Wickerman Festival

Ah The Wickerman.

An ancient pagan symbol of fertility and rebirth (ok I am winging this bit) and used to such great effect in the 1973 Brit flick of the same name. Edward Woodward's naieve police officer, Sergeant Howie, is lured to a mythical island off the west coast of Ireland, Summer Isle, which is run by Christopher Lee's pagan peer, Lord Summerisle, to investigate a missing child case but get caught up in strange rituals. Anyway it is a fantastic film so watch it but please don't get it confused with the limp US remake starrring Nicholas Cage. Anyway at the end of it all there is a 30ft high Wickerman than is burnt.




This is the centre piece of Scotland's own leftfield and hip boutique Wickerman Festival which takes place atop a cliff in South-West Scotland (Galloway & Dumfries,if you are interested) . The festival has carved out a nice little niche for itself in its relatively short history. And it has long looked to Viking Audio and their Turbosound Floodlight system to provide an audio system capable of dealing with the ecletic mix of rock, folk and world music acts the festival is known for. BUT this year things were a little different, Viking opted to use Flex Array for the Summerisle main stage freeing up the Floodlight for duties on other stages around the site.


The main stage caters for around 8,000 people and this year highlights included acts such as The Dub Pistols, Dodgy, Gary Numan (yes, that Gary "Cars, Friends Electric" Numan), Alabama 3, (title theme to The Sopranos), KT Tunstall, The Cuban Bros and the legendary Fall led by the infamous Mancunian Mouth, Mark E Smith.


Set up ran nice and easy in beautiful summer sunshine and blue skies - apparently they get that up there in Scotland - though usually all I've got from hiking the Munroes is trenchfoot and midge bites. Turbosound's Paul McMullen was on hand to enjoy the sunshine and help rig the PA - an easy job as you can see.







The main stage system compromised of 8x TFA-600H and 4x TSW-218 per side run from an amp rack comprising of 2x T-25 & 3x T-45 and controlled by LMS-D26s. It ended up looking a little like this




The system was turned on, tweaked and the field was walked. Lots of smiling faces and, as the further sections were reached, heads shaking in disbelief at the performance, throw and clarity of such a small system.


Anyway then with the opening of the festival the proper Scottish summer weather arrived to add some atmosphere in the form of a Haar (or summer sea mist) as can be seen below. But then what is a festival in these great British Islands without precipitation in one form or another? Apparently the system held together well despite the changes in humidity and temperature over the two days and the occaisional strong on shore breeze.



ANORAKS AT THE READY? LETS PARTY!!!!!








In the end the skies might not have been clear but the PA sure was!


And Steve at Viking is looking forward to getting to grips with Flex when dealing with his diverse range of work over the coming months.


And the last word, or image, goes to the Viking Truck...

FB-600 Flybar Demo 1

DEMO OF ADJUSTABLE PICK-UP POINT ON FLEX ARRAY FB-600FLYBAR

Have a look at the FB-600's unique feature - the ability to move the pick-up point's CoG under load. Here Turbo's own Paul McMullan demonstrating this feature with 3x TFA-600H and a cordless drill. You can do this manually with a socket set and upto a weight of some 700Kg or well over 12x TFA-660Hs. Full details of the appropriate tools to follow soon, along with more practical Flex videos.

In the meantime sit back and stare in awe at the power of Paul's tool

PALM show Beijing 2008

Ah the wonders of the new Great Fire Wall of China, which lets me post but not view or edit this blog. I'll have to edit and finish this entry off when I fly back down to HKG and back to the UK. Man that's irritating must be the subversive and corrupting nature of its contents......

Ah well, sorry for the inconvenience. Normal(ish) service to be resumed soon.....

PALM Show Beijing May 2008

Phoenix Stand 3
Originally uploaded by furryface

Ah Beijing - city of brown skies, traffic jams and crazy driving. The Olympic city, centre of the new Chinese Empire. And home to one of the world's craziest trade shows. Its so loud in some halls you can barely think let alone speak - and this goes on from 9AM to 6PM. Turbosound with our Distributor Phoenix, is in a relatively quiet (and that is very much a relative term) Hall two where it is also quite cool and has high ceilings. Other halls are hotter and much more claustrophobic and this is only made worse by the fact they are full of local manufacturers with dodgy "tribute" products all on at full volume.

Noticeable absentees this year include ACE (the Harman Family package), Funktion One, Martin Audio, Coemar Lighting to mention a few. Some are boycotting because of the organisers lax attitude to IP infringement, some are spending the money in other ways and some, well nobody seems to know.

