Trevor Gilligan has been Front of House engineer for the band since the beginning of the year. Since then he’s weaned the band, all of who provide lead vocals or harmonies, off their previous mics and onto Sennheiser e 935s.

“The old mics sounded fine,” explains Gilligan, “but I can get more level out of the 935s. I can get a much more placed in vocal sound with the 935, and I like the background noise I get from it. The stuff it does drag in sounds a lot nicer than what you get from some other mics. If you’re working on a loud gig and it’s hot and sweaty, and everyone’s talking, the 935s cut through that really well. In a live situation, that’s the way I like it.”

Gilligan also impressed the rest of the engineering community with the sound he generated from Alphonso Sharland’s drum kit.

“I had a lot of comments about the drum sound from other engineers during the festival season,” he laughs. “They kept asking if I was using samples. No, it’s a live kit with Sennheiser mics. It’s an e 901 on the kick drum. That sounds fantastic. I have the e 904 on the toms. And I’m using the same one on the snare top, which sounds brilliant. On the snare bottom I’m using an e 614 condenser. For the high hats I’m using e 914s.”

The backline is also miked with Sennheiser, with e 609s on the bass and guitar cabinets, and e 845s for the two-piece brass section. 

The band were so impressed with Sennheiser’s in-ear monitors that they purchased their own ew 300 IEM G2s. And since early spring they’ve also been using ew 372 wireless systems for guitar and bass.

“The wireless system for the guitars has been fantastic,” assures Gilligan. “They had some other stuff beforehand that used to suffer from dropouts a lot more than the Sennheiser stuff. And it was a bit more fiddly to set up.”

Although Gilligan is grateful for the opportunity to try a range of mics courtesy of Artist Relations Manager Phil Cummings, he’s yet to need backup from Sennheiser to get him out of a jam.

“I appreciate the support from Sennheiser,” he concludes. “It’s great knowing they’re there in event of a problem, but I’ve never had one of their mics break on me.”

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