Newton works for blues rock powerhouse
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Bonamassa spends a great deal of time on the road and plays a wide range of venues, from large outdoor spaces to venues such as London’s Royal Albert Hall, to ‘blues cruises’ on ships and even club dates in Liverpool’s Cavern Club, presenting a continuous range of challenges to his sound crew.
Michael reports, “The Newton has replaced multiple other units, both in my drive rack at FOH and in amp racks, to accomplish all the same processes in a 1RU rack device. The functionality and I/O in such a small package is seriously impressive
“Given the vast amount of I/O per Newton and tools available on each output it made the Royal Albert Hall, normally a challenging venue, a breeze. I was able to drive and control every subsystem individually from one Newton at FOH that we travelled with. Whether it’s our normal tour rig, or dealing with a house rig, there hasn’t been a scenario yet where Newton wasn’t the correct tool for the gig.”
In addition to himself, Bonamassa’s seven-piece band features a second guitarist, drummer, bassist, keys, plus two backing vocalists and Newton’s facilities help Michael to deal with the line-up: “Not just for Joe, but other gigs as well. The layers of EQ and variety of tools available on each output keep my FOH engineer, as well as occasional guest engineers and bands, happy if different tunings are required, but also keep my artist comfortable on stage. The WFIR filters are very neutral sounding and transparent. There’s no audible or measurable colouration other than the EQ being applied.
“All my overall system optimisation is done inside of Newton with a combination of the WFIR filters, IIR, All-Pass filters, level control and delay.”