Whether its the Olympics or the effects of the recent earthquake the show feels a little different this year. Whilst still a very busy show there is an obvious reduction in foot traffic. Luckily it seems that the absentees are mainly timewasters and tyre-kickers, because there is a constant stream of serious enquiries about Turbosound for the Phoenix crew to deal with. There are new dealers and contractors to meet and greet. Established customers and old friends to talk to. But the oddness even extends to the nearby SAS Radisson hotel where many of the gwailo (westerners) exhibitors stay and is used by most of them as a place of refuge for quiet meetings, discrete conversations and escape from the crush and noise of the show. After the show the lobby bar is normally invisible under the weight of exhibitors having a drink, having tete-a-tetes, and planning the rest of the evening. But this year, whilst still busy, it was possible to get a seat and the upstairs cafe was practically empty. Even getting taxis, usually a thankless task was merely frustrating rather than seemingly pointless.
Impact makes one on two punters
But nevertheless a very, very postive show for the boys in blue. ots of interest in the new products such as Impact and FlexArray (which unfortunately couldn't put in an appearence due to a mix-up with some paperwork and the tightening of customs due to the Olympics), with serious rental company interest in Aspect, club owners interest in TA-500 and NuQ series (obviously this got demonstrated quite frequently along with a TSW-218 - and we were one of the quiet ones, plus lots of enquiries for TXD & TCS Compact from the KTV sector.

Examining the back of a TA-890H Sucked in by Polyhorn Technology










Aswell as the Chinese market the show attracts a large foreign contingent of visitors drawn by the ability to buy just about anything made for the Audio, LX and AV business at a knock down price and badged with their name. Particularly popular at the moment seems LED walls. Anyway the upshot of this being that existing overseas customers were seen as well as potential new distributors and customers. As well as Northern Asia (Korea & Japan) I saw customers from SE Asia, the Indian Sub-Continent and Australia. There were also plenty of Russians around.......













Left - A happy Melburnian Aspect customer impersonates
an Egyptian Tea Pot

Above - Lone Gwailo in the crowd - The usually
inseperable Mondo boys get split up...











Technology Corner Frames business talks

Looking out from the stand in vain for daylight

FLEX ARRAY DAY!

Flex Array Day – North Weald Airfield 21-05-08

There are few places better than the English countryside on a summers day with a blue sky, lush green trees and grass, a group of friends and the sound of a really big sound system overwhelming the gentle thwock of willow on leather (that’s the traditional way of describing a cricket ball being hit by a cricket bat) . And last Wednesday Turbosound, having finally found an outside location where we could make noise without too many issues, took a Flex Array system upto North Weald airfield just to the north of London to show to some interested parties from both Europe and the UK.

North Weald is an old Second World War fighter airbase, famous for its pivotal role in the Battle of Britain. Now as a modern civil airfield, it is home to numerous light planes but also to various historic and interesting aircraft as well. For more info have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Weald_Airfield Anyway from our point of view it is ideal, close to major London airports, easy to get to, in a sparsely populated area with a motorway down one side meaning we can actually run a system up and show people what it is capable of. We were located by Hangar 39 (thanks Dave!) which gave us access to power, cover and hard-standing. In the image you can see the M11 to the left of the picture just some 200-300m away. The white line across the ground is for scale and is approximately 70m indicating the distance from the clusters to the perimeter road.

On to the set-up. The system was 6x TFA-600H per side flown from self supporting aluminium truss towers with 0.5 tonne motors. We ground stacked 4x TSW-218 subwoofers per side. Each side was run four-way from one amp rack with 2x T-25 and 3x T-45s and LMS-D26 digital controllers run with Turbodrive PC control.

The TFA-600H were running fully active (Tri-amp) with a T25 on HF, a T25 on HMF and a T45 on the LMF 10"s. Each TSW-218 was run by one channel of a T45.

The Hang weight is 246Kg plus the weight of the FB-600 (about 25Kg). the hangs were positioned some 10-12m apart.

Both Hangs and control rack in the centre.

Images of the TFA-600H hangs, showing the integrated hardware and the single point pick-up FB-600 flybar – Using the towers and 0.5 tonne motors that were used upto 11 TFA-600H could have been safely and easily flown

Rear views of the speaker hang, showing the back panel and basic guide to setting rear angles using the central “spine” system. See close up of the setting guide



More to Follow

My thanks to JP from LMC, Martin Reid and myself for the photos used - sorry but I can't be bothered to remember exactly who took what!

