Article

Friday, July 03, 2009

Top-Flight Sound Reinforcement For A Raucous Week Of Concerts At Arizona’s Annual Cyclefest

Pro Production Services handles the wild ride by combining experience and top components to serve a week of live performances by a roster of A-list artists

Fifty weeks out of the year, WestWorld in Scottsdale, Arizona is an equestrian center and special events facility, but during Arizona Bike Week (ABW), held in early April of this year, the ABW Cyclefest turns WestWorld into a raucous concert venue.

A 27,000 square-foot tent is erected on the premises and dubbed the HandleBar Saloon, and it’s where the majority of the concerts take place during Bike Week.

Arizona Bike Week, which actually spans 10 days, is an annual event that has taken place for the past 13 years in the territory in and around the city of Scottsdale and is the fourth-largest bike festival in the country.

Pre-Rally Days, the five days leading up to Cyclefest, also features concerts, rides and events – including the coronation of Miss Arizona Bike Week – that take place at various towns in the area. This year Pre-Rally Days started off with a concert staged at Chester’s Harley-Davidson in Mesa by the Charlie Daniels Band.

Pro Production Services has been handing production for ABW Cyclefest since 2004, and the Tempe-based company maintains a pretty diverse client base covering everything from fairs and festivals to corporate shows and even events for the White House.

Donovan Mote, director of operations for Pro Production Services out of their Phoenix office, relied on EAW KF750 loudspeakers and BH760 subwoofers driven by Crown I-Tech Series amplifiers to provide the wide horizontal coverage needed for the tent, as well as satisfy rider requirements for the bands coming through. This year’s lineup featured performances by hometown group the Gin Blossoms, Blackfoot, Eddie Money, and Cheap Trick, as well as performances by local bands.

Faced with the physical challenges of staging a large scale production in a tent, Mote has tried various configurations opting this year to go with ground stacked mains positioned in front of a 40- by 40-foot stage, expanded up this year from a 40- by 32-foot stage to satisfy set requirements for Cheap Trick. Crown I-Tech amps provided the power, and Rational Acoustics Smaart was employed by Mote primarily for time alignment of the system.

At front of house and monitors, both analog and digital consoles were represented. “This year we had a Midas XL200 (analog) at front of house, which is kind of our festival workhouse,” Mote says. “It’s really easy to use. There’s not always a lot of time for sound checks and there are charity raffles and things like that that happen in the tent where the concerts occur as well, so something that is really familiar to everyone is pretty important.”

A Midas Heritage 3000 (analog) console was provided for monitors, while Yamaha M7CL digital consoles were situated at both house and monitors. Mote continues, “It’s really kind of an ideal scenario for us, some bands prefer to work on the M7CL because they already had the cards or were more familiar with the console, so we were able to provide the headlining acts what ever they wanted to use.”

Both 12- and 15-inch Radian MicroWedges (the original Dave Rat design that the new EAW monitors of the same name are based upon) were employed on stage, again powered by Crown I-Tech Series, though as Mote recalls, “Several of the acts had in-ears, and we provided some. We used the Shure PSM 700s and the PSM 600s for hard-wired, and Cheap Trick brought out their own set.

“We just picked up Crown I-Tech 4000s for the monitor amp rig and that was the first time we used them all networked. It’s really nice to be able to set up a custom panel and see the status of all the amplifiers and know how much headroom you have.”

“I’ve got our laptops set up so I can monitor all of the (Harman Pro Group HiQnet) System Architect devices, and in this case, it’s the I-Tech Series and a dbx 4800 DriveRack at house,” he continues. “I can also monitor all the wireless systems, and I also have it so I can run either of the M7CLs remotely from the laptop, walking through the crowd making mix adjustments and so forth. To be able to do all that from one laptop is pretty cool.”

The microphone selection is diverse, including AKG C414s and Neumann KM 184s, Shure KSM 9s and a standard selection of Shure SM58s and SM57s. Sennheiser e908s handled toms with Sennheiser 421s for other drum needs.” We just bring out basically two full mic packages and they’ll have pretty much anything that they could want to choose from,” says Mote.

In addition to sound reinforcement, Pro Production Services also provided all staging, lights, video, and backline, with Mote explaining, “More and more these days clients want to have company that they can make one phone call to and have most of their needs, if not all of them, met. So we’ve been trying to diversify our business model to accommodate that.”

He estimates that 50,000 people attended the five days of Cyclefest. “This year there were two other really large festivals that were the exact same time frame, and I hear reports from the other two as well as Bike Week that the numbers were as high as ever and in some cases higher. So while the economy is affecting a lot of people, we’ve been real lucky.”

(Be sure to check out our accompanying PSW Photo Gallery to see a wide range of images of the system, gear and people at Arizona Bike Week/Cyclefest)

Arizona Bike Week Equipment List

Front of House Consoles
Midas XL200
Yamaha M7CL-48

Front of House Processing
Yamaha SPX-2000
Yamaha SPX-990
TC Electronic D-2
BSS DPR-404
dbx 1066
dbx 1074

Front of House Drive
dbx DriveRack 4800
Klark Teknik DN360
Shure P4800

Front of House Loudspeakers
EAW KF750/755
EAW BH760
EAW JF80
Mackie SRM450 (vendor area public address)

Front of House Amplifiers
Crown I-Tech Series

Monitor Consoles
Midas H3000
Yamaha M7CL-48

Monitor Processing
BSS DPR-404
BSS DPR-504
Yamaha SPX-990

Monitor Drive
Klark Teknik DN360

Monitor Amplifiers
Crown I-Tech Series

Monitor Loudspeakers
Radian MicroWedge
EAW KF600i
EAW SB250
EAW SB1000
Buttkicker
Shure PSM 700 wireless IEM
Shure PSM 600 wired IEM

Microphones
Shure UHF-R wireless
Shure
Sennheiser
AKG
Audio-Technica
Neumann

Miscellaneous
Motion Labs Distro
Rational Acoustics Smaart
Harman HiQnet System Architect

Mark Johnson has been involved with audio and video for more than 35 years, including production, manufacturing and writing for various publications.

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