for a very good reason. It sounds somewhat better than decent on most voices, and is extremely reliable.
Each of these goes through a DIY high-pass-filter (hanging out in the back of the rack) set to roll off around 100Hz. These work very well to help the mics reject low-frequency bleed from bass and drums, reduce stage rumble noise transmitted through the mic stand, to tame plossives, and even to get the vocals to cut through the mix a bit. They save the headroom of the preamp and compressor to process the actual desired signal.
The preamp is an ART Dual MP (2nd from bottom in the pic) I've had for over a decade. When I purchased this pre, it was a noticeable improvement over the mackie mixer I'd been using and I really haven't messed with many others since. It's relatively quiet. It's relatively clean unless you push it and sounds pretty cool when it starts to break up. It's probably not particularly flat, but I've come to understand its tone. Most importantly right now, it's a 2-channel rack unit.
From there the vox go to my dbx 266 compressor (bottom). This is set to rather gently decrease the dynamic range of the vocals, partly in order to make up for sometimes poor (or drunken) mic technique, and partly to just make up for the fact that all the other instruments have some form of compression or overdrive - to give the vox a chance to keep up. Compression can sometimes be a feedback concern, but I've got it set pretty conservatively, and we can generally get away with low enough stage volumes to where it doesn't bother us.
That's the end of the vocal chain. From here they go to the dbx patchbay (3rd from top). This is our live rig, but it also contains the majority of the crap which I use to record. When we first slapped this together, I found myself getting behind the thing on Friday afternoon, unplugging everything and running it off to the recording rig so it would be ready to record on Saturday. Then I'd have to come back on Sunday (after I'd sobered) and replug the whole thing so it'd be ready to haul off to our Monday night gig. The patchbay solves that issue. It's set up in a half-normalled configuration. I've got the outputs from the various sources (vocal compressors, for example) plugged into the rear top row. The mixer inputs are on the rear bottom. When no cable is inserted in front, the two rear jacks connect. A cable inserted in the top row on the front creates a split. The signal still goes from top to bottom in the back, but also comes out the front. This allows me to plug a snake into the front and take all of my sources off to my recorder, without having to mess around behind the rack.
One of the cool things about this style of patchbay is that the individual channels are connected to the chassis by one nut on the top rear jack. They are specifically designed to where you can remove that nut and just take the whole piece right out. I have 4 of these things, and only need a couple. One of them has been cannabalized for use as either an "extender" to mate 1/4" plugs together, or as a passive splitter. Because of the way the mixer is set up (see below), I run the each output from the compressor through one of these loose patchbay channels to split the signal.
From the patchbay, everything goes to the Midiman Line Mixer (third from bottom). Let's talk about that next. In case you weren't aware, Midiman is now known as M-Audio. This particular device comes from some point in the late 80s or very early 90s. It was designed for the hip MIDI synthesist (like my father). This is a passive (resistive) mixer with 10 left channel inputs and 10 right channel inputs, followed by an active "make-up" gain stage. There are no controls for any of these inputs. No volume or pan, let alone EQ. In MIDI synths, all of these parameters are usually controllable via continuous controller data, and would be taken care of before the signals got this far. At this point, we're blending already processed signals. Starting just a few years back, when computer-based multi-track recording started to become truly viable, people started building this type of thing again. They're now called summing amps, and sell for absurd sums. This Midiman box does actually have mic inputs and preamps to go with them. I've only used them a couple times, but they are perfectly acceptable clean, flat, solid-state pres. I don't use them here because there's no good way to get them to the compressor and back.
This mixer has a switch to convert its output between Mono (all 20 inputs on both outputs equally) and stereo (L ins on the L out, R ins on R out). Our monitoring situation decides the position of this switch. I like to run it in stereo, so that my guitar is louder in my monitor, and Dave's is louder in his own. I want everything else equally in both, thus the splitters for the vox channels (see above). The mixer outputs are unbalanced 1/4" TS. The output of the mixer goes back to the patchbay - top rear, channel 23-24. From the bottom of these channels go our main outs.
