Sheringham Social Club (The Top Club)

Left at 5pm and had a good trip over arriving at 6:40pm. The club has good access to the stage but you have to park on the pavement to unload. Got all my gear in OK by the time Dave Jenny and Dan arrived. I wanted to concentrate on setting up the PA because I had replaced the exciter with an enhancer. Also, I wanted to set Dave up with an Audix OM5 I had borrowed from the studio. Early signs were good. The PA sounded crisp and clear and we appeared to have the lost the touch of resonant boomyness we had with the exciter. A great on-stage sound. The OM5 is a more middly sound and certainly “does what it says on the tin” in that it has high resistance to feedback and picking up extraneous sounds from the kit. It cut through the mix well but I had to reduce the treble and increase bass slightly to get a compatible sound with the Shure’s. So we soundchecked OK. I got the boys to play a bit of “Good Luck Charm” without me and the vocals were well balanced with the rhythm section throughout the hall. Soundchecked the usual and it all worked really well. Dave’s family and several friends had arrived to support the band and the hall was filling nicely. So we were looking forward to a good night with everything sounding good and working well. And so it proved in Set 1. We played a good hour and it all worked very well good sound and few mistakes – an exception to the smooth run was Dave losing his voice in “Nights in White Satin”, but it still got a very good round of applause. We got some waltzers up in “3 Times a Lady” and that started the dancing. This audience likes a good mix of slowies with the medies and fasties! Took a bit of a break while Dave and Dan worked the room and I fiddled with the PA, then we went on for what we thought would be about half hour of set 2 – starting with “Walk Don’t Wipe Out” which went really well. Steve, Michele and Harriet arrived at this point and we got a lot of people up and dancing. The set was running a bit manic and there were odd problems creeping in, but we got a good reception. Did “Amazed” which was a bit untogether. The raffle guy didn’t turn up at 10:30pm as planned so we just played on with increasing verve right through the rock’n’roll – about an hour again! Also, the PA had started to deteriorate. I could detect a bit of distortion on the intense sections and although I tried to adjust equalisation and reverb settings, I couldn’t nail it. Michele danced with Derek right thru the Rock’nRoll and she was fairly hot when I greeted her at the end. Steve reported that Dave’s mic was toppy and too reverberant, so I made a few tweaks for set 3. We got underway with the usual sort of stuff but it was quite late and it took a bit of effort to get the dancers going. The main trouble was the increasing distortion on the PA. I can only put this down to the mixer, enhancer or power amp, and I’m looking forward to getting it changed out and getting an easier life! Anyway we had gone down very well, the guvnor was delighted (and slipped us a bit of extra money) and Dave looks well set to take some gigs for next year. Got underway about 1am and home for 2:30am on a cool but clear night. PS I found the Hi Freq knobs on the PA Enhancer were not where I expected and in the dark on the night I was tweaking the wrong one - may have accounted for the bad sound in set 3?