Gert Sanner Wraps Up Successful Deep Purple Tour With Soundcraft Vi6

On a recent trip to the Soundcraft Studer factory in Potters Bar, Deep Purple FOH man Gert Sanner, talked about the recent Deep Purple tours of Japan and Russia and his experience with the Soundcraft Vi6.

That region is a strong heartland for the UK rockers, as the tour took in 12 shows in venues of 5,000 and above including Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Osaka and Nagoya – some of the same venues that played host to the recording of the band’s most famous album, Made in Japan, some 37 years earlier!

“The whole thing was a great success,” says Gert. “Purple has a huge following out there so the band likes to revisit their fans as often as is practical for everyone.

“This is my second tour with the Vi6, and I plan to keep using it,” he continued. “It’s compact and so easy to use with the Vistonics shared with the Studer range, it’s the best user interface for fast reaction gigs like ours in the business. Purple don’t use a set list, so I have to be on my toes all the time ready to make adjustments in a split second, the Vi allows me to do that.”

“There was a special moment in the 2nd Tokyo gig, when I had the biggest surprise, we’d just started ‘Perfect Strangers ’ and, unannounced, Jon Lord walked on stage and started playing keyboards, it all seemed a bit Spinal Tap mixed with Still Crazy, I certainly had to react fast to that!”

The Soundcraft Vi6 and Vi4 have found favour with many high profile global tours this year as well as prestigious theatre and performance venue installations including Benaroya Hall in Seattle, The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and The Turin Royal Theatre (a full list is available on www.soundcraft.com.

“I enjoy using the Vi6,” continued Gert. “We hired the desk for the Japanese leg of the tour from Hibino, I took my show file from the European leg and loaded all the settings from the USB into the Vi6 in minutes, this saves two to three precious hours of setup time. Most nights I used 32 inputs, which is only about a third of the Vi6’s capacity and four of the eight Lexicons and onboard processing, which means I need no external outboard racks keeping the footprint compact and the weight right down.”

You can meet Gert and learn more about his travels and the Vi Series at Soundcraft, date and details yet to be announced.