Pigeon Detectives - Cambridge Corn Exchange

Aspect SL Stack - Cambridge Corn Exchange

Here you can see some of the most abused wedges currently out on the road in the UK. I didn't take any pictures of the grilles yet but will at the end of the tour so you can see what I mean.

Also we can see one column of the ground stacked FoH PA. The bottom three cabinets are TA-890L (2x 15") and the top two cabs TA-890H Mid/highs. The tour also uses a pair of TQ0445Dp for front fill, this being hidden by the Aspect in this shot. The more keen eyed of you may notice that the TA-890 cabs are a traditional shade of Turboblue - very fetching. And they sound better because of it you know!

I will do a more in-depth entry on this tour when I get back from China, based on one of the shows at the Brixton Academy. I hope to also include a small interview with the FoH engineer

Aspect does the Detective Work!

Cambridge Corn Exchange - May 2008 Pigeon Detectives

Whilst everyone is getting very excited about Flex Array, its worth remembering that its much bigger brother Aspect is still out there doing the business night after night. Today I popped along to the set-up of an 5-way Aspect gig in the Corn Exchange in Cambridge UK. The Band are the Pigeon Detectives - a northern hi-energy indie rock 5 piece renowned for the dynamism of the lead singer and his unerring talent for jumping on wedges - the grilles are a shocking state.

For more info on the band look at their website http://www.thepigeondetectives.com/ or search for them on myspace.

The rental company is We Audio and in this picture you see 8x TA-890H per side (4 stacked and 4 flown) with 6x TA-890L and 4 TSW-218s driven from Turbo T-series amps and XTA controller. Andy, the bands FoH engineer, used Aspect a few times last summer on the festival circuit and realised straight way that Aspect was the ideal system to capture the racing energy and dynamism of this Leeds based 5 piece. He is really happy with the results he is getting every night with the system in a range of 1800-4500 capacity venues.

Monitors are much abused TFM-450s (with TQ-425s subs for Drum Fill) plus TQ445DP/TQ-425DP sidefills run via a Midas Heritage H3K

BTW the photo was taken with my phone so apologies for slightly fuzzy analogue feel to it.

AND just to underline the hardworking nature of the Aspect series go to http://www.turbosound.com/newsroom/forum/index.html for details about another one of the UK's key touring venues, the Kentish Town Forum (for you older punters out there you may remember it as the Town & Country Club) and its new Aspect system. For more details on the Forum check out its website or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Forum

Flex Array on Production Line 1

Flex Array on Production Line 1
Originally uploaded by furryface

Lots of lovely Flex Cabs ready to go and rock the world!

Flex Array on Production Line 2

Flex Array on Production Line 2
Originally uploaded by furryface

We describe part of the factory at Turbosound as the Fitting Floor - here you can see why! The First production TFA-600Hs nearing completion and ready for testing

FlexArray hits Manchester (part 2)

After the gig at the Manchester Academy, the local rental company used the system twice more over the holiday weekend. Both times as a point source due to lack of flying points and positioning restrictions. On Bank Holiday Monday it was used at an outdoor gig to promote the launch of a "classic rock" radio station in the city - 106.1FM Rock Radio (imaginative name there!). The gig was held in the Catherdral Gardens and featured named acts such as Bad Company and Gun as well as tribute bands such as Letz Zep and Mercury (can you guess which bands they cover?). It was a free event and the PA company was told there would be an audience of around 1500. They put up 4x TSW-218s per side then a row of 4x TA-600H with a further 2x TA-600H on top (in point source format) all ground stacked.

It was a lovely sunny Holiday Monday (a rare event in the UK) and the gig ended up with an audience of around 5000 happy rock fans. Despite a few nervous moments on behalf of the rental co, the system covered the larger crowd with plenty of level and worked flawlessly for the entire length of the show. Everyone was impressed with a) the flexibility and b) the power and finesse of th system.

Unfortunately we don't have any images from this gig just yet. Will put them up if they become available

Flex Array At Manchester Academy 03/05/08

Arrive at Manchester Academy 1 on Oxford Rd just before 10am. Just driven 200 miles and need a coffee but it looks like its time to unload a truck - oh joy! All this is made even better by the fact last night (or is it this morning) I was up till about 2.30am having been to see a band down at the Scala (another Turbo Installation, TA-500s http://www.turbosound.com/newsroom/scala/index.html ) in Kings Cross with a freind who had flown in from Brazil just to see it. Further complicated by the Cachaca, Sugar and Limes packed in her luggage which made the best caipahrinas I've tasted for some time. But that was last night and 4 hours sleep seems scant reward. All this on a bank holiday weekend aswell!

