Gand Concert Sound and sister division Gand Sound Installations of Glenview, Illinois have completed rigorous real-world testing on the new NEXO NX4x4 amp.
Results have proven the product to be as good as promised. Both divisions are using the monstrous four-channel amp in many mission critical projects.
“We started with a rack of five installed at Buddy Guy’s new Legend’s Club in Chicago,” states Gary Gand, President.
“The amps have been running non stop since the opening during the Chicago Blues Fest and Crossroads Fest in June 2010 with no problems.”
The four-channel NEXO NXAmp contains a complete library of control parameters for all versions of NEXO speakers, which are Gand’s choice for all concert work and premium installations.
This allows the company to stock one amp that will work with every model of speaker they own or spec from the smallest NEXO PS8 monitor to a 32 box GEO T flown array, down to any sub from a NEXO Alpha S2 to the new RS18 Ray Sub.
Late in the design process, Buddy Guy’s FOH engineer Max Maxson suggested that bi-amping would be the way to go for the PS15 R2’s that were being installed in the new Legend’s Club.
“It was a simple matter to dial up the Bi-amp PS15-R2 main setting on the amp and give it a try,” says Gand.
The then newly designed RS15 subs, which needed to be flown over the audience due to the intimate low stage, could be ‘steered’ to keep low frequencies off the stage, reducing rumble and low frequency feedback, using the onboard RS15 program.
Viper Alley, a new boutique concert club opens in March 2011 in Lincolnshire, Illinois, and owner Scott Greenberg, best known as creator of The Wit, Chicago’s hippest hotel contacted Gand after seeing their work at Legend’s.
“I read all the specs on the NEXO NX4x4 amp and thought ‘we have to have these for the concert club’ as the bleeding edge is where we want to be,” notes Greenberg.
“Everyone’s going to be talking about the audio experience at Viper.” The new entertainment multiplex includes a concert club, disco, bowling alley, restaurant and private party space.
All concert and monitor speakers are NEXO PS15 R2 and PS10 R2. The compact, yet high-level rig includes the brand new RS18 subwoofers, which are flown.
“With one of the largest inventories of NEXO GEO T line arrays in the U.S., we’ve become known as ‘the NEXO guys’ and we’re proud of it,” says GCS V.P. Tim Swan. GCS purchased the first large-scale GEO T concert system in the summer of 2006 for use at the Georgia Dome, an 80,000-seat arena with a floating membrane roof.
They set the record at the venue later with the largest NEXO column flown in the U.S. for an Elton John show and broke their own record again at the Superdome in New Orleans for an ELCA convention.
“As truck-pack space and weight is a premium commodity due to higher diesel prices, a compact rack of eight monitor mixes of NX4x4 amps just left Chicago
for the East Coast leg of the Frankie Valli concert tour,” adds Swan.
On the last date of that tour, ESI Audio of Tampa, Florida will pick up a 32-box NEXO GEO T system from Gand to cover a number of Southern shows.
