This is the fourth installment in guest blogger Steve Lagudi’s series on Guitars & Bass in a Live Setting – if you missed Part 1 of his post on selecting and placing mics, you can read it here.

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Steve's view during a live show.  Photo: Steve Lagudi/Instagram

With the gain, I find I like to run the gain hotter than most signals. On certain consoles, I like to get a good saturation of color from the preamp, and I end up running it just under the red. TIP! On the topic of “red”: On a channel all this is, is it’s an indication that your signal is at the point where the mic pre will start to distort. This is NOT always a bad thing. Some consoles will illuminate earlier than others. And some console’s preamps distort better than others and sound awesome. Just as long as you’re not clipping the outputs and running the amplifiers of the PA in red, you’re fine. I bring this up because I had a kid in a venue once (who was not even on the audio staff, I think he was with lighting [makes sense]), who saw a few clip lights lighting up on the console while I was mixing and he came running up screaming, literally, screaming, that I was breaking the console and was going to blow up the PA system. Mind you, my main fader, I was not even in the yellow and still had plenty of head room. I’m trying to quickly tell this kid that it’s ok, but he kept yelling and yelling. Now, mind you, my main focus is on the gig, and I don’t like being interrupted. So when the song ended, I tried to explain what was going on – he did not want to hear it, storms off and gets the house engineer. Keep in mind that I have been to this venue countless times and the house engineer is a friend for many years who trusted me and knew he did not have to babysit me…he comes in with the kid and the kid is showing him how the little red LED’s were lighting up. The house engineer basically told this kid to shut up and proceeded to explain what I had explained to you, that the red light is just an indication that the signal is past the point and distortion will occur. The kid apologized, and this is when I learned he was not even on the audio staff. I don’t want to say the name of the console, but this console only sounds good when you drive it hard. So for you traveling engineers, you might run in to this situation and it is unfortunate that people are not aware of this, and many other things for that matter and sometimes you just have to deal with it. Ok let’s get back on track now… Since I always get the most consistent results by using the AE2500 mics and running them flat, here is a ‘lil trick that I use on gigs, particularly outdoor festivals, or anytime I don’t get to sound check, or am in a new venue and don’t know how the room sounds etc…I build my mix around the guitars. That is my reference. I trust these mics and the sound they give me, that from the moment the band comes out of the gate, I just work my way around the mix and with over a thousand gigs I have done using these mics, it has worked each and every time. Check back for Part 3 of Steve’s post on selecting and placing mics next Wednesday!