Jands at Club Forster
Club Forster is a Memorial Services Club situated just over three hours north of Sydney and a little over one hour south of Port Macquarie, in the beautiful Great Lakes region of the Mid North Coast of New South Wales. It attracts a lively mix of touring original and tribute acts, including many from overseas. With a PA system pushing well into its third decade of service, it was becoming both a logistic and technical headache to keep it operational.
“It was becoming hard to replace parts in equipment that they don’t make anymore,” related Club Forster’s Marketing and Entertainment Manager Eddie Youngblood. “We also wanted to make it much easier to negotiate with travelling shows. If we have an industry-standard PA system and they don’t have to bring their own equipment, it’s a big cost labour and transport saving to them. When those costs are reduced, then we can offer a more reasonable ticket price to our members– the savings go right down the line.”
“Acts these days are definitely preferring to tour where there’s suitable in-house equipment,” said Rene Miles, in-house technician at Club Forster. “When we decided we needed to upgrade, we approached a range of suppliers. We evaluated several similar systems, and we got to use them on our shows. In the end, Jands and their JBL VTX system were the most professional and competitive. Our Manager and board appreciated their professionalism, and commented on it a number of times; they were just so easy to deal with.”
Club Foster’s existing PA was cleverly concealed in extremely large custom-made boxes hidden behind the proscenium of their stage. Jands worked with the local integrator and the Club to develop an engineered solution that allowed Club Forster to re-use these expensive fixtures, and keep the PA hidden from the audience, an option that no competitor gave them “That saved us a lot of money,” observed Rene, “as some of the competing systems would have cost a fortune in infrastructure renovations to alter the roof to hold their weight.”
In addition to their new JBL VTX concert line array, Club Forster added four new JBL PRX612 powered foldback wedges, a Soundcraft Vi3000 digital mixing desk with remote input/output rack and a BSS Blu-100 DSP processor that allows one-button sound system operation for speech and movies when there’s no technician present. “We now have more now have more control of the PA system with the Vi3000; it’s made a big difference,” said Rene. “The JBL VTX PA gives us more even coverage around the room, and people are going away with a better impression of our shows. Even our acts are saying at their soundchecks that it sounds so much better.”
“We’ve had an excellent reaction from our patrons,” added Eddie Youngblood, “particularly in our older demographic. The problem with our old system was that you had to turn it up to reach the back of the room, making it louder at the front. People at the front would walk out because it was too loud. The new system can provide the same volume at the back as the front. We haven’t had one walk-out due to sound levels, and I come to every show. We’re one hundred percent satisfied with Jands. They were on-time and on-budget, their staff and follow-up service are terrific, and they’re lovely to deal with. A pleasure!”
Installed:
- 6x JBL VTX V20 Three-Way High Directivity Line Array Elements
- 2x JBL VTX S25 Suspendable, Cardioid-Arrayable, Dual 15″ Subwoofers
- 2x JBL VTX G28 Dual 18″ Subwoofers
- 6x JBL PRX612M Two-Way Multipurpose Self-Powered Loudspeakers
- Crown I-Tech 4x3500HD Four-channel, 4000W @ 4Ω Power Amplifier
- Crown I-Tech 12000HD Two-channel, 4500W @ 4Ω Power Amplifier
- BSS Blu-100 DSP Processor
- Jands PDS6RII power distribution
- Soundcraft VI3000 digital mixer
- Soundcraft VI Local Rack