Jonny “Famous” Williams, front-of-house engineer for Sir Rod Stewart for the past two and a half years, has switched to a Solid State Logic Live L650, supplied by Sound Image (Clair Global Group), for the North American tour, with a rack full of SSL analogue processing.
Williams, who has also worked with RAYE, Central Cee and Thundercat, first used SSL consoles about eight years ago. “When I had the opportunity to switch to SSL I only really had two choices — either the L550 Plus or the L650, due to the capacity I needed. I went for the L650 because I like its layout.”
Three fader bays, “anything anywhere”
I like the three fader banks because I’m very hands-on with the faders, even with a lot of automation involved. One of the great things about SSL Live, a platform I know inside out, is its flexibility. You can put almost anything, almost anywhere, Williams explains.
The SSL rack
His FOH rack holds four SSL Super 9000 SuperAnalogue and three Revival 4000 channel strips: the Super 9000s on vocals, the Revival 4000s on kick, snare and bass, and THE BUS+ compressor on the drum group. A UMD192 USB/MADI/Dante interface handles multitrack recording and playback, an SSL 18 interface connects to his SMAART rig, and two MADI Opti-Coax units link the L650 to the rack.
Four SSL ML 32.32 MADI stageboxes send 122 inputs to FOH via a Blacklight II Concentrator, with a split feeding the monitor console; transport at the stage is over fibre, with eight MADI Opti-Coax units for format conversion.
Internal effects and automation
Williams uses the Enhancer a lot, especially on drums, along with the bass amp model in the Effects Rack, Dynamic EQ on vocals, guitars and fiddles, and the Sourcerer on all vocals. He also hosts SSL FlexVerb and Digicrush plug-ins on a server he built himself, and runs SOLSA, the standalone SSL Live software, on a PC mounted behind a Remote Tile.
“One very cool thing about the SSL Live’s workflow is that you can chain effects, then chain that to something external, which I do, and then bring it back as part of the same chain,” he adds, with backups that switch to the internal SSL effects if anything in the rack fails. The console’s Event Manager is linked to a Stream Deck to fire changes such as resetting VCAs after a solo or lowering effects between songs.
Stems and two master buses
Williams groups inputs on Live’s Stem buses, with variable send levels, which is useful for parallel drum compression. He runs two master buses, one for the PA and one for a dedicated broadcast mix with its own limiter and reverb masters, so the room reverbs can be pulled down in a cavernous arena without affecting the broadcast.
There’s just so much versatility in this board that you can do pretty much anything, he concludes.
Instagram
Facebook
LinkedIn
YouTube
