Tip Of The Week

It's always fun when you figure out something new to add to your bag of tricks. This is one I thought I'd share. I may not be the first person in history to come up with it, but I had never heard about this until I figured it out.

 

I was recently doing a gig that required 14 in-ear monitor mixes, all used at the same time. With some products, that's not a problem. I had all PSM 600s. Problem. They're configured to be able to use a maximum of 10 units at a time. Or are they... ?

 

After staring at the units for a couple minutes, I came up with this solution that can double the number of mixes, provided you can do them all in mono:

 

-Patch Mix 1 into the Left side of the transmitter and Mix 2 into the Right side of the same unit.

-Switch the transmitter and belt packs to Mix Mode.

-Pan the belt packs hard left and right to seperate the signals. That way you are transmitting two seperate mixes on the same frequency. The packs panned hard left do not hear the right side, and vice versa. Just make sure to put a strip of pro gaffe over the pan knob so the musician doesn't accidentally switch his mix to the other mix on the same frequency.

 

In theory, the same can be done with the PSM 700 units, bringing you from 16 mono mixes up to 32. Quite the advantage, and from experience I can say it's also quite the life-saver.

An observation...

This doesn't really have any meaningful impact on anything, but it does bother me nonetheless. After sitting through a very long and badly attented show a couple nights ago, I went to Tim Horton's with a couple of the guys I work with. We're in the middle of this Roll Up The Rim To Win contest and each location displays the number of winning tabs it has received. This is all well and good, and I am an active participant in the contest, but I think the numbers lie. We've gone back to same location on a daily basis and the numbers go up by 300+ each day. It is remotely possible when you think of the number of people that go through each location on a daily basis, but real? I think not. They even go up over the weekend. I don't think 300 tabs show up at Tim's on Queen St. in Ottawa on a Sunday. There's no way. The location in question went from 325 tabs about a week and a half ago to well over 4500 at last count. Even if there were 300 tabs per day, that's about 10 days x 300 tabs for a total of 3000 new tabs, 3325 overall. Where does 4500 come from? There has to be some kind of inflation in there hidden away among the empty coffee cups and donut bags. Like I said, this really doesn't matter in the vast spectrum of the universe, but I just don't think it's right.