Legendary British blues singer Joe Cocker is currently touring Europe using a Sennheiser e935 wired mic for his mighty vocals.

Front of House engineer Chris Madden is the man behind the decision. He joined the Joe Cocker team on a permanent basis this summer and planned on bringing his selection of Sennheiser microphones on the first leg of the tour over eleven weeks of European festivals. Sadly, circumstances dictated otherwise.

"I went in with a whole kit of SKM935s," explains Madden, "and wanted to carry a front of house rack and a wireless monitor system with us. We set the whole thing up, but then found it wouldn't fit on the private plane we were touring in, because we had really strict weight demands. So we had to use what was already at all the festivals." Thankfully, for the second leg of the tour that began at the end of September, Madden was able to bring his own choice of microphones.

"At the start of the production rehearsals for the second leg I swapped to e935s," he continues. "There are ten of them on stage in total. None of them are wired. We put Joe's in the stand at the beginning of the show and he never touches it. He just sings into it. There's no point of having a wireless version of it. It's one less thing to worry about. We plug them in and we know they're going to work."

Despite Cocker having used other manufacturers' mics for many years, Madden insists that the switch to Sennheiser has been seamless.

"I've used the 935 for a while," he explains. "For starters, they sound good. I think the top end is the closest I've heard to a condenser from a dynamic mic. It doesn't matter who I put in front of them, they always sound good. They're robust and very smooth sounding. The mic Joe was using was fine, but it was a bit crunchy. When you've got someone with a voice like Joe's, which is gravely in a good way, and you then put that voice through a mic that's crunchy, it can become a bit much. I couldn't hear what he was saying sometimes. Now, with something slightly cleaner, I'm getting a killer vocal sound every night.