EAW MicroWedge Stage Monitors at Coachella

The three-day Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival annually attracts crowds of up to 70,000 a day to see more than 180 international artists perform on six stages at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, in the California desert. To meet the requirements of the artists performing on the stages in the Mojave and Gobi tents, Rat Sound, the production sound provider for the Coachella Festival for the past 11 years, this year supplied two complete systems comprising a total of 28 EAW MicroWedge12 (MW12) stage monitors.

"We provide the artists with what they want rather than what we think they should have, and we offer three premium monitor systems," stated Dave Rat, Rat Sound Systems founder and co-developer of the MicroWedge line with EAW. "The sound quality, volume level and feedback stability of the MicroWedge are exceptional and meet or exceed the competing products."

Some of the artists appearing on the Mojave and Gobi stages and benefiting from the EAW MicroWedges included Monarchy, Raphael Saadiq, Neon Trees, Boys Noize, Steve Angello, Bloody Beetroots, and many, many others. "Paul van Dyk used two MicroWedge12's on tripods, with six more behind him configured as a subwoofer," added Rat.

Cage the Elephant, performing on the Outdoor Theatre stage at Coachella this year, made use of their own MicroWedge12, MicroWedge15 and MicroSub monitors. Space is at a premium for the band, which has been touring with just a bus and a trailer, according to monitor engineer Jay Rigby. "The wedges I had out before were about 150lbs apiece and I had four amp racks. The same package with MicroWedges is one compact amp rack and the wedges are less than half the weight. The stagehands love them because they're so light that you can pick two of them up, one in either hand."

More importantly, he said, "I was able to get the SPL out of them that I needed with drums and vocals right off the bat." There is certainly plenty of gain before feedback, as he reported: "I got my dB meter out the other day and in front of a pair of MW15s it was 115dB, A-weighted. That's somewhere between spaceship and Armageddon levels."

Rigby has been enjoying a number of MicroWedge features as the band's tour has progressed. "The cool thing that I like is the three different processor settings," he said. The White setting offers a flat response, Gray introduces some high frequency roll-off and Blue is custom tailored to allow maximum SPL when the wedges are placed near vocal microphones. "I'm using the Gray, with a little bit of graphic EQ on it to get the tonality that I need. But the Gray gave me a bit more of the high end I needed to get the vocals on top of everything else."

"Another advantage of the MicroWedges is that they are so compact and low profile", he continued. "Our lead singer runs around the stage a lot, so it's great having these low-profile wedges; it gives him a lot more room to move around downstage." Also useful, he said, are the MicroLegs, which allow a wedge to be tilted for broader stage coverage. "Because our lead singer is all over the place I need to be able to get the wedges propped up so they're shooting more across the stage. The legs just screw right in and-done. That's a really cool feature."