BUENA PARK, Calif. — Surrounded by a stunning stage show that included five huge video screens and six pillars with stage lights that rose and fell all night, one night in late summer 2007 Sting and band mates Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers took to the stage at Madison Square Garden with front-of-house engineer R. Michael Keating controlling house sound using a Yamaha PM5000 analog console. Ian Newton used a Yamaha PM1D at monitors and Kirk Shreiner used a Yamaha PM5D for opening act Fiction Plane (vocalist/guitarist Joe Sumner, Sting's son). Clair Brothers, of Lititz, Pennsylvania, handled worldwide tour production. The shows may be over for now, but The Police Reunion tour was certainly a highlight of the 2007 concert season.

Ian Newton

When I found out I was going to mix Fiction Plane the Yamaha PM5D was my first choice," Shreiner states. "One of the things I really like about the console is that you can patch your split in the back of the console and don't need a rack to go with it to get your inputs into the console." Schreiner uses a PM5D console on the Maroon 5 tour.

Front of house engineer Keating said there's no room for digital desks in his "old school" world and chose the Yamaha PM5000 analog console for several reasons. "I have always been a fan and user of Yamaha consoles since the late 70s when, while working with local club bands, I purchased a PM1000 24-channel board; we were living large! Reliability has always been foremost in my priorities for sound equipment since I don't deal well with gear that doesn't work all day, every day. I used a PM4000 for years without ever having a problem, so when the PM5000 came out, I loved the sound of the mic pre amps – great sounding console, recall, and the time-tested reliability of Yamaha."

As far as the PA, Keating says the system they used was a bit of a hybrid, "taking the best of the old and the best of the new," and combined the age old sound of the Clair Brothers S4 sub low boxes (72 when the show was in a stadium) with the clarity and precision of the Clair Brothers I-4 line array (80 in stadiums) powered by QSC and Crest power amps. Four delay speaker towers with Clair Brothers R4s x 8 were used, and all processing for the PA was handled by Clair/Lake IOs with TC 1128 EQ inserted on L & R of the Yamaha PM5000 console.

R. Michael Keating

Outboard gear included Lexicon 480L, PCM 70, 90, 91, TC 2290, TC Voice Works Harmonizer, TC Voice Doubler, five Distressor EL8 compressors on vocals, bass and kick; Manley EL OP Stereo comps on bass and Tarus Pedals. The tour's microphone arsenal consisted of Sennheiser 865 vocal mics, Shure Beta 52 on the kick drum and percussion gong drum, a Shure SM 57 on top snare, Neumann KM184 on snare bottom, hi hat, splash cymbals and percussion, AT 4050 on overheads and guitars, and Beyer OPUS 87 and 88 were used on toms.

For more information about Yamaha live sound consoles, write Yamaha Commercial Audio Systems, Inc., 6600 Orangethorpe Avenue, Buena Park, CA 90620; telephone 714-522-9011; e-mail casales@yamaha.com; or visit www.yamahaca.com.