30 years after the debut album, 8 years after the last tour, Squeeze have been playing their first live shows of this century in the UK.  Supported by NEXO GEO tangent-array PA systems supplied by SSE Audio Group, the band has sold out mid-sized venues throughout the UK before stepping up to the 5,000-seat high-profile clubs for their final dates.

Squeeze was of course one of the biggest British bands of the late 70s/early 80s, showcasing the songwriting talents of Chris Difford and Glen Tilbrook.  Together again to promote a Greatest Hits album release, the duo are joined on stage by John Bentley, Simon Hansen and Stephen Large.

At front-of-house, engineer Tom Wiggans and system tech Chris Snow watch over a NEXO GEO Series inventory which has changed its components as the band has moved into the larger venues.  In the early stages of the tour, when the shows were playing in civic halls and theatres, Wiggans was working with NEXO's newly-released GEO S12 Series, one of the first engineers to do so in a sizeable live concert application.

"SSE had already tried out the new S1230 cabinets as infill for larger GEO T rigs," explains Wiggans, "and, in this role, they are absolutely superb.  For the first part of this tour, we found them invaluable because they fly really well, and are very quick to put up, but they are also very happy to be ground-stacked.  In some of the smaller venues, where you can't fly anything too heavy, we were able to split the 12-box hangs and that worked incredibly well."  Wiggans points to another touring bonus with the new S12 Series, namely that only 8 of CAMCO's Vortex 6 amplifiers were need to run the whole system - 2 hangs of 12 GEO S12 enclosures, plus 8x CD18 subs.

For the closing shows of the tour, in London, Manchester, Liverpool and Dublin, SSE has swapped the GEO S12s for NEXO's flagship GEO T cabinets, giving Tom Wiggans his first opportunity to mix the system loaded with the new NXStream management software.

"I liked GEO T before," says Tom, "I love it now, with NXStream.  It's much easier to time align, and the new software has delivered a massive improvement in the low end, addressing what might be called a grey area between the CD18 subs and the GEO T modules.

"A characteristic of NEXO systems is that you can make a tiny adjustment and really hear what you've done, immediately, even in big boomy arenas.  With GEO T, I can listen to my left and right buss through headphones, take them off and hear exactly the same thing from the arrays in front of me."

At front-of-house, Tom Wiggans was piloting a VENUE system, incorporating the main D-Show work surface and Sidecar extender.

His first experience with the desk came while looking after a Pro Tools HD system for FOH engineer Davey Cooper on the Manic Street Preachers tour at the beginning of he year. As a result, he requested VENUE for the Squeeze tour and purchased his own Pro Tools HD system to complement the remainder of this production, which was supplied by SSE Hire.

He says that the Pro Tools TDM plug-in support was the main reason for switching to VENUE. "I wanted to reduce the amount of outboard - also if it's a plug-in, you don't have to worry about power supplies overheating." Wiggans is also making extensive use of the McDSP plug-ins, especially the MC2000 multi-band compressor which he loves.

"And the desk sounds so neutral, I can use the plug-ins to create any vintage sounds I need."

He says that, having recently undertaken a small venue tour with Paul Heaton using an analogue board, he had immediately been attracted by the weight advantages of the digital system. "I have now realised how heavy outboard equipment is when you have to carry it out of the van every day, compared to loading a plug-in and carrying my iLok key.

Tom uses the virtual soundcheck facility to tune plug-ins as it gives him a lot more scope to experiment with different settings and sounds. "If something is concerning you, it's always good when soundcheck is over to be able to go back and check the individual parts, rather than get the band to hang around for longer than they need to."