Opened for Five Finger Death Punch on Saturday

Sidivan

Fractal Fanatic
Saturday was insane.

10am: Phone rings. An offer on our house came in and the buyer gave us asking price. Holy crap. Commence frantic reading, signing, etc...

11am: Packing up the car to meet at our bass player's house, which is where the trailer is. Upon arrival, I see the other guitarist (Chris) practicing his pick throw in the driveway. "I have to be able to make it to at least the second row!"

1pm: Arrival at the venue, which is the Red River Valley Fair grandstand. The stage is HUGE. We brought 2 roadies with us, but the fair provided 3 more to load our stuff out. The next hour or so is spent getting gear where it needs to be, making sure we have everything, getting merch setup, etc...

2pm: FFDP soundcheck. Awesome.

2:30pm: Get all of our stuff setup and are chatting with FFDP's soundguys, who are super cool. Their guitar techs shot the shit with us and Chris mentioned that he plays a BC Rich Zoltan Sig. He pulls the guitar out and the tech starts running down all the good/bad things about the guitar and offers to work on it! He replaced a knob, made some adjustments... awesome.



I'm going to stop the timestamp format because I don't really know. It's time to soundcheck and everything sounds monstrous. We're all running in-ears off our board, but they gave us a couple powered monitors as Chris likes a wedge "just in case" and our drummer likes to feel her kick drum. Afterwards, I'm standing around talking shop with Jason Hook's guitar tech and I asked him how he likes the Axe FX II. Hook really likes it, but he just got endorsed by Marshall, so he has to switch for live use. I asked if I could look at his patches and he said yes! I paused for a moment expecting him to give me a little tour and he just said, "go ahead".

I jumped in front of the Axe FX and started checking it out. He's running firmware 11.x, using the Brit 800 amp with factory cab 125 (a v9 cab!). The layout is super simple, just drv->amp->cab without any fancy advanced parameter adjustments. In hindsight, I should've snapped a couple photos, but it was just so simple I figured it wasn't worth it.

Doors open and literally people are running in to the front of the stage... and they don't stop. Hundreds.. then thousands... people everywhere. Backstage, FFDP is chatting with us and they're super-cool guys. Zoltan signed Chris' guitar. We're telling them how we appreciate being on this bill with them and whatnot. Their monitor guy jokingly says, "there's a lot of people out there. Don't f**k it up!" and we all have a good laugh.

Right before showtime, we look out and there is a sea of people. I can tell the whole band is on edge, so we have a little powwow to work out the nerves. We're hanging in the wings of the stage when the radio guys take the stage and introduce us.

Four hits of the hi-hat and we explode on stage. I close my eyes until the first chorus, the monitor guy's words ringing in my head "Don't f**k it up". I finally look out and there are 15,000 people pumping their fist to a song we haven't released yet. I want to scream in celebration. After the first song, the crowd is going crazy and it's so loud I have to turn my in-ears up.

We tore that stage up. About 4 songs in, I look to the left and FFDP is standing there watching, heads bopping to the groove. This is when my MFC decides it's not going to communicate with the Axe FX anymore. I've been having this intermittent problem ever since a drunk guy accidentally ripped my ethernet cable out at a gig. I had the MFC fixed by fractal, but apparently there's a problem with the cable, or maybe the jack on the back of the Axe FX. I can't imagine it would be the Axe FX since I have a rack panel in front. I purposely did not use the rack input for this gig to minimize this risk.

Luckily, I've dealt with this before. What happens is the lights change on the MFC, but if the light is on, you have to hit it again to actually make the change on the Axe FX side. I played 1/2 the solo to one song with the synth block on, but I sold it like it was supposed to be that way!

Partial view from stage:


Afterwards, Jason Hook stops me and asks, "Hey, what was that flute sound you used for that solo?" and I explained the patch to him and gave him some tips on working with the synth block. I was stunned!



Ivan Moody stopped us backstage and told us that the last song we played is absolutely a radio hit and he swears up and down that we're getting radio play all over Denver. I need to check into that.

The whole experience was surreal. Our social media is blowing up. The best part? This is our home town, so these new fans are local. That's huge.
 
If you are going to be doing gigs like this you need redundancy, as in a complete back-up rig, soup to nuts. I have one for much smaller gigs. I was a roadie for four years for a signed band, stuff breaks when it is handled constantly.
 
Sounds like an EPIC weekend in all regards! Use some of that profit from the house sale to get an XL with a FAS-LINK connector and a MkIII MFC maybe? :)
 
If you are going to be doing gigs like this you need redundancy, as in a complete back-up rig, soup to nuts. I have one for much smaller gigs. I was a roadie for four years for a signed band, stuff breaks when it is handled constantly.

I think it's the cable. I've got a FAS-Link adaptor and some cables from Best-Tronics on their way for some testing.

This is definitely not the normal gig for us, so full backup rigs are a wee bit out of our means right now. That is the plan, however. The thing is, it worked perfectly right up until that solo. I unplugged it and plugged it back in and it worked fine after that.
 
Great story Sid
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I think it's the cable. I've got a FAS-Link adaptor and some cables from Best-Tronics on their way for some testing.

This is definitely not the normal gig for us, so full backup rigs are a wee bit out of our means right now. That is the plan, however. The thing is, it worked perfectly right up until that solo. I unplugged it and plugged it back in and it worked fine after that.

A band is a business. Like any successful business, to grow you have to spend money.

Reliability is the most important feature of any business. Think about it; the reason we all have settled into using a specific plumber, electrician, landscaper or carpenter is because we can rely on them, not because they are the bestiest in the universe.
 
I think it's the cable. I've got a FAS-Link adaptor and some cables from Best-Tronics on their way for some testing.

This is definitely not the normal gig for us, so full backup rigs are a wee bit out of our means right now. That is the plan, however. The thing is, it worked perfectly right up until that solo. I unplugged it and plugged it back in and it worked fine after that.

You sold it is the important part! Congrats man!
 
A band is a business. Like any successful business, to grow you have to spend money.

Reliability is the most important feature of any business. Think about it; the reason we all have settled into using a specific plumber, electrician, landscaper or carpenter is because we can rely on them, not because they are the bestiest in the universe.

Did you miss the part where he said that the plan is to get backups?
 
you can also get a 7 pin midi cable and use the mfc adapter to send phantom power to the mfc. might be worth having around just in case.
 
That's insanely cool! FFDP fuggin ROCKZ IT!

After hearing y'alls tunes I can only imagine what a badass show that was. Would LOVE to have that experience. Congrats man.
 
Very cool congrats,I think I was just excited as you while I was reading your thread :encouragement:
 
Sounded like a fun gig!

I have had the same MFC with ethernet problem usually once a night. Different and shorter cables havent helped.
 
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