Now, I'm never sure what I'm going to be plugging these into, nor how far away they're going to be. Well, you may have noticed that cables with phone plugs on each end don't mate very easily, and those with jacks on one end and plugs on the other never seem to be reliable. So, if I wanted to get from the stage to the FOH board 50' away, I'd have to carry some really long cables, and or a bunch of cables and adapters. Unacceptable. Too, running an unbalanced cable that far is just begging for all kinds of noise issues. So, I've "half-balanced" the outputs. I build adapter cables which go from 1/4" TS to XLR. The cable has 3 conductors (2+shield - a mic cable). On the 1/4" side, the two inside conductors go to tip and sleeve, with the shield NC. On the XLR, the inside conductors go to the + and - pins, and the shield goes to where it normally would. XLR mic cables lock together securely and can be extended indefinetly and can be found anywhere. Better yet, most stages where the FOH is that far away will have a mic snake. I can just plug into two channels here and be done. I was thinking that the line-level output of the mixer is a bit hot for the mic input, so I built a pair adapters for the other end which take the XLR to 1/4" TRS which could be connected to a typical balanced line input on a mixer. This has worked in the 2 places where I've tried it, but I've also recently found that thoughtful use of the trim knobs on the FOH mixer can make it play quite nicely with microphone inputs as is.
So, the next most important part of most bands is, of course, the drums. I have a fairly extensive Roland drum trigger kit, and an Alesis D4 (on top of the rack) for a brain. Unfortunately we've got nobody to hit the triggers. We've tried a couple of drummers. One started yelling "Can we play something that's not a ballad?" He then asked to play one of our guitars, and proceeded to play my two least favorite songs. He didn't come back. The other seemed really cool. He showed up for two consecutive practice sessions. At the second, he was hammered and professed his love and made us swear to always stick together. He never came back. You may be aware that I am the president of the Partnership for a Drum Free Amerika. I guess maybe I should stop telling our drummers about that... So, I put together percussive timing cues using my old standby of the Jammer to "compose" the parts and EZDrummer for the sounds. Render these to .mp3 and load them up on the iPod. These are all mixed in mono. I don't really want one side of the stage (let alone the audience) hearing the high hat while the other side can't hear anything but floor tom.
Now, the iPod has an 1/8" TRS stereo output, and it needs to get to the rack in the form of a pair of 1/4" TS plugs. The iPod hangs from Josh's mic stand, but we can't really ever be sure where the rack is going to be. Commercial headphone extenders are notorious for falling apart right when you need them. So I built a set of adapter cables. Out of the iPod comes the 1/8" TRS to a female XLR connector. I measured the cable here out to be about 6' long so that a person could hold the iPod in hand - even move it around a bit - and the heavy XLR junction will rest comfortably on the floor, without putting any undue stress on the jack. The other end (plugged into the back of the patchbay) is a male XLR connector which breaks out to seperate 1/4" TS plugs. For the reasons mentioned above, I can use mic cables to extend this about as far as necessary.
Then there's the Bass. Luke plays an old Yamaha bass which buzzes like crazy. I intend to start a thread about this at some point. Anyway, this goes straight from bass to the table-top style Behringer Bass V-Amp seen sitting on top of the front of the rack. This has built in pre-amp compression which we use fairly liberally. I'll have to check to see exactly which of the amp models we've got it set to. I can say that I have turned it's "Deep" knob all the way down, because it creates truly absurd amounts of subharmonic content. In fact, I've set all of the V-Amps (you'll meet the rest of the family shortly) to a mode which gives me a post processing EQ, and "bookended" the sound with high-pass and low-pass filters. On this one it cuts off somewhere down between 40-60Hz on the low end, again to save headroom so the amps aren't trying to recreate subharmonics we don't really need.
Also atop the rack (to the back) is a blue table-top style V-Amp. This was my first, and is the original, bought sometime in 2000. A little while later they released the upgraded version, which doubled the available amp sims via PROM upgrade. I emailed them wondering how I might attain the necessary chip, and they sent me one (and installation instructions) for free. So, mine's not labeleled with all 32 amps, but it functions exactly like the V-Amp2. This module is for our effects mic.*
When we first started working on this band, I recorded a demo for a song. I tried a number of times to record a usable guitar solo, but just couldn't get anything usable. By the time I got to the vocals, I was a little...shall we say loose?... and ended up singing a guitar solo-ey kind of thing which turned out to be pretty cool once I distored the bejeebus out of it. I got to thinking that neither Dave nor I are particularly great lead guitarists, and that led to the effects mic. I'm using some Nady thing that came in a "drum pack" that was purchased almost a decade ago. I guess this one was meant for toms or something. It's not a great sounding mic, but we're not looking for fidelity here. This goes via a RadioShaft brand inline transformer to my Boss AutoWah, into my Boss DD3, and then to my DIY stompswitch.
