Santana tours with SSL Live
Published: MEA
MEA: Santana’s recent Corazon tour, which has included stops in Dubai, Johannesburg and Cape Town, has seen a pair of Solid State Logic Live consoles travel with the band for both monitors and FOH duties. Monitor engineer, Brian Montgomery, is using it to mix both stereo wedges for Carlos Santana and IEMs for his band.
‘I’m an old school guy and I like that SSL has an additional focus channel screen, which gives me all of the control that I need, alongside the main screen,’ said Mr Montgomery. ‘This setup lets me have multiple modes of accessibility to my work surface, which is key.’
Mr Montgomery was introduced to SSL Live by Rob Mailman, FOH for Santana and GM of touring for Sound Image, which supplied the consoles for the tour. ‘I’d been looking to switch consoles, so when Rob started telling me about the way SSL Live’s control surface was laid out, I was extremely interested,’ explained Mr Montgomery. ‘Once I finally got to see the console, it drew me right in. I actually never heard the console before I decided to use it. I know what an SSL sounds like in the studio; they’re sonically incredible. For me, it’s mostly about design, use, accessibility and how I could lay the desk out for what I need to do. I don’t have any static mixes with the band, every song is different, so there’s never quite the same setup each night. I have to have a console that I can get around on very rapidly.
‘Most of the band members are on in-ear monitors, so I need the versatility to mix Carlos while I’m changing the IEM feed for another band member,’ continued Mr Montgomery. ‘With many other digital consoles, that’s difficult to do because you have to stop what you’re doing for one performer to do something for another. With the SSL Live, I don’t have to do that. I tap the screen for the mix and I can change something for someone else rapidly without popping through four different layers.’
After Mr Montgomery started using the SSL Live, every band member was reportedly impressed with its quality. ‘They all came to me and said it sounds brilliant,’ he noted. ‘It was something that kind of threw them because it was very natural sounding. Over the years, a lot of them have gotten used to something that was a little brighter or a little thin sounding. No matter what you did to the midrange, you had that digital imperfection. Now that I’ve switched to SSL Live, all of the musicians have come to me and said that sonically they’re very pleased with how it sounds. With a lot of my ear mixes, I don’t have to drive the units as hard. The musicians actually have to turn their packs down and I don’t have to send as much signal.’