Brit Floyd, billed as “the World’s Greatest Pink Floyd Show,” decided to use a Solid State Logic L200 digital mixing console at front-of-house. He returned to the road this summer following a yearlong hiatus due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The UK-based band has been touring the world since 2011, performing selections from Pink Floyd’s The Wall, The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals, The Division Bell and Meddle. And now, his tour will begin in Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado.
“It’s the best console I’ve ever heard; there’s no two ways about it,” says Gareth Darlington, the band’s longtime sound designer and FOH engineer. “It has a big, fat, wide, pleasant sound with lots of separation.” “I got the L200 because I wanted more faders. I’m a musician, and mixing is like playing an instrument,” says Darlington, who also performs with Damian, their sister, Johanna, and others in a side project, Acoustic Unlimited. “I’m not afraid to use a lot of EQ and shape everything, so I want to get my hands on everything. It’s very organic.”
Darlington has been with the band full time since 2011 but started his live sound career in 1998 when he joined his brother, Damian, Brit Floyd’s musical director, guitarist and vocalist, on the road with a previous Pink Floyd tribute band.
A Saucerful of SOLSA
Darlington familiarized himself with the Live console’s operation prior to its delivery by first downloading the SOLSA (SSL On/Off Line Setup Application) software to his computer.
“I learned how to use it intuitively via the software. Then I spent a week at Parr Street Studios [in Liverpool] prepping the show with studio monitors, so I could really hear what it was doing. He confirms that “I’ve never worked on a console with that much flexibility. That’s the beauty of the console; you can set it up exactly as you want it starting from a clean slate. I quickly built a show that I was happy with and I haven’t changed it much since,” he says.
Set the Controls for SSL Live
SSL Live was one of the strongest recommendations came from Andrea Pellegrini, who alternates at FOH with Brit Floyd when Darlington is unavailable. Pellegrini has toured for 15 years mixing FOH for King Crimson and Tony Levin’s Stickmen, but is primarily a studio engineer.
“I work with SSL every day,” he says, in a studio in Florence, close to his home, where he has an SSL 9000 J console. He got to hear the very first Live desks to come off the SSL production line at a Peter Gabriel rehearsal years ago. “The thing that I noticed was the space, the stereo image, that I also find on the 9000. It has become my first choice, because of the sound quality and the preamps,” says Pellegrini, who takes the Live console on tour whenever he can. “I thought that desk was the best choice for CMP, because the show is about live music, effects and dynamics,” Pellegrini says. Pellegrini continues, “The L200 has all the features that I might need and is my favorite layout. I love to have all the faders on the same level. We don’t run anything externally.” And, he adds, “The all-pass filter on every output was a tremendously useful tool for me when it came to lining up my L-Acoustics K2 tops and SB28 subs,” says Michael Skinner, who has worked as Brit Floyd’s systems engineer since 2018 and also recently toured with Deadmau5. Skinner adds, “In my opinion, the SSL Live beats every other large-scale console on the market in terms of sound quality, hands down.”
