As one who has done mostly acoustic sound for the past twenty years, I've seen 'em come and go, and a great deal of new processers to boot.

Seamus, I wonder why no-one has mentioned a compresser to you which, when properly set with a "soft knee ratio," would allow you to add volumn for dramatic effect without blowing the speakers.

As for a Dige, try an X-Y stereo setup with wind puffs on the mic heads, about 4 inches from the end of the tube (Close to the first cycle of the intial vibrato cycle) and pan slowly from left to right if there's a solo or intro. It puts you inside the tube if done right. The 45 degree angle on the mic heads avoids the effects of wind compression on the mic capsules.

As for the most basic skill of the sound guy, it is the ability to appear to turn a knob or ajust a slider while actually doing nothing to the board, and looking up at the complainer with a questioning glance, and a "Did that do it?" comment without the smirk.

A couple of more comments:

Monitor Wars - the fact that during the progress of the performance you gradually lose the ability to hear yourself (Kind of like smells) and suddently everyone is demanding to hear them selves in the monitors. Monitors are for cueing, volumn matching, and rythmn exchange, NOT TO HEAR YOUR STUPID SELF.

Because most people want to be near the performers, and some SEs place the speakers next to the stage, the crowd has the choice of being near the performers or going deaf. Place your speakers high on stands and use tilt adapters (Yorkville, from Canada, makes some good ones) to aim the speakers down towards the middle of the audience from high right and left. Since most tweeters use a 90 X 45 degree angle, if the speaker is placed level, 22.5 degrees of the most direct sound from the tweeters is wasted. Using a 15 degree adapter directs an additional 15 degrees down closer to the center of the audience and reduces the loss to 7.5 degrees of direct input.

Notice how the speakers are placed in the permenent setting in a good theater, high and at a 15 degree angle. Good luck!