RECORDING August 2022 - 14

Log
L Session
og
Bleed and
One day while soundchecking at the
Grand Rex Theater in Paris (which has a
notoriously low dB noise limit that has to
be respected or the system automatically
limits the output to the PA); the moment
Lou's guitar tech Stewart Hurwood tested
the guitar amps at concert level, the
volume from the stage without the PA
was already over the limit!
For years we tried to sweet-talk Lou
into putting his amps in front of him,
like monitor wedges. This would have
helped Lou hear them more clearly (and
maybe turn them up less) but also, the
amp's sound would have been off-axis
to the vocal microphone and, therefore,
in the null point of its polar pattern.
The other big issue was that Lou loved
his Neumann KMS 105 condenser vocal
mic! Being a supercardioid condenser,
perfect for Lou's bobbing around the
mic, also meant it picked up too much of
everything else. Eventually, Matt did a
Jedi mind trick and got him on the thennew
dual-pattern Shure KSM9, which
had a tighter polar pattern.
Aside from the amp and monitor
volume, the cymbals of the aptly nicknamed
Tony " Thunder " Smith were always
prominently bleeding through the
vocal mic. During one of the rehearsals,
we asked Lou if he'd let us move the
Leakage
with Lou Reed, Part 1
drums from right behind him to a 45-degree
angle from center stage to get the
drums further away from the mic. As a
bonus, Lou and Tony loved this because
they could see each other better without
Lou turning his head around completely,
and the idea stuck.
Yet that still wasn't enough, so we
devised another solution. Matt and Tony's
drum tech, Joey Crifo, took some
clear drumheads, poked a hole in the
center and mounted them vertically on
a spare cymbal stand. He then placed
them in front of the cymbals as shields
between the vocal mic and the cymbals.
Again Lou loved this because his ears
were not being pierced as sharply by
the cymbal hits, so that idea stuck. Now
Crifo had to field questions about those
strange UFO-looking drum accessories
for the rest of his life. I've since seen similar
shields out on stages, but I think we
were the first to do it!
Did I mention that we also had at least
4-5 other vocal mics on that loud stage?
Lou Reed's 4 monitors
stage setup in Prague
Photo by Marc Urselli
One solution we attempted to implement
was using Optogate microphone gates
(optogateonline.com). These small devices
get plugged in between a microphone
and its XLR cable and then gate
that microphone's signal anytime somebody
isn't physically standing in front.
The device has a small trim screw to adjust
the tolerance for the distance from
the mic at which the gate opens. Still,
back then, it was not very precise or
quick to open the gate, especially if the
singer was at an angle or on the side,
as Lou did. Eventually, I decided only to
use the Optogate on all the other vocal
mics but not on Lou's. I could not afford
to have anything he said or sang not be
heard by the people who came to listen
to the prophet from the wild side!
14 RECORDING August 2022
Lou Reed Summer 2012 Stage Plot (minimal) June 6, 2012
Revision by Marc Urselli
http://www.optogateonline.com
RECORDING August 2022

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