When i do guitar and vocal only gigs with BB, (rare, but I do them sometimes) I use a heavy steel black music stand for the laptop.

Now listen up.

To keep the music stand solid and steady, I first removed the rack from the pole and the three-footed base and dropped a free weight over the pole. About 20lbs IIRC. This puts a low CG on the stand and turns the whole thing into a "dweeble toy" should it get bumped. It would take a very hard bump to knock it all the way over.

Then I put the rack back on the Music Stand, and open the laptop up FLAT.

I use two small black bungee cords to hold the laptop to the rack of the stand like that. Both wrap completely around laptop and stand rack and are right in the middle of the laptop where the hinge is opened flat. They don't get in the way at all, being two of those thin bungees, not the big thick motorcycle type. i use two for the sake of redundancy. Should one come loose... (Although that's never happened to date and this rig is going on six years old.)

The keyboard and touchpad are easily accessible "in the vertical" like that for selecting BB songs, running the Conductor, etc. (I also use a two button USB programmable footswitch with this rig, set to do two critical BB commands. Play is one of 'em. The other is usually set to Repeat Choruses using the Conductor.)

For those gigs, I don't take the big mixer as I don't need all of that. I use a teeny tiny Behringer UB802 (now discontinued but they have one this size in the new series) to connect up to two mics and three line inputs. Typically I use only one Line Input, from the earphone jack of the laptop, but occasionall I don't want to lug a guitar amp and use another line input for a hardware guitar amp sim like the Digidesign pedalboard or the old and might Johnson J-Station.

The top of the laptop screen sticks up above the top edge of the stand somewhat, but not a kill with the right height stool.

Most people think its just a Music Stand, as it turns out, they are very surprised when they find out that there's a laptop on the other side of it.

Cost. Effective.

And it works.


--Mac

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