This is built into a direct box. Eventually, I may find a male XLR jack to replace the female that's there. Then I can forgo the RadioShaft transformer and use the one already inside. It's already wired with an effects loop. The switch itself is a DPDT momentary switch wired so that when it's not depressed it disconnects the input and shorts the output. You have to stand on it to hear the mic. If you step up and it squeals in your face, you'll likely step back, and it goes quiet. The amp is some model of a high gain marshall type thing. The ultimate output is quite horrible and not at all recognizable as a human voice. We really need to use this more...
Then there's the guitars.
Mine is always my 3HB, no pots Strat set exlusively to the middle pickup in series mode. This gets jacked into my Boss TurboFuzz which is set to a "clean boost" mode - just enough to push my "amp" further into saturation and get me a little extra crunch when I really need it. From there it's into my Big Muff for the one song where I need a square wave. These pedals (along with those used for the effect mic) are powered from my "tuna can". I use the V-Amp Bass Pro which sits in the top two spaces of the rack. It's also got the built in compression, and I use this fairly conservatively before it gets to the AC30 model. Yes, it says "Bass" on it, but it has a number of guitar amp models which are nearly indistinguishable from the ones found on its blue brother.
Dave's using the blue one for a couple reasons. First, the particular Fender model we use for him isn't available on the bass version. Secondly, it has a simple tremolo effect and decent spring reverb which I use very subtley to emulate the functions of his real Fender amps. He's got a DOD FX-17 pedal board that he's been using. I've never had good results with this sort of multi-effect board in the past, but this one actually sounds decent through the V-Amp. He switches back and forth between his 335 copy and his new electric mandolin. We're still working on evening out the volume disparity here.*
Oh, you want to know about the rack box itself? I've had this ~7.5 ft tall aluminum server rack for over a decade. We were using to hold all of our studio stuff back when the studio was in rooms with cielings which would accomodate it. Since my move, though, I've been in low basements. Also, I've downsized the studio considerably and just don't need the thing any more. So we cut off a chunk big enough to leave some room at the top and bottom and still accomodate 8 RU of crap. The top of the rack had aluminum "angle iron" pieces holding it together, which we're using as the base. A piece of actual angle iron on either side holds the top together. The original plan involved a sort of skelatal frame attached to this. This frame was going to go into a wooden box with some sections of pool noodle sandwiched between to accomplish some shock relief. We didn't quite get around to that before we actually needed the thing, so Luke just glued up a couple of panels for the sides and we screwed the whole thing together as you see it. It's a bit more than 20" deep, because I wanted to be able to put my rack-mountable computer in there. For now, though, it leaves us plenty of room in the back to accomodate a bunch of cables, plus the two tabletop V-amps for transport. Works fine as is, except that (when fully loaded) it weighs almost what I do. I refuse to move the thing by myself. Luckily, the other guys like to show off how manly they are!
*Most of this was written a while back. We have since kind of abandoned the effects mic and are using the tabletop V-Amp for Dave's mandolin. It's set pretty much the same as the one he uses for guitar, just a couple settings changed to optimize it for the mandolin and somewhat match his volume when he switches back and forth. If (hopefully when) we end up revisiting the effect mic, I'll probably start carrying one of my SansAmp pedals for it.
This is the Circadian Nations live rack, all the gear we need to play an electric show, save the PA itself. It's the most recent iteration of my "Silent Stage" concept. There are no individual sound sources on the stage, so there's very little bleed, which allows greater gain before feedback in the vocal mics. Another bonus is that we all hear essentially the same mix, and can play to that mix, rather than standing in front of our own amps wailing away blissfully unaware that we're drowning everybody else out and stepping on each other's toes. We can take this from the studio to the stage to even somebody's living room plugged into their stereo and sound almost exactly the same everywhere.
What are we looking at, how does it all work together, and why?
Let's start with the vocals.