Still my colleague Paul has just arrived with his mate Jeff, from one of our UK dealers, and gthere does seem to be a very efficient stage crew to offload the truck - so maybe things aren't so bad. We are working with a company called STS on this gig, they have a bit of previous with Turbosound having grown out of an earlier company called Phantom Power, and their mainstay system for many years being a Floodlight rig. One of their system tech's, Keith, also has quite a few connections with Turbo so it all makes for a nice freindly and efficient atmosphere.

Anyway once we've had chance to look at the room, seems they have spent a few quid on it since my last visit, we decide on a plan of action. The room is a bout 25m wide and roughly 35m deep with a 6m ceiling, rectangular with good draping but there is a new glass fronted balcony at the back for the VIP area. That might cause a few issues, so having been told no-one ever really uses it we decide to try to point the PA away from it.

So what have we got to use? Well we have 16x TFA-600H plus 8x TSW-218 along with 2x TA-500DP Aspect Wides for fills. We are running Turbo T-45 & T-25 amps and a networked system of LMS-D26 with a laptop at FoH for control and tweaking.

Once the points are in and the chain hoist, yes that's right chain hoist, is up plus the stage configured then we start to fly the PA. This proves to be a remarkably easy job. All the cabinets have come up individually (ie not pre rigged in cases) so its a simple matter of lying one cabinet down then putting the next on top, dropping the front links in, pinning them off and then dropping the rear angle arm and selecting the appropriate arm position. Repeat a further 5 times and cable up. Then we bring in the FB-600 flybar - a chunky-looking piece of kit that looks like a cross between an M-60 machine gun and a crossbow (see images below not from gig) - and attach the front pins then drop the rear arm to pick up the back of the cabinets and pin off

Then we decide on which will be the appropriate pick-up point on the bar top and attach the hoist hook. Taking the strain and winching away we take the array up to see how it hangs - pretty flat but we have few more cabs to add (only six on so far) and need to miss that balcony. Unfortunately we don't yet have the appropriate information on the Turbosound Predictive software - GIGMATE - which would ordinarily allow us to look at our options on the laptop and identify the weight of the array, appropriate pin positions and angles etc. Therefore a certain amount of trial & error was involved - but thankfully not much.

We added the extra two cabinets to the bottom of the array and then reposition the pick-point. This is where the full production feature of the FB-600 would have been a boon, in the fiull version you have a screw thread with handle that allows the pick-up point to be moved forwards or backwards under load, then pinned off. The pin not loadbearing but just secures the block in position.

Having found the correct angle then it was just the long, boring and tiring process of hauling the total array (approx 350Kg) up 4.5-5m in the air on a chain block. Times like that you really appreciate the old Lodestars and a pickle.

So if you have been following the process correctly, with the aid of a responsible adult, then you should end up with a very neat looking array. Repeating the process on the other side and ensuring the same settings are used on the complemenary cluster means you will have symetrical hangs, then it was just a matter of towing in the arrays to ensure maximum floor coverage and minimum wall reflections. So your clusters will look a little like the following ........

So now the PA clusters its time to add the subs and fill. We stack the TSW-218 left and right of stage two wide, two high and stick a TA-500DP on top by the stage for immediate stage front fill of the "mosh pit" - not that there's likely to be any moshing at an I Am Kloot gig. That's the band btw for more info check out http://www.iamkloot.com/ or this video from the Manchester Academy (but from an earlier gig I think) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=babgbInpYOI

Then just a matter of turning the system on, checking it through for any cabling or phase issues, then selecting the appropriate preset (yes there will be presets for the system for reasons that will be explained at a later date, to do with how a line source/array system works) and tweaking a little to deal with the room. As you can see from the picture below its very difficult to see the PA given the cabinets are black and there walls and drapes are all black aswell. Still very compact and discrete for all those corporate gigs etc. Certain amount of EQ, then we handed it over the 5 or 6 STS guys to have a quick play. Then Paul, boss man from STS (in left of this image), brings his copy of Thriller for his litmus test. All very happy once we sort out a small issue with a high impedance connection on the subs.

Lots of appreciative head nodding and positivity for the simplicity of the flying gear, the size of the cabinets, the weight of the cluster, the format and the audio quality. Then we're asked how much headroom is left in the system, "oooh, a good 10-12dB" we say. The faders push up and Paul's laptop at FoH starts to bounce across its perch. Eyeballs wobble but ears don't scream, and mouths all seem to smile.

So the system is up and running. We hand it over to the STS guys and IAK's FoH engineer and retreat to the local kebabshop for some lunch and a serious chat with Paul (STS).

More to follow.........