The second location of the Saddle Up Saloon and Dancehall, which recently opened in Indianapolis, offers a total of 13,440 square feet, including a stage, large dance floor, three bars, and sound by QSC Audio KW Series active loudspeakers.
Local integrator Sean Wooldridge, previously a sales engineer at Sweetwater Sound in Fort Wayne, IN and a graduate of the Music Production and Engineering program at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, installed the system at the new Western-themed dance club.
The output power and dispersion of the KW Series allowed Wooldridge to achieve excellent coverage and intelligibility with a surprisingly small number of loudspeakers, despite the sheer size of the venue.
“We installed six of the KW122 12-inch two-way speakers — three on either side of the dance floor. Then there are four of the KW181 18-inch subwoofers on the dance floor; we’ve got a little box for them there,” Wooldridge explains. “It has a capacity of 1,200 people, and amazingly, the KW Series speakers covered the whole thing.”
In addition to operating as a nightclub and bar, the Saddle Up also presents line-dancing lessons for patrons. “Every 20 minutes or so an instructor will go down onto the dance floor with a head-worn mic and teach. Next thing you know, there’s a big line dance going on,” says Wooldridge. “So vocal intelligibility is critical in an application like this. And that’s another cool thing about the KW Series Loudspeakers — the clarity is astonishing.”
Wooldridge had no hesitation in recommending QSC Audio products, having experienced K Family loudspeakers first hand while working at Sweetwater.
“QSC came in with the K8s, K10s, the K12s and KSubs when they were first coming out,” he recalls. “They were playing program material as we walked into the meeting and it was filling the room with a decent level of sound. Someone said, ‘Can we hear it without the subs?’ Actually, they weren’t even using the subs – just the K8s. So I knew these were some pretty serious speakers.
“As far as this installation, it makes it a lot easier if you’ve got a lot of sound coming out of smaller box,” he continues. “It just ends up being an easier installation. The processing in the KW boxes makes them easy to manage and made my job a breeze. I knew that QSC was the way to go for Saddle Up.”