I've got two mismatched mics.
One is an Audio Technica (space reserved for model number) which I acquired about 6 years ago in one of my family's "studio consolidations". If you'll forgive a bit of profiling, it looks like something you'd stick on a guitar amp or snare drum. I started using it on vox, though, when my AKG condenser went weird. Turns out it sounds pretty darn good for my voice. It works pretty well for Josh (our "lead" vocalist) as well. It's focused directionality would probably help us with gain before feedback, but that's not much problem with this setup.
The other is a Shure SM58 which belongs to Dave (guitar, mandolin, and "backing" vox, except when he sings "lead"...). This is the standard vocal mic in live sound for a very good reason. It sounds somewhat better than decent on most voices, and is extremely reliable.
Each of these goes through a DIY high-pass-filter (hanging out in the back of the rack) set to roll off around 100Hz. These work very well to help the mics reject low-frequency bleed from bass and drums, reduce stage rumble noise transmitted through the mic stand, to tame plossives, and even to get the vocals to cut through the mix a bit. They save the headroom of the preamp and compressor to process the actual desired signal.
The preamp is an ART Dual MP (2nd from bottom in the pic) I've had for over a decade. When I purchased this pre, it was a noticeable improvement over the mackie mixer I'd been using and I really haven't messed with many others since. It's relatively quiet. It's relatively clean unless you push it and sounds pretty cool when it starts to break up. It's probably not particularly flat, but I've come to understand its tone. Most importantly right now, it's a 2-channel rack unit.
From there the vox go to my dbx 266 compressor (bottom). This is set to rather gently decrease the dynamic range of the vocals, partly in order to make up for sometimes poor (or drunken) mic technique, and partly to just make up for the fact that all the other instruments have some form of compression or overdrive - to give the vox a chance to keep up. Compression can sometimes be a feedback concern, but I've got it set pretty conservatively, and we can generally get away with low enough stage volumes to where it doesn't bother us.
That's the end of the vocal chain. From here they go to the dbx patchbay (3rd from top). This is our live rig, but it also contains the majority of the crap which I use to record. When we first slapped this together, I found myself getting behind the thing on Friday afternoon, unplugging everything and running it off to the recording rig so it would be ready to record on Saturday. Then I'd have to come back on Sunday (after I'd sobered) and replug the whole thing so it'd be ready to haul off to our Monday night gig. The patchbay solves that issue. It's set up in a half-normalled configuration. I've got the outputs from the various sources (vocal compressors, for example) plugged into the rear top row. The mixer inputs are on the rear bottom. When no cable is inserted in front, the two rear jacks connect. A cable inserted in the top row on the front creates a split. The signal still goes from top to bottom in the back, but also comes out the front. This allows me to plug a snake into the front and take all of my sources off to my recorder, without having to mess around behind the rack.
One of the cool things about this style of patchbay is that the individual channels are connected to the chassis by one nut on the top rear jack. They are specifically designed to where you can remove that nut and just take the whole piece right out. I have 4 of these things, and only need a couple. One of them has been cannabalized for use as either an "extender" to mate 1/4" plugs together, or as a passive splitter. Because of the way the mixer is set up (see below), I run the each output from the compressor through one of these loose patchbay channels to split the signal.
From the patchbay, everything goes to the Midiman Line Mixer (third from bottom). Let's talk about that next. In case you weren't aware, Midiman is now known as M-Audio. This particular device comes from some point in the late 80s or very early 90s. It was designed for the hip MIDI synthesist (like my father). This is a passive (resistive) mixer with 10 left channel inputs and 10 right channel inputs, followed by an active "make-up" gain stage. There are no controls for any of these inputs. No volume or pan, let alone EQ. In MIDI synths, all of these parameters are usually controllable via continuous controller data, and would be taken care of before the signals got this far. At this point, we're blending already processed signals. Starting just a few years back, when computer-based multi-track recording started to become truly viable, people started building this type of thing again. They're now called summing amps, and sell for absurd sums. This Midiman box does actually have mic inputs and preamps to go with them. I've only used them a couple times, but they are perfectly acceptable clean, flat, solid-state pres. I don't use them here because there's no good way to get them to the compressor and back.
