I like to give myself at least an hour at a live show to get my rig set up and tested, adjusted, etc. I’ve done this enough that I can do most of it in my sleep, and the different gear arrangements that I make from set to set don’t phase me. I’ve also compiled a ton of little tricks to make it all much easier on myself. One of the bigger tricks I’ve embraced is to have mg studio setup and my live setup as closely the same as possible, but that’s probably a different story for a different thread.
If I can have two hours that’s much more comfortable, but I also generally bring along some visual component to set up as well. And you got it, all of my audio is being sent through my board on a stereo mix that’s then going to the house system.
The entire thing is pretty modular itself; for instance most of the gear is already connected for audio and power and placed on a pedalboard that’s removed from a case and then just plugged in, and so forth. And, as illustrated in the Cś-L situation outlined above, a big part of what I do is working around shit that doesn’t want to work once I get it set up, or that is not working as planned, for better or worse. Much of what I do is very heavily improvised, so I just look at this as part of the puzzle that I must work through, and I’ve gotten quite good at it over the years. It’s also something of a justification to bring more gear and more voices I suppose. . .
Lastly, I perform from the floor instead of from the stage, and a large part of this is due simply to the setup/breakdown concerns.
