Band In A Box
Ever wanted to make loading and unloading your band’s gear easier? Ever wish you could hear yourself and your bandmates clearly throughout the show without having to constantly ask the sound engineer to turn you up in the monitors? This post is for you.
When I joined One Gun Shy, our guitarist Tom had a large mobile rack in which he kept a mixer and all our wireless in-ear monitor (IEM) transmitters. Even though I left the band before we had a chance to perform together (COVID), I never stopped thinking about that rig and its possibilities.
When I joined Squirrel Hands the next year, I decided to make a rig like that of my own. The process required a lot of research and a few months to get all the parts, but it has ended up being a huge benefit to the entire band. Our load ins are quick and easy (except for the drum kit) and sound checks are even quicker. Sound engineers love us, our stages are clean, and we always hear everything we want to and nothing we don’t.
If you think you would like to build a similar rig for your band, read on.
Components
The rig serves two main purposes.
To clean up and simplify the band’s sound gear.
To provide the mixes to each member’s wireless IEMs.
My rig achieves this through the following components.
Power conditioner
Helix Rack for my bass tone
16-port XLR splitter
18-channel virtual mixer
Wireless IEM transmitters
Drawer
In addition, I also have my wireless receiver for my bass in the rack next to my wireless transmitter, so nothing connects me physically to the setup.
The signal path can be diagrammed as follows.
Open back of the rig with power conditioner, splitter, mixer, and wireless audio transmitter.
Our guitarist, Jake, plugs his Kemper Profiler directly into the splitter, running an XLR cable across the stage. Although his amp is outside the box, he doesn’t use a cabinet. Travis runs his microphone into the splitter as well, so we have all of those inputs running into our mixer.
The splitter has a 15-foot snake in addition to the shorter one that goes into the mixer. The long end is for the sound engineer to run sound to the front of the house (FOH). At our last show, I handed the sound guy our XLR outputs for bass, guitar, and vocals, and he plugged them into the stage box where he wanted to run them.
This gives you an idea of how the rig is put together and how it helps our band. I’ll follow this post up with more detailed ones soon.
