With a tour that was to include acoustic sets, electric sets, large theatres and small arenas across the US, Europe and Australia in prospect, the production team at Special Event Services (SES) chose L-Acoustics’ K2 system – its first official tour as a main PA system.

The artist was blues-rock guitarist Joe Bonamassa, who is ‘opening for himself’, with the band playing an acoustic set before going electric.

SES’ Jason Farah explains that it was the venues that the tour was to take in thast disctated the choice: ‘The K1 can feel a bit deeper, but there is no shortage of low end in the K2,’ he says. ‘In fact, the 12s in the K2 are so potent that they can easily outrun the system, so we usually end up backing down the lows a little bit. As far as the mids and the highs go, I have heard K1 and K2 side by side, and while they are similarly voiced, I give the nod to the K2 in terms of smoothness and sounding pleasant out of the box.’

FOH Engineer Scott Ragsdale is on his first Bonamassa tour: ‘I love mixing the acoustic set,’ he says. ‘I love for things to sound natural and detailed, and the K2 does that very well. But unlike some other 12-inch systems I have mixed on, it does not run out of gas when we start to push it in the electric set.

‘We have acoustic guitars, mandolins, banjos… so many cool acoustic voices that I am trying to make sound as natural as possible. The mix tracks really well between the lower volume acoustic stuff and the loud – and it can get loud – rock set. On other 12-inch systems I have always felt that as I pushed it, I had to start doing surgery on the mix because things changed. That’s not the case with K2. I make very few adjustments as the SPL goes up.’

The North American leg of the tour used 24 K2 boxes flown 12 per side, eight K1-SB flown four per side, and eight SB28 subs four per side in a cardioid configuration. The K1-SBs ran in L-Acoustics’ Contour mode, which has them flown behind the main array. This allows for both low-end extension and, depending on where the Contour boxes are hung along the length of the array, can even help steer the low-end lobe off the stage making for a much cleaner on-stage mix for bands on traditional wedges.

‘In addition to size, low weight and the Contour mode, K2’s 10° inter-box angle means that no separate down fill is needed. Consequently there are also no adapters or extra bumpers to hang downfills, which reduces overall system weight and makes for a better truck pack.

‘It also flies fantastically smoothly,’ says System Tech Alex Ritter. ‘I get into the venue at 8:30am, take about 30 minutes to make my measurements and calculations, and we have everything up, trimmed, and ready to play by no later than 11am. It is by far the easiest and simplest system I have put up in a long time.

‘This is a very new rig and we are the first tour with it out so few of the local hands have seen it,’ he adds. ‘But with just a few minutes of instruction, they get it right away and the system goes up smoothly each and every day.’ In terms of the load out, Ritter reports being able to get the rig down and on the truck in as little as 45 minutes.’