A couple of Decembers ago, I remember loading in for a club gig. The club manager was not happy with the necessary evil of loading in the production gear through a side door, not because of the choice of entrance, but because it took a half hour to complete the task.
Now look at the situation from the club owner’s standpoint. Your few dozen ins and outs hauling gear have just cooled down the venue to the point where customers are putting on jackets and complaining about the room temperature. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that cold beer won’t sell to cold customers. So, to summarize the lesson learned, find ways to minimize your load-in and load-out time to keep the venue environment under control.
Options
Option number one is to hire a platoon of roadies for a short period of time to expedite load-in, setup and get them off the clock until load-out. Usually not a wise choice, as it will cost you in wages and adult beverages after the hire. If you are talking about a C-rig in a medium club scenario you can barely afford yourself, let alone extra grunt labor for the ins and outs.
To me, the obvious choice is to reduce the number of ins and outs of production. This usually means consolidating production gear into cases and trunks, all with wheels (usually four-inch castors) and moving them in haste when all packed up. To execute the strategy, the milk crates and plastic tubs need to be replaced with road-grade trunks and cases.
Case-Up
Choosing road cases used to be a “DIY” affair, but today there are so many good manufacturers that a quick browse through the EPD web directory will bring many qualified sources and competitive prices. A lot of sound companies still multitask as road case companies, and that practical dual expertise results in cases with just the right amount of ruggedness for the burdens of years of transportation.
While the road-case makers will want to pitch you their versions of “standard” tour grade cases, I still want to know the construction details just to ease my mind. Nothing sells better than a few well-shot pictures of unloaded trunks and cases to indicate the level of quality being marketed. My story of woe is ordering a costly console case and asking for the usual floating doghouse requirement to absorb shocks to the console from the bumps on the road. Unfortunately, the road case provider did not understand that bolting the doghouse to the external case shell basically defeats the foam rubber surrounding the doghouse. So, scrutinize your case providers.
My club C-rig has as much cases and trunks as I can get the system down to. I have three cable trunks for AC cables, speaker cables, mic stands, audio snakes, sub-snakes and XLR patches. Add to this a pair of amp racks for monitor and mains duty, a FOH outboard rack, a monitor beach EQ rack and console cases for FOH and monitor consoles. Short of dealing with speakers and stage lighting, everything else is on casters.
For me, the big concern is the weight-to-durability ratio when choosing casing. Traditionally, tour-grade cases was half-inch plywood with laminate out surfaces, which made for heavy but robust cases. Today, several case/trunk makers are choosing 3/8” plywood under laminate, with the hope that the lighter weight will allow the case to hold together and save on fuel costs. Make sure your supplier can prove to you that its thinner cases will still hold together by using quality aluminum extrusions, riveting and design practices.
My color choice for cases is still basic black, not only for tradition, but because black hides well off-stage so the audience’s focus remains on the performers. Keeping with tradition, I created a tagboard stencil and use white spray paint to logo my cases. But don’t get too exuberant on stenciling, as show managers for corporate gigs likely do not want your name peeking out of the side-stage sightlines to the audience. That is why my stenciling is confined to topside surfaces and my brand stickers stay bottom-side or confined to my Anvil briefcase. This may be common sense to most of you, but it bears repeating to those thinking that a rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle trumps corporate fashion sense.
Size Counts
When choosing case sizes, I look at it from a “me-myself-and-I” perspective. If I can’t maneuver a trunk or case up a couple of steps by myself, then I have chosen too large a case or trunk. My current trunk size is about 4’-by-2’-by-2’ high, and when fully loaded is about the maximum I care to hump around by myself in most club gigs. While I can hire or persuade a friend to do two-man lifting on my trunks and cases under more difficult in and out environments, the more I can hump by myself, the better the overall situation.
My 20-space FOH outboard rack is another beastly case that could be cut down into two smaller cases. The idea is nice, but I see many cases from other soundcos without casters, and one man handling a heavy 10-space rackcase without wheels is not my idea of safe lifting. But, occasionally, I do need to maneuver a steep staircase gig, so I have a “plan B” with a four-space outboard effects case when the 20-space beast is reasonable. My final words of wisdom: Always think about how to make load-ins and load-outs easier.
