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All Wet

All Wet

I learned the hard way to never lend out gear to your friends. My good friend came to me to borrow my new FOH board and new monitor mixer. He needed it for his friend who was doing a show out of town, so I said "OK, but I need it back in time for my show on the following day, at the exact time I am to set up."

The day of the gig, they rushed in, dropped off the boards and took off right away, which was curious. My head tech pulled the board out of its road case to find it dripping with water, and the case itself had absorbed a lot of water as well. My tech phoned me where I was working on another job, and I had to rent my old board that I had just replaced with the new board, the one that was now soaking wet. I was so embarrassed. Especially after bragging to the customer on how good the new FOH board was and how the built-in effects were just beautiful for what they needed. Boy, did I have egg on my face.

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Bigfoot Found and Captured! French Array Avoids Radar!

Not a line array? A tangent array system? Maybe they should just call it French.

The new NEXO GEO T speakers are not boxes, as we would typically assume a speaker enclosure to be. They look more like something out of a futuristic Spielberg movie. They are small, very small, and shaped like a mini stealth fighter. The rigging looks weird, very weird, but extremely functional. Like stealth fighters, they are light and weigh less than 100 lbs, or 45 kilograms, as the French would have it (that's 99.2 lbs). Radar does not bounce off them, and they have been flying over the United States undetected now for sometime…

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Mackie Onyx 80 Mixing Consoles, DAS Compact Series, LightViper 1832 Snake

Mackie Onyx 80 Mixing Console

By Mark Amundson

If you grew up on a Mackie mixing console, and the two of you parted ways as you matured, I believe the Mackie Onyx 80 series is going to make you at least think about coming back. Yes, it was a long time coming, but not only did Mackie get it right on the electronics and feature set, but the rugged construction and the painstaking attention to ergonomic detail puts to shame other mixing consoles with price tags four times as much.

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On the Move

Many months ago, we discussed the challenges that churches go through when moving from temporary facilities to permanent locations. This is typically a challenge, both in adjusting operational methods and taking equipment out of road cases and bolting it down (or hanging it up) properly, safely and efficiently. I'd like to take one look even further back and see how we got the gear going in the first place.

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Rack Case Design

I believe the role of road cases is critically important to the profitability of a sound company. But not every case made out there is really road-worthy. A lot of my anklebiter friends think I am insane to pay $600 or more on semi-custom rack cases to haul power amplifiers and signal processing gear. I look at it as cheap insurance to keep the gear performing throughout its scheduled life, and to put more gear on wheels instead of having my back do the lifting. So this month's installment is about rack road cases, and a guide to getting them built and maintained.

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The Sound of Sweet Charity

A revival of Bob Fosse's 1966 musical, which he later adapted into a movie, Sweet Charity follows the misadventures of dance hall hostess Charity Hope Valentine as she hopelessly searches for the right man to help her escape her life of misery–and a chance meeting with a shy, awkward accountant named Oscar may be her chance for happiness. Yeah, it's definitely dated in its concept, but headliner Christina Applegate proves that she is far more talented than many would give her credit for as she sings and dances her heart out and makes Charity her own, while the show itself offers the razzle-dazzle that choreographer Fosse was known for. This modern production features some fantastic sets, costumes and music, particularly one groovy club sequence drenched in purple ("Rich Man's Frug") that shirks lyrics and is all about the dance.

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Yamaha Makes a Major Move

The ongoing consolidation of the audio business took another giant step forward in June when Yamaha announced that it had established a joint venture with French line array and live sound technology developer NEXO. The agreement calls for the two companies to join forces in future product development and gives NEXO's line arrays and other high-end PS products a much deeper reach in the critical American and Asian markets via Yamaha's distribution and marketing capabilities. Good for NEXO, which has long made what many in the industry feel is a quality, competitive product that has been hamstrung by a marketing culture out of its depth here.

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Dennis Cooper and Rob Mondora

Dennis Cooper

Production Manager

Production Support Group, Inc.

Tallahassee, FL 850.562.1070

Dennis@productionsupportgroup.com

Quote: One hundred feet away and in the dark, they'll never know the difference.

Services Provided: Full service production company. Sound, lighting, stage, AV.

Clients: 53rd Annual Florida Folk Festival, Celebrate America 4th of July featuring Andy Griggs, Florida State University's Last Call Before Fall featuring Jimmy Eat World, Freightliner and Kohler Industries sales meetings and trade shows, Swamp Stomp

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Church and State

Sometimes I do very stupid things, even when I know in advance that they're stupid. Call it a thick head or a stubborn streak, but I just don't learn.

I am about to do one of those stupid things right now. I may live to regret it, but I need to say something about this business and the role of the trade press. It will upset some people, but I hope that–if you are not one of the offended–you at least find it somewhat entertaining, albeit in the same way we are drawn to look at a particularly bad car accident when we drive past.

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20/20 Hindsight

I take pride in my engineering skills, and after many years of honing my craft, I think that I have become adequately competent at my trade. I feel very confident in my mastery of the basics of live audio engineering and that I have an artistic and musical approach to the job. I know my strengths and my weaknesses and try to use this knowledge to my advantage when mixing a concert or event. I feel that I put a lot of thought and effort into what I do as an engineer, and I approach each band or event in a way that is most suitable to the situation. While the mechanics of sound (i.e. speaker placement, gain structure, power requirements, etc.) are fairly consistent, it is the unknown variables that truly test our mettle when we find ourselves on the battlefield of live sound.

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20/20 Hindsight

I take pride in my engineering skills, and after many years of honing my craft, I think that I have become adequately competent at my trade. I feel very confident in my mastery of the basics of live audio engineering and that I have an artistic and musical approach to the job. I know my strengths and my weaknesses and try to use this knowledge to my advantage when mixing a concert or event. I feel that I put a lot of thought and effort into what I do as an engineer, and I approach each band or event in a way that is most suitable to the situation. While the mechanics of sound (i.e. speaker placement, gain structure, power requirements, etc.) are fairly consistent, it is the unknown variables that truly test our mettle when we find ourselves on the battlefield of live sound.

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One-Stop Shops

Back in February, at Pro Production 2005, a panel of industry experts held court on "Expanding Your Offerings: Becoming A One-Stop Shop." These high priests of sound and light spoke to what it means to offer sound, lighting, effects and staging under a single tent.

The names have not been changed to protect the innocent, but their quotes will not be identified to protect the guilty. (Actually, what Jerry means is that he was working from an audio tape, where it's hard to match a voice in the dark to a name. Next time, we do video. -Ed.) The panel included Gregg Brunclik of Clearwing Productions, Mark Dodd of Dodd Technologies, Doug Adams of Pyrotek and Tom Sorce and Barry Rackover of PRG. If you were there, you know who said what. If not, try to think of them as Masked Super Heroes of the Convergence. Truthtellers, all.

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