Guitar Center Professional (GC Pro), the outside sales division of Guitar Center that focuses on professional users, recently outfitted a trio of new establishments in the Boston area with audio systems headed by Harman Professional components.
At the Salty Pig, GC Pro senior account executive PK Pandey designed a sound system that provides full-range music reproduction and intelligible paging.
“The challenge here was the many hard, highly reflective surfaces, including wood and tiled floors and table tops,” explains Pandey, who assembled a system that uses seven JBL Professional Control Series C67P/T pendant-type loudspeakers, two JBL SB210 subwoofers, five JBL Control 24C ceiling loudspeakers, along with a JBL CBT 50LA columnar line array on the restaurant’s outdoor patio, powered by Crown Audio XLS 2000 and XLS 1000 amplifiers, and managed by a dbx 1260m zone controller.
The facility also includes Auralex acoustical treatment that Pandey also sourced for the design. “In addition to the highly directional speakers we used, we needed a lot of absorption around the dining areas to enable the sound be present and very clear,” he states. “The results were excellent.”
As a result, the owners asked GC Pro to work the same forumula for their other restaurant, Canary Square, where Pandey redesigned the sound systems to include a dozen JBL C67 P/T pendants and four CBT 50LA line arrays on the outdoor dining patio, powered by Crown XLS 2000 and XLS 1000 amplifiers, and managed by a dbx ZonePro 1261m controller with ZC9 and ZC1 remotes.
“The problems they were having at Canary Square were volume level and intelligibility – the same issues we were able to successfully tackle at the Salty Pig,” says Pandey, who also used carefully-aligned acoustical treatment panels to minimize reflections and maximize intelligibility, allowing the music to be present without being overpowering.
Trade, another Boston-area eatery, called on GC Pro after experiencing the sound at the Salty Pig.
“The owners of Trade liked the way we used the speakers to enhance the architectural/aesthetic appearance at the other restaurants,” Pandey says. “This was of primary importance to them, as well as great sound. We worked closely with the architect on the project to achieve both goals.”
For Trade, GC Pro specified 10 JBL C67 P/T pendant loudspeakers, eight JBL 226C/T ceiling loudspeakers and a JBL SB210 subwoofer, powered by Crown CTs 3000 and XLS 1500 amplifiers and managed by six dbx ZonePro 1261m controllers with ZC9 and ZC1 remotes.
“We understand what our clients are attempting to accomplish, and we become their partners in helping to achieve it,” Pandey concludes.