Europe - Drummer turned audio engineer Ross Rothero-Bourge heads up live mixing for The UK Drum Show and The Europe Drum Show, the music festival-meets-trade shows held in Liverpool and Friedrichshafen. He is also head studio engineer at Cube Recording in Cornwall.
Most recently, he’s been on tour with Phil Campbell and the Bastard Sons. Ross has also worked with Tom Meighan, co-founder of high-energy British rockers Kasabian. His microphones of choice are the Audix D6 and D6X on kick and bass-centric sources, SCX25A as drum overheads, the OM7 handheld as vocal mic, and the PDX720 and PDX520 as versatile studio workhorses.
“I’ve just been out on the road with Phil Campbell, the guitarist from Motörhead,” says Ross. “Even after all these years, Phil has that unmistakable rock’n’roll presence, and the fans were loving every second of it. Partway through my first show with them, I was worried it might have been too loud, but I suddenly remembered that Motörhead held the world record for the loudest concert. That gave me an excuse to turn things up a bit.”
Ross uses the D6 for the Bastard Sons’ kick drum sound, but has recently been intrigued by the new D6X. “I am forever a D6 guy on kick; I have six of them,” he says. “I have a couple of D6X mics now.
Above the drum kit on the live stage, Bourge put a pair of Audix SCX25A. “I had problems with stage bleed using several other overhead mics,” explains Ross. “The SCX25A were recommended to me by some other very good engineers, so I decided to take a punt with them. They’ve performed much better in this regard. They picked up the kit extremely honestly.”
“On vocals, I have the whole band on the OM7s now,” says Ross. “They’re designed to reject off-axis and unwanted signals on loud stages, and they do so well.”