Located on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Tammany Hall is a new music venue that’s quickly established itself as a formidable player on the local scene, hosting live performances every weekend and on select weeknights.
Named for the political machine that played a major role in New York City politics for more than 150 years, the venue delivers music on three floors: a main room at street level, an upstairs balcony, and a lounge located on the lower level.
Formerly occupied by long-time club The Annex, new ownership, which also runs popular live venues such as Crash Mansion and BLVD NYC, has completely transformed the space with an all-new interior design, a process topped by a new sound reinforcement system designed and installed by PBell Sound of Queens, headed by owner Paul Bell.
“Because the owners have other club locations, they understand the value of a quality sound system,” explains Bell.
“At the same time they were interested in repurposing some of the high-end gear they had on hand from other locations – so I created a system that used the best of both worlds, new and otherwise.”
Covering The Space
The main room at Tammany Hall, with a capacity of more than 300, has a 30-foot long stage in one corner, opposite a formidable bar that runs the length of the room.
Plenty of standing room is provided around the stage, with a seating area in the back half of the room parallel to the bar. Because of the stage size and is location, bands typically perform facing the standing area rather than the main bar and seating area.
As a result, Bell’s design has dual McCauley ID3.115-53 full-range loudspeakers for stage mains, flown left and right, to cover most of the house.
But to bolster coverage to patrons standing near the stage, a McCauley ID2.112- 65 full-range loudspeaker was added, flown horizontally near the entrance of the main room and receiving a mono, slightly delayed feed.
Although the upper balcony receives a fair amount of output from the main system, Bell bolstered this with two EAW SM200 monitors, mounted upside-down on the ceiling above the upper lip of the balcony.
At the rear of the main floor listening area, a bit of boost is supplied by two EAW J8 compact loudspeakers, mounted left and right on the back wall and delayed in relation to the output of the mains.
Two Turbosound TSW-218 subwoofers are tucked under the stage, delivering plenty of low end while not occupying valuable audience real estate.
Stage monitoring is provided by up to four Turbosound TDX-15M wedges that can be placed where needed.
Small Footprint
The power amplification and digital signal processing for this diverse slate of loudspeakers comes from a surprisingly small footprint based at the house mix position.
An Ashly Audio Protea ne24.24M modular DSP provides input conditioning, signal routing, and loudspeaker conditioning for the stage system, including all monitor and distributed signals.
