No… no Burt Reynolds here, but I thought you might want to see what powers the new live “sound of sharks.” To start, how about my Odyssey rack case and everything in it.
At the top is my dirt-old Behringer Eurorack mixer. They don’t make these guys anymore, and frankly most Behringer gear is not especially exciting or high quality but this is one of the cheapest rackmount mixers with enough channels for us to do what we need that exists out there. The last channel is labeled “iPod” but is just as likely to have a Korg Monotron or other small goofy thing plugged into it. It still has a sticker from one of my old bands, Custom Car Commandos, stuck to it. On the front side of the rack, we have an almost-equally ghetto setup.
At the top is a BBE bass preamp, which I got from a friend for literally nothing when he moved to Africa. It allows us to travel out without a bass amp, which would really be a drag considering we use a live bass on two songs at this point.
Under that is a dbx 1066, which is totally cheating because I rented it for the show on Sunday. It’s the least cheapo thing in this rack, which is easily explained by the fact that I don’t actually own it. The 1066 is a gold-standard in the recording world for all kinds of compression. We’re using it on the master to smooth out the sound and to prevent the also-rented PA from blowing up when I drop an espresso on a mixer fader and suddenly the kick drum or Deb’s voice sharply cuts through the mix at +2000db. We might be mistaken for pros with this thing on our side!
Which brings me to the final piece of gear, the Behringer Virtualizer. I snagged this for $35 on eBay. It’s an effects processor that can run in stereo or two mono, with two separate effects on it. I use it for some nice reverbs on the vocals and a fancy delay when I have the free hands to adjust the send knob on the mixer. Which is usually never. It makes a ton of hiss, especially for a digital unit, but hey, the reverb is really nice and it was 35 bucks.
That last thing is just a drawer. It’s where I keep things. What kind of things?? I don’t have to tell you anything!