This mixer has a switch to convert its output between Mono (all 20 inputs on both outputs equally) and stereo (L ins on the L out, R ins on R out). Our monitoring situation decides the position of this switch. I like to run it in stereo, so that my guitar is louder in my monitor, and Dave's is louder in his own. I want everything else equally in both, thus the splitters for the vox channels (see above). The mixer outputs are unbalanced 1/4" TS. The output of the mixer goes back to the patchbay - top rear, channel 23-24. From the bottom of these channels go our main outs.
Now, I'm never sure what I'm going to be plugging these into, nor how far away they're going to be. Well, you may have noticed that cables with phone plugs on each end don't mate very easily, and those with jacks on one end and plugs on the other never seem to be reliable. So, if I wanted to get from the stage to the FOH board 50' away, I'd have to carry some really long cables, and or a bunch of cables and adapters. Unacceptable. Too, running an unbalanced cable that far is just begging for all kinds of noise issues. So, I've "half-balanced" the outputs. I build adapter cables which go from 1/4" TS to XLR. The cable has 3 conductors (2+shield - a mic cable). On the 1/4" side, the two inside conductors go to tip and sleeve, with the shield NC. On the XLR, the inside conductors go to the + and - pins, and the shield goes to where it normally would. XLR mic cables lock together securely and can be extended indefinetly and can be found anywhere. Better yet, most stages where the FOH is that far away will have a mic snake. I can just plug into two channels here and be done. I was thinking that the line-level output of the mixer is a bit hot for the mic input, so I built a pair adapters for the other end which take the XLR to 1/4" TRS which could be connected to a typical balanced line input on a mixer. This has worked in the 2 places where I've tried it, but I've also recently found that thoughtful use of the trim knobs on the FOH mixer can make it play quite nicely with microphone inputs as is.
So, the next most important part of most bands is, of course, the drums. I have a fairly extensive Roland drum trigger kit, and an Alesis D4 (on top of the rack) for a brain. Unfortunately we've got nobody to hit the triggers. We've tried a couple of drummers. One started yelling "Can we play something that's not a ballad?" He then asked to play one of our guitars, and proceeded to play my two least favorite songs. He didn't come back. The other seemed really cool. He showed up for two consecutive practice sessions. At the second, he was hammered and professed his love and made us swear to always stick together. He never came back. You may be aware that I am the president of the Partnership for a Drum Free Amerika. I guess maybe I should stop telling our drummers about that... So, I put together percussive timing cues using my old standby of the Jammer to "compose" the parts and EZDrummer for the sounds. Render these to .mp3 and load them up on the iPod. These are all mixed in mono. I don't really want one side of the stage (let alone the audience) hearing the high hat while the other side can't hear anything but floor tom.
Now, the iPod has an 1/8" TRS stereo output, and it needs to get to the rack in the form of a pair of 1/4" TS plugs. The iPod hangs from Josh's mic stand, but we can't really ever be sure where the rack is going to be. Commercial headphone extenders are notorious for falling apart right when you need them. So I built a set of adapter cables. Out of the iPod comes the 1/8" TRS to a female XLR connector. I measured the cable here out to be about 6' long so that a person could hold the iPod in hand - even move it around a bit - and the heavy XLR junction will rest comfortably on the floor, without putting any undue stress on the jack. The other end (plugged into the back of the patchbay) is a male XLR connector which breaks out to seperate 1/4" TS plugs. For the reasons mentioned above, I can use mic cables to extend this about as far as necessary.
Then there's the Bass. Luke plays an old Yamaha bass which buzzes like crazy. I intend to start a thread about this at some point. Anyway, this goes straight from bass to the table-top style Behringer Bass V-Amp seen sitting on top of the front of the rack. This has built in pre-amp compression which we use fairly liberally. I'll have to check to see exactly which of the amp models we've got it set to. I can say that I have turned it's "Deep" knob all the way down, because it creates truly absurd amounts of subharmonic content. In fact, I've set all of the V-Amps (you'll meet the rest of the family shortly) to a mode which gives me a post processing EQ, and "bookended" the sound with high-pass and low-pass filters. On this one it cuts off somewhere down between 40-60Hz on the low end, again to save headroom so the amps aren't trying to recreate subharmonics we don't really need.
