David Gilmour Takes Turbosound on Tour

	Photo: JimiG Photography

Pink Floyd front man David Gilmour recently celebrated his 60th birthday with a number-one solo album, On An Island, and a tour of Europe and the United States. Both legs of the tour utilized Turbosound Aspect modular point source loudspeaker systems, which were supplied by Britannia Row for the European leg, and Rat Sound for the U.S. shows.

"David didn't particularly like line arrays, so that does narrow it down these days," comments front-of-house mixer Colin Norfield, who engineered Gilmour's last solo acoustic outing, in 2001-2002, and shared mixing duties on Pink Floyd's last tour, promoting The Division Bell. "We used [Turbosound] Flashlight on the Floyd tour in '94. David had heard good reports about Aspect, so we went and did an A-B-C comparison between Flashlight, Floodlight and Aspect, and Aspect seemed to be just what we were after."

Gilmour's recent nationwide U.S. tour carried 24 pairs of Turbosound TA-890H mid-high/TA-890L bass boxes, supplied, together with Turbosound TFM-450 monitor wedges, by Rat Sound of Oxnard, California. Pennsylvania-based Bauder Audio provided additional Turbosound systems, including TFM-420 wedges for some of the band members, including special guest vocalists David Crosby and Graham Nash, plus compact, full range, self-powered TQ-308SP units for audience front fill. A number of Turbosound TSW-218 subwoofers were also brought in for the final show, at the Gibson Amphitheatre at Universal CityWalk in Los Angeles, the largest venue on the U.S. tour.

According to Sennheiser USA Turbosound product manager Paul Giansante, who provided factory support on the U.S. leg, the Aspect system provided excellent vertical and horizontal coverage in every venue on the 18-day tour. "Being a completely scaleable system, it's proven to be very versatile and very effective. Because of the intuitive nature of a virtual point-source system, it's really as simple as pointing the boxes where you want the sound to go. With the very tight and well-controlled pattern on the box you're able to prevent an awful lot of unwanted reflections. And as it's so well defined, it's very, very predictable."

The Aspect TA-890H three-way, mid/high box offers a 25° vertical by 15° horizontal dispersion pattern. The mid-high section may be rotated through 90°, allowing the rectangular cabinet to be oriented vertically or horizontally as required.

The compact nature of the Aspect system allowed Brit Row system tech Aron Ross, who stayed with the tour for the U.S. leg, to fly the system very quickly at each venue. And, as Giansante reports, it is lightweight enough to fly nine boxes from a single one-ton hoist. "It takes Aron about ten minutes to fly a cluster with one stagehand. Most of the rigging for the boxes is self-contained. The flybar packs into a flightcase. You can go four-wide with two points or three-wide with one point out of one case. It's a very well packaged virtual point source system."

Gilmour's third solo album On An Island, his first for 22 years, went to number one after its release on March 8th. The touring band included his Pink Floyd band mate, keyboardist Rick Wright, as well as Roxy Music guitarist Phil Manzanera, who co-produced the new album. The tour featured material from On An Island as well as an extensive set of Pink Floyd songs, some of which had not been played live for decades. The tour returned to Europe after the U.S., where Gilmour played a series of shows at London's Royal Albert Hall in late May that included a guest appearance by David Bowie. You can read all about the tour in the June issue of Lighting&Sound America.