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Well... I do a bit of this stuff, showing up in strange halls with about a half an hour to get set up and then get out of the way. I always wondered about the whole Decca Tree approach, until I realized that a real Decca Tree is like the size of a surfboard. So I put together a custom ORTF holder with a 12" bar of angle-aluminum and two Oktava 012's, and it sits high atop a pole hanging from a shockmount. It's not invisible, but it's just one slender pole.
So in a couple of minutes, I can get it up in the air, string the XLR's over to my Rolling Rack, and I'm good to go--if there was some reason I couldn't set up anything else, this would do the job. I'd think that if your Tree was somehow all put together and you could just carry it in, boom, it's up, the crowd would be mighty impressed with your preparation and thoroughness. You probably have some idea of how the levels ought to be set, and if you didn't I would guess, oh, at around 7 on the dial (out of 10)? If there's no sound check, I just listen through the mics and hike the gain until the audience murmuring sounds like a nice background murmur. And sit there poised with my fingers on the dials in case the first sound is some massive orchestra hit.
Someday I'll try to attach a pic of my Rolling Rack: Stanley toolchest on wheels with an Alesis HD-24, pres and compressors, Allen & Heath Mixwizard for monitoring... great to have everything all plugged in from the start.
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