Country legend John Fogerty and tour manager Bob Fogerty chose to enlist the services of Atomic Pro Audio and it’s Adamson line array system for the recent Rockin’ Canada Tour, which started in Prince Edward Island making stops across the country in larger cities such as Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg, Calgary and ending in Victoria BC.
Atomic Pro Audio owner Kevin Margolin sent out Evan McElhinney as systems tech for the Rockin’ tour. Prior to departure, the pair worked on the sound design and, as all stops were mid to large sized arenas, with the larger ones such as Toronto’s Air Canada Center, sold as a quarter-multilevel venue, the designs were almost identical in every venue with the exception of dropping off a couple of boxes where trim height was an issue.
Margolin and McElhinney chose to use a flown mains system of 12 Y-18 with two Spektrix W hung below for frontfill, per side. Side hangs for outfill were comprised of eight Y10 with a two Spektrix, two Spektrix W underhang. For low-end, eight T-21 subs as a double stacked tour cart were evenly spread across the front of stage on the floor. Lab Gruppen’s FP 7,000 for LF and subs and FP 10,000Q’s for the mids and highs powered the Adamson system.
McElhinney and system tech Clint Boire then fine-tuned the PA for every venue using the Shooter design with room and height modifications. They then spent about an hour on eq, time alignment and a good walk around, using tools such as SIA Smaartlive 6 for Mac and Audix TR40 analyzer mic. FOH engineer Felix Brenner let McElhinney do most of the setup. McElhinney commented: “We communicated well and Felix was all about running around with microphones too – how often do you have a FOH Engineer who is that cool?”
The only adjustment McElhinney would make on the next tour is to fly some of the T21 subs and place rest on the floor as he did on the last Linkin Park tour. Even when using less of the high upper levels of the bowl seating than on a full-sized arena tour, he felt that the subs were still stronger on the floor and at FOH: “John (Fogerty) and I experimented with different delay times and placements to achieve a very smooth low end. John is very particular about the technical aspect of things and he walked with me daily to have a listen to what we did. I was extremely pleased with the end result in both coverage and SPL calculations. Shooter made it very easy to predict where to shade boxes.”
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