Ah well, I'm out on Friday for the first time in ages - I only do it for a bit of fun. It's a good opportunity to inventory the kit and retrieve the bits that have been on long term loan. I was lucky enough to get some classic Celestion horns a while back and this will be their first time out in anger. They are reputed to be very sweet and they certainly sound nice in my drawing room.


I normally carry a little HiFi amp to power some headphones so that I can listen to the foldback mixes and make sure that every instrument is in there at a sensible level. It gets a bit exciting on the eardrums doing above the FoH during performance.

One of the bands I lent a 300 watt driver (an Eminence pro series) to to replace the 100 watt one they had blown in a foldback wedge. They were driving it with a little old H/H. I did say "NO kick drum in the foldback". When I got it back they had succeeded in ripping it off the edge suspension all the way round! I'll be watching them this time.

The other band I lend stuff to I had a hell of a row with the drummer. He kept saying "Just stick an SM58 in the kick drum, it'll do the job". I had to get the WHOLE of the band out front and make them listen as I changed mics to persuade him.

I have, however, NEVER succeeded in getting anything the size of a BOSE 1800 into clipping on foldback.   A Hill DX700, yes, but that's a fair bit smaller.