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Meyer Sound’s MICA Proves Its Mettle with Swiss Metal Band, Gotthard
Gotthard’s music could best be described as “melodic metal”, a style blending the sound of raging guitars with catchy tunes and memorable lyrics. In November and December, the Swiss quintet wrapped up its 2005 European tour with 15 packed shows at large concert halls and small arenas in Germany and Switzerland. To cover crowds of up to 6,000 energetic fans, the tour’s production manager and FOH engineer Lothar Strunk specified Meyer Sound’s MICA compact high-power curvilinear arrays as the cornerstone element of his sound system.
Because strong vocals are critical to the band’s sound, the sound system had to produce both raw power and exceptional clarity. Strunk’s past experience with Meyer Sound gave him the confidence to choose the MICA system before having even properly heard it. At the first production rehearsal he was pleased to find his blind trust in the new product justified.
“I was absolutely stunned by what I heard,” Strunk says, “and so was the band’s management. Our rehearsals were in a very large club holding about 2,500. It used to be an industrial building, so the acoustics were not very good. The band had a backline of 10 Randall and Orange stacks, which they used at full volume. We had only six MICAs flown per side, yet it was incredible how well the vocals projected out in front of the mix, with headroom to spare.”
To accommodate the variety of venues the band would play, the tour traveled with 16 MICA cabinets, normally flown six or eight per side or, in some cases, groundstacked six high. Chest-thumping bass came from six M3D-Sub directional subwoofers. Rounding out the all-Meyer Sound loudspeaker system were four CQ-1 wide coverage main loudspeakers for frontfill, four CQ-2 narrow coverage main loudspeakers for sidefill monitors, and, to drive the system, an LD-3 compensating line driver and three CP-10 complementary phase parametric equalizers.
Sound and lighting equipment on the tour was provided by Starlight AB, a production rental company based near Stockholm in Sweden. Tour organisation, planning and staffing was handled by Strunk’s own company, Rocksound-Management of Hannover, Germany. A touring veteran with more than 24 years experience, Strunk counts the Scorpions, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Marius Müller Westernhagen, and Herbert Grönemeyer among his many FOH mixing credits.
The small-but-mighty MICA certainly proved its mettle when the system was pressed into service at the last minute for two of the larger venues, where Strunk originally had planned to use Meyer Sound’s flagship M3D line array loudspeakers. A very heavy, early season snowfall prompted the venues to drastically reduce hang point allowances, forcing Strunk to shift weight from ceiling points to ground support trusses. “We were limited to about 1,500 pounds per side,” Strunk explains, “so instead of the M3Ds we brought in four more MICAs so we could fly 10 per side. It was the perfect choice, giving us plenty of power and excellent coverage.” The M3Ds were put to use later, however, to provide maximum power for Gotthard’s raucous concert at Zurich’s 13,000-seat Hallenstadion.
For shows in less cavernous spaces, Strunk was more than pleased with the power, clarity and rigging flexibility of the MICA system. “From night to night, I was pleasantly surprised by the MICA arrays,” he says. “They worked out very well, flown or groundstacked, in all kinds of venues. Also, the comments we got back from the band’s management were very, very good.”
To complement the MICA arrays, Starlight provided a front-of-house setup centered around a DiGiCo D5 console, minimally supplemented by a Focusrite VoiceMaster and TC Electronic M5000 reverb. Microphones and wireless systems were all from Sennheiser.
Since first climbing to the top of the Swiss record charts in 1992, Gotthard has enjoyed remarkable longevity as one of Europe’s most enduring hard rock groups. The group’s string of national hits includes six singles pushing into the top 10 and nine albums ranking as number one. All nine are now certified Platinum, with the latest release, Lipservice, approaching double Platinum status.
27th April 2006
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