New Orleans show was fun and eventful as well. Not only is Trombone Shorty opening but the Rebirth Brass Band joined peppers for an awesome encore

Encore

Good fun stuff. Jack Irons is also an opener and wow is it great to see him, known Jack for over 30 years, will shoot some pics of him jamming soon, for now just enjoying the watch

So the big news on my front is I will be moving on from mixing peppers. It’s been a long time coming and actually when I first started blogging Roadies in the Midst , I intended that to be my last real tour and had set out to document my last real tour through bloggery posts.

roadies in the midst

If you have been following my posts and interviews for any time now you already know that I never set out to be a sound engineer. I sort of fell into the gig by owning a sound company as well as wanting to test my speaker designs. Never would have dreamed I would end up mixing huge bands in huge places.

Mixing Peppers has been a wonderful adventure spanning nearly 26 years and now the time has come for me to follow my true passion of designing sound gear and dedicating my life to what started as a tiny punk rock sound company but has also grown beyond my wildest imagination. Who would have ever guessed us little Rats would become an internationally recognized touring sound company with manufacturing, sales and installation divisions, numerous employees. Ha, and now is time to have some fun bumping it up a notch!

So though no one ever knows what the far future will bring, what I do know is my last show mixing Peppers will be Minneapolis on Jan 22nd.

I truly love Flea, Anthony, Chad, Josh and all my dear and close friends I consider family both on the road now and those that have moved on to other adventures over the years. I am pretty happy to say that I have dedicated significant time documenting touring with Peppers in journals but also have thousands of amazing photos spanning decades of smiles and challenges.

The sound engineer that is coming to replace me I have also known for many years and is of the highest caliber and I look forward to him taking Peppers sound to new and lofty levels.

So cheers to good times and the excitement of new adventures to come. As tough as it is to say goodbye to the people I love, saying hello to creating my own itineraries supersedes

And so the countdown begins:

Oh, on the subwoofer front, here is a pic of the SuperSub 30 array under the stage left top plates that extend the stage.

I did some more eq on them during system tuning yesterday and am making further progress on getting them dialed in. One thing we are noticing is that we are seeing better Rejection in the off axis zones than previous array setups of have implemented. Primarily it seems to be related to the reduced resonance at the tuning frequency. There is still much to be learned about them as they are based on the Powersoft M-Force and M-Drive products.

M-Force

These transducers are literally a new technology unlike any other transducer. They are not moving coil in a magnetic field like most loudspeakers. They are not rotary woofers using a fan

rotary woofer

And they are not ServoDrive subwoofer that use a rotary motor to drive belts attached to opposing cones.

servodrive

What these are is a flat composite paddle like structure with 4 embedded magmets surrounded by fixed coils such that the paddle moves linearly inward and outward guided by precision bearings. The protruding threaded bolt is them attached to a 30″ diameter cone.

Being that this is a completely new technology, and though the product has been through 10’s of thousands of hours of rigorous testing it remains unlike traditional designs.

When I leave the tour, the subs may or may not come home with me. That should all get sorted in the next week or and Rat as vendor with open arms will support the clients preferences.

In the mean time, say hello to George, Tyler and Nick, ok, off to find some BBQ in Memphis try and catch up with the sound crew.

DR

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