Rude soundman

relic245

Just a bit of a moan I guess. 

We played a small festival, organised by a great music venue/pub.  They had an external person/company to do the sound and he was SO rude to our singer. 

For context, she is late 40's ex barrister now holds a senior role in a charity, so she's no ones fool. 

She took her wireless mic and asked if she could use it.  He looked at her like she'd just crawled out of the gutter and said "depends if you want to sound shit or not."

She was going to leave it there and said: ok you know what you're doing I'll use your mike if you think it's best. It was an SM58 for context. 

He didn't leave it and said something like: you're all the same you singers you buy a piece of shit £100 microphone and think you know better than we do. 

She replied - actually it's not a £100 mic it's a £300 Sennheiser and got the response - we'll you got ripped off then darling. 

So rude. She left it there because we were about to play and didn't want to ruin the vibes of a good set. 

Just for context - last week we played a much bigger festival where the sound was done by a well respected outside company - their soundman's response was: yeah course you can, whatever you're comfortable with. 

We're not going to make  a big fuss but we will be feeding it back to the venue owner to let them know our experience. 

octatonic

Some people are dicks.

relic245

octatonic said:

Some people are dicks.

You're right - thanks for reminding me. 

That's not sarcasm by the way. You summed it up perfectly. 

Some people are dicks. We happened to bump into one of them yesterday.

Winny_Pooh

And his choice was an sm58 LOL, made to survive, not thrive.

theatreanchor

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/s_ccS5gBV3Y

Dannic

Typical case of ego bigger than knowledge. He’s still pissed that his phone didn’t ring for the Taylor Swift tour. Your singer did well to hold her tongue. 

Grampa

I wonder if he has the same attitude towards male singers?

BillDL

Speaking personally, I would find out what name he hires his services out under, find out where his reviews are posted, and leave a very simple 1-star review: "If you enjoy being sworn at, belittled and patronised verbally for no reason, then hire this obnoxious man". 

longshins

I’ve found that the bigger venues have nicer soundpeople. The worst I had was at St Pancras church in Laaaandan. It was a really nasty young woman who went ape shit at a guy who unplugged his acoustic after soundcheck without permission. Another one at a different gig came over and started adjusting my pedals which didn’t go down well… both of these soundpeople also were pretty crap at their jobs, getting confused with stage boxes, routing, feedback etc. 

relic245

longshins said:

. Another one at a different gig came over and started adjusting my pedals which didn’t go down well… both of these soundpeople also were pretty crap at their jobs, getting confused with stage boxes, routing, feedback etc. 

Unbelievable isn't it? 

I had a similar thing where a soundguy came on stage mid song and turned my amp down as he thought my stage volume was too loud. 

The amp had a very sensitive volume control and he effectively turned it off.

LionAquaLooper

Maybe he's Swiss or Turkish

GoFish

I think he may have experience working in a guitar shop in the good ol' days.

Danny1969

Some people are arseholes and shouldn't really be working in this sector where good public relations are required. 

There are occasions where it's better not to use your own mic .... sometimes you can have a lovely expensive mic but it's not the best fit pickup pattern wise for a small stage. Remember the pickup pattern is more important than the frequency response for live work. 
It's hard to know what you are going to be dealing with Sennheiser wise because the same microphone can contain many different capsules including capsules from sE, DPA etc as well as Senn's own range. They has been one occasion I told a lady she couldn't use her Senn on a small stage because I could see it was a condenser based mic with a wide omni pattern. But obviously I was polite and explained that on that small stage it would act as much a drum overhead as a vocal mic. 

It doesn't cost anything to be polite, it's just some people have a chip on their shoulder from the get go 

DefaultM

Wasn’t in Wakefield was it? Sounds just like a guy we had on Friday at a beer festival, and yesterday was the 2nd night.

dazzajl

Always thought this was an incredibly brave* song to put out but I do love it

https://youtu.be/ZyMFMz2f65k?feature=shared

*possibly stupid 

Dominic

Grampa said:

I wonder if he has the same attitude towards male singers?

Probably..........unless ,of course, they are bigger than him .......................then he's politeness personified
Life often tends to work like that with unpleasant ,rude little jerks

M1ck

Have. Listen to ‘soundman’ Aynsley Lister - sums up your (singers) experience perfectly! 

Edit: should have checked the link @dazzajl posted! 

relic245

DefaultM said:

Wasn’t in Wakefield was it? Sounds just like a guy we had on Friday at a beer festival, and yesterday was the 2nd night.

No Sheffield but they are not a million miles away from each other. 

Hoof

Sounds like a dick who shouldn't be doing the job. Lazy and only willing to do things his way.

A common issue our bass player comes across is engineers who insist in putting their own DI box in front of his amp, therefore feeding the direct sound from his pedals straight to the desk and relegating his amp to being a mere stage monitor. This is despite his amp being a Darkglass Alpha Omega which has a great cab sim output. Even when this is pointed out it's quickly dismissed with "they're always too hot" or "we don't do that here". This then puts our bassist in a poor mindset for the gig because he knows he's going to sound shit out front. 

Or the classic "guitar has got to go wayyyyy down mate", to which you trust them and then after your set you keep being told "I couldn't hear much guitar" by audience members. FFS.

I had one recently looking fruitlessly around the back of my amp for a DI output. Then swore when he had to go and find a mic and stand to mic the cab up.

We're experienced enough to know to be nice to the soundguy too but when they start with such a shitty attitude WTF are you supposed to do? Especially as we're an instrumental 3-piece, how much easier can we make it for them?

relic245

dazzajl said:

Always thought this was an incredibly brave* song to put out but I do love it

https://youtu.be/ZyMFMz2f65k?feature=shared

*possibly stupid 

Brilliant

Teyeplayer

Hoof said:

I had one recently looking fruitlessly around the back of my amp for a DI output. Then swore when he had to go and find a mic and stand to mic the cab

Had this a few times over the years, including soundmen who were really miffed or totally perplexed that they couldn’t DI a valve amp -genuinely wondered how they got the job, particularly as valve amps have been around longer than soundmen.