Eddie DiBona takes only a second to explain why he jumped from a regular hotel and casino gig to the land of self-employment. “They exploded The Sands?”, he answers with a laugh. “No, I’m kidding.”
Turns out DiBona, who had spent 13 years at the Claridge Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, N.J., and his partner John Grasso, who was the lead audio engineer at the Sands Resort & Casino, started ACIR Pro as a backline rental company six years ago because they saw a prime opportunity.
“All of the backline in Atlantic City was coming out of northeast Philadelphia and New York City,” DiBona says. “We were techs on the ground, and every time a keyboard went down it took three hours to get another one. That was the concept we started with, just backline.” It helped that he and Grasso knew the city, what people needed there and they knew they could provide faster service.
Serving the East Coast
For the first couple of years, DiBona recalls, he would drive around in a minivan with a drum kit and a bass amp. Then a client asked about sound, another asked about lighting and then a request for an installation consultation came in. So, ACIR Pro now serves clients in Atlantic City, New York and Washington, D.C., providing a wide array of services.
Of course, DiBona and Grasso had early challenges that included getting the money together to purchase gear and then proving themselves to a tough client base. “The first real challenge was getting people to trust us,” he says. “They would say to us, ‘Yeah, you’re great techs, but can you run a backline company?’”
Their first shows were in the Copa Room at The Sands, and then the calls started to come in and the company began to boom. “It wasn’t that slick, we just tried to do a good job, keep good gear and keep it up,” DiBona reports. “At this point, I guess I’m just along for the ride. What a difference a day makes, as the song goes.”
Moving Into Audio
The impetus to move into audio started somewhere in 2005, but took off as soon as new partner Tom Young joined in 2006. “John and I have strong audio backgrounds, so people would ask us to cover the audio side of the job, too,” DiBona says. “We partnered with other companies for a while, but then we decided to invest in our own gear. Right about then Tom Young came into the picture and he really wanted to make our audio presence stronger.”
Young (who won the Parnelli Award for FOH mixer of the year in 2007) brought with him a long history with some of the top names in the music business, including Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra. He knew that ACIR Pro had to upgrade the inventory of audio gear. On the console side of things, ACIR Pro invested in a collection of Yamaha consoles that includes a LS9, M7 as well as a PM5D.
DiBona says that Yamaha was picked for a simple reason: “They have a support network, a track record and engineers are familiar with them,” he says. “That’s really important as a rental house because as soon as I say M7 or 5D then my job is done. We looked at Digidesign and a couple of other manufacturers, but with the 5D, everything is in the case. I don’t have to get a sidecar or an input bank. We liked that.”
ACIR Pro’s main line array includes d&b audiotechnik Q1 loudspeakers. “For us, the Q1 is the Swiss Army knife of sound systems because you can ground-stack it or rig it, fly it or put it on a stick,” DiBona explains. “It was a little more money, but it has been valuable when we do shows in places where there typically aren’t shows.” The company’s second array is from WorxAudio Technologies and the inventory includes Meyer UPA boxes.
The move into lighting and video came for the same reason — clients were asking for it. “We had been subbing it out, but we were having problems,” DiBona recalls. “We figured that we could get lights and screw it up as good as the next guy, so we brought in a fourth guy by the name of Ron Farino, who runs that department for us. It’s just more service to offer a client. Especially the lighting, we found it really hard to find a reliable company that wouldn’t try to steal the clients.”
A Natural Extension
DiBona, Grasso and Young, all touring engineers who have seen an incredible variety of rooms around the world, figured that installations were a natural extension of the business. “We’ve been in a lot of rooms, tuned a lot of sound systems, and we know gear,” DiBona says. “Also, when we became dealers of some of this gear it just became a natural extension. We have the product to offer, we can support it and we can train people how to use it. We have a lot of combined experience between the three of us. I mean, you’re not going to come up with many situations that we haven’t seen at least once. That’s the greatest thing about having partners. Now I have those guys to bounce stuff off of and it makes it a lot easier.”
The partnership also contributes to the company’s dedication to customer service, since DiBona points out that each of them are available practically 24/7. “If I’m up then my cell phone is on,” he says. “Anybody can get me at 7:30 on a Saturday night right before a show if something won’t boot. We know what it’s like to be the guy whose job is on the line when shit isn’t working.”
That dedication, he believes, is what’s kept them in business while facing competition from some bigger companies. “We were like the David and Goliath story when we started,” DiBona admits. “But we survived that by doing a good job for people and by caring. That goes a long way, no matter what you do. Our clients know we care and we’ll do whatever we can.”