Also atop the rack (to the back) is a blue table-top style V-Amp. This was my first, and is the original, bought sometime in 2000. A little while later they released the upgraded version, which doubled the available amp sims via PROM upgrade. I emailed them wondering how I might attain the necessary chip, and they sent me one (and installation instructions) for free. So, mine's not labeleled with all 32 amps, but it functions exactly like the V-Amp2. This module is for our effects mic.*
When we first started working on this band, I recorded a demo for a song. I tried a number of times to record a usable guitar solo, but just couldn't get anything usable. By the time I got to the vocals, I was a little...shall we say loose?... and ended up singing a guitar solo-ey kind of thing which turned out to be pretty cool once I distored the bejeebus out of it. I got to thinking that neither Dave nor I are particularly great lead guitarists, and that led to the effects mic. I'm using some Nady thing that came in a "drum pack" that was purchased almost a decade ago. I guess this one was meant for toms or something. It's not a great sounding mic, but we're not looking for fidelity here. This goes via a RadioShaft brand inline transformer to my Boss AutoWah, into my Boss DD3, and then to my DIY stompswitch.
This is built into a direct box. Eventually, I may find a male XLR jack to replace the female that's there. Then I can forgo the RadioShaft transformer and use the one already inside. It's already wired with an effects loop. The switch itself is a DPDT momentary switch wired so that when it's not depressed it disconnects the input and shorts the output. You have to stand on it to hear the mic. If you step up and it squeals in your face, you'll likely step back, and it goes quiet. The amp is some model of a high gain marshall type thing. The ultimate output is quite horrible and not at all recognizable as a human voice. We really need to use this more...
Then there's the guitars.
Mine is always my 3HB, no pots Strat set exlusively to the middle pickup in series mode. This gets jacked into my Boss TurboFuzz which is set to a "clean boost" mode - just enough to push my "amp" further into saturation and get me a little extra crunch when I really need it. From there it's into my Big Muff for the one song where I need a square wave. These pedals (along with those used for the effect mic) are powered from my "tuna can". I use the V-Amp Bass Pro which sits in the top two spaces of the rack. It's also got the built in compression, and I use this fairly conservatively before it gets to the AC30 model. Yes, it says "Bass" on it, but it has a number of guitar amp models which are nearly indistinguishable from the ones found on its blue brother.
Dave's using the blue one for a couple reasons. First, the particular Fender model we use for him isn't available on the bass version. Secondly, it has a simple tremolo effect and decent spring reverb which I use very subtley to emulate the functions of his real Fender amps. He's got a DOD FX-17 pedal board that he's been using. I've never had good results with this sort of multi-effect board in the past, but this one actually sounds decent through the V-Amp. He switches back and forth between his 335 copy and his new electric mandolin. We're still working on evening out the volume disparity here.*
Oh, you want to know about the rack box itself? I've had this ~7.5 ft tall aluminum server rack for over a decade. We were using to hold all of our studio stuff back when the studio was in rooms with cielings which would accomodate it. Since my move, though, I've been in low basements. Also, I've downsized the studio considerably and just don't need the thing any more. So we cut off a chunk big enough to leave some room at the top and bottom and still accomodate 8 RU of crap. The top of the rack had aluminum "angle iron" pieces holding it together, which we're using as the base. A piece of actual angle iron on either side holds the top together. The original plan involved a sort of skelatal frame attached to this. This frame was going to go into a wooden box with some sections of pool noodle sandwiched between to accomplish some shock relief. We didn't quite get around to that before we actually needed the thing, so Luke just glued up a couple of panels for the sides and we screwed the whole thing together as you see it. It's a bit more than 20" deep, because I wanted to be able to put my rack-mountable computer in there. For now, though, it leaves us plenty of room in the back to accomodate a bunch of cables, plus the two tabletop V-amps for transport. Works fine as is, except that (when fully loaded) it weighs almost what I do. I refuse to move the thing by myself. Luckily, the other guys like to show off how manly they are!
*Most of this was written a while back. We have since kind of abandoned the effects mic and are using the tabletop V-Amp for Dave's mandolin. It's set pretty much the same as the one he uses for guitar, just a couple settings changed to optimize it for the mandolin and somewhat match his volume when he switches back and forth. If (hopefully when) we end up revisiting the effect mic, I'll probably start carrying one of my SansAmp pedals for it.
