Recent content by PATech

At my university we just received a BSS Omnidrive, after having a shoot-out with both the Driverack 260 and the BSS. The BSS won hands down for audio quality. Having worked with the XTA processors before, I must agree that they blow me away.

Both my high school and college use Barbizon Lighting Company: www.barbizon.comThey appear to have good service and support, but sometimes you have to be careful and make sure that they don't cut corners or make mistakes on orders, but that's improved tremendously recently.

My favorite speaker brand is definitely Martin Audio, hence the choice of "other." I just love the way those British cabs sound. I also like EAW and EV as well, but they definitely don't beat the Martins.

I happen to like a lot of EV gear. My university's theatre (which I have a job in) has a system of four EV DeltaMax cabs paired into arrays of two along with two McCauley dual 18'' subs.) When you flip one so that they're horn to horn they sound great for the space and have served well for a...

I'm very partial to Sennheiser. I love my university's Evolution Wireless 500 systems. They sound great and are really reliable. I'm also a fan of the Sennheiser 3000 series. At my job this summer we had old Vega wireless equipment that I'm sure was great in its time, but now just needs to...

We also had this gear in my high school, and I found it to be far more durable than the newer Clear-com and RTS intercom gear. Those metal beltpacks are nearly indestructible. The way I remember this system working is that it carried two channels of intercom on a 6-pin XLR cable (check the...

1) What is your favorite Lighting console? ETC Obsession II 2) How many different consoles have you used? Two scene preset, three flavors of ETC Express, ETC Acclaim, ETC Expression 1, ETC Expression 3, ETC Obsession I 600, ETC Obsession II, Strand 550i. 3) If you regualary use a...

One little trick that I recently picked up from an old hand who's been mixing professionally since far before I was born is to incline the mic slightly towards the stage. He sets the mics up on a layer of foam that is slightly sloped (about 10 degrees or so) towards the stage. We used this...

Thank you very much Chris for bringing this up. Last summer I worked as a tech at a major corporate theme park (which will remain nameless as I am going back to work there this summer.) One of the shows that I was running had a substantial moving light rig and several cues in which most of the...

Ha, fun with upright pianos. If you only have two SM57's, I'd recommend that you open the top and place two 57's on booms pointing into the piano angled towards the soundboard. Place one over the treble and one over the bass strings. A dirty, relatively cheap, and easy way to get a good...

My dream FOH would be: Console: (kind of a toss-up here, any high quality console would do just fine) Analog: Midas XL4 (this is a dream, right!) Digital: Yamaha PM1D Speakers: Martin Audio W8L Line Array Amplifiers: Lab.gruppen, Crown Macro-tech, or Crest Processing...

A cyc/groundrow light that no one has mentioned yet is the Selecon Aurora. We have them at my university and have them lamped at 625 watts. They are brighter and more even than our old (now deceased) Altman 1000 watt cyc lights. And we're getting the same brightness while being able to...

From what I've seen, DBX compressors are really an industry standard. The sound-heavy touring shows that come through my university almost always spec DBX 160 compressors. Not that DBX processing is always the best on the market, though. We were looking for a system processor and did a...

When my college rents lighting gear, it is generally from Show Lighting Corporation in Berlin, CT. Sound gear is generally from Snow Sound in North Haven, CT, which I believe was just bought up by the HB Group, but is still operating. We seem to be happy with both these companies.

I'd definitely leave a show in someone else's hands, but that person must be fully competent. Of course on a production that size, it isn't as if they're hiring just anybody. So many elements of tech involve trust, not only to put on a great show, but also to put on a safe show.