By Tim Dolbear and Angela Dolbear

Knowing your system and its signal chain can be the saving grace for both you and your job. Pushing faders and setting EQs is one thing, but when disaster strikes, you must know how to problem-solve your way out of any situation. I learned this lesson early, and here is one time where it really saved me.

 It was a beautiful summer evening in a city park occupied by approximately 2,500 people. A local country act was just taking the stage at the City of Whittier’s summer concert series. I was working that night with Ross Miller of Miller Sound, the company that I had been engineering for the past five years. Up to this night, the outdoor concert series had been a very uneventful event, as far as the sound system was concerned.

 One trick to this park was it’s layout. We were forced to mix from behind and to the side of the band, with myself at what should be the FOH position radioing in the information to Ross at the board. We also could hear a descent mix from the satellite speakers on the side of the stage used for the wrap-around crowd at this park. This mixing inconvenience would prove to be in our favor this night, making our trips from the mixer’s location to the stage seem like next to nothing.

Sound check that night had been, for the most part, as normal as the previous 60 other shows we had done at this park. The real work was finished and it was almost time to start talking about "what’s to eat."

The Problem

By the chorus of the first song, we knew there was a serious problem: the vocals were distorted and the bottom end was about as clear as the air in the Los Angeles basin. By the second chorus, I would have killed for the clarity of an old Shure Vocal Master PA. We were in a serious situation. For the first time in my career, a band was going to be forced to stop due to the sound system. Sure, I’ve seen bands stop before for problems, such as when a power breaker blew (not my department) or when the lighting rig went dark (not my department, either). On another occasion a few years back, a keyboard player accidentally pushed his keyboard rig off the front of the stage, bringing his solo to a smashing conclusion. Prior to that stunning display of musicianship, a band had a train wreck in the middle of a song that was so bad even CNN had footage. But this time, when the band stopped they would be looking at me... Click here to find out what happened!

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