In almost 40 years in live sound, Robert Nelson counts Tears For Fears, Beastie Boys, Hall & Oates, Boyz II Men, Leonard Cohen, kd lang and Gloria Estefan among his satisfied clients. For the past three years, he has been production manager and monitor engineer for Blondie, including on their recent international tour when he updated his decades-old Clair Brothers wedges with a dozen Clair Brothers 1AM+ 12-inch point source monitors.
‘I do my best to stay on top of what is needed and try to make everything happen, within reason and the laws of physics,’ he says. ‘Compared to a lot of monitor engineers, I keep things simple. If I do any processing at all, it’s modest – there’s only so much that processing can achieve. The real weak link in most monitoring situations is the monitor wedges themselves, and all the crazy processing in the world can’t fix a lousy wedge.’
Nelson owns more than 20 Clair Brothers 12AM wedges that have served, and continue to serve, him and his clients well for 20 years: ‘For Blondie, I wanted something that was a little newer, if only aesthetically.
‘My stock of 12AMs has been knocked around a lot. I visited Clair Brothers in Pennsylvania with the intention of getting some lightly-used 12AMs, but then they demoed the self-powered 1AM+. I was impressed by its volume and clarity; I was impressed by its smaller size and manageable weight; and I was impressed by the fact that it’s self-powered. Like I said, I like to keep things simple.’
Compared to many of the acts he has worked with, Blondie is more straightforward rock-and-roll. The band members need to feel the music to inspire a passionate performance, and they need to hear all of the instruments articulated to deliver a technically solid performance. Nelson gives bandleader Debbie Harry two 1AM+ monitors at centre stage. Every other band member gets a single 1AM+. The drummer’s 1AM+ is paired with a Clair Brothers self-powered kiT-Sub+ 18-inch subwoofer. For large stages, Nelson places a 1AM+ on either side of the stage so that Harry will have coverage when she moves around. The only other major component in his system is a Yamaha QL5 console.
Having taken the new monitors on the road, hw reports: ‘I don’t have to work to make them loud, and yet I can pick them up and move them around by myself,’ he says. ‘The finish is nice looking, and the casing is solid. Perhaps most importantly, the band is happy, and that’s my ultimate goal as a monitoring engineer.’
More: www.clairbrothers.com
