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The Pat Metheny Trio, CQ-2 at Medford's Crateria Ginger Rogers Theater
Sitting astride Interstate 5 midway between Sacramento and Portland, the modest city of Medford, Oregon is ideally situated for attracting touring artists looking for a fill-in date between bookings in the big cities of Northern California and the Northwest. Medford's ability to pull in name artists was enhanced considerably in 1997 with the opening of the 775-seat Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater. A 1920's movie palace reincarnated (after a $5 million renovation) as a performing arts center, the "Crate" now hosts a full schedule of pop and classical concerts, Broadway-style musicals, operas and lectures. The Pat Metheny Trio booked one such stopover date on a recent Wednesday evening. On this swing through the Northwest drummer Bill Stewart and bassist Larry Grenadier accompanied the perennial Grammy-winning jazz guitarist. Metheny's own touring production was limited to an FOH effects rack and the monitor system. The rest of the FOH system was provided by George Relles Sound of Eugene, Oregon. Relles, who has provided systems for the room on numerous occasions, brought only six Meyer Sound self-powered speakers down for the evening: one pair each of CQ-2, 650-P and UPA-1P. Precisely Defined Coverage "This really is a very nice room," enthused Relles, relaxing by his Yamaha PM3500 board while awaiting Metheny's sound check," and it sounds great using just a pair of CQ-2s. My first shows here with CQ-2s were David Grisman and Compey Segundo, and I also used them here for Ladysmith Black Mambazo. They sounded wonderful for that show. Just one CQ-2 per side covers most of the room extremely well. I put them up on the 650-Ps and tip them back slightly, just about five degrees, to cover the balcony. I use a laser pointer attached to the side of the cabinet to pinpoint my coverage, which is handy with the CQ-2s because the coverage angles are very sharply defined." A loyal user of Meyer products for over sixteen years, Relles confessed that with the CQ-2 he has a new-found favorite. "In my personal opinion, it's the best sounding box that Meyer makes, hands down. It has incredibly smooth response over its entire coverage pattern. John really did a fabulous job in designing this horn. Everyone I demonstrate the CQ-2 to loves it. It's very accurate, very precise and sounds like a good home hi-fi speaker." Because the CQ-2s are full range devices, Relles maintained that for many shows the 650-P subwoofers sitting underneath are used more as speaker stands than loudspeakers. "Typically, the way I set up this rig, I run the subwoofers off an aux send. I use the new BSS-366 Compact Omnidrive, which is three in and six out, which allows me the flexibility to set up the subs on a separate send. When set up with that program, the 650-Ps are crossed over at 100Hz. But if the act wants to run full range on two outputs, I go to that program on the Omnidrive and the subs are derived off the sums of the A and B outputs." Haul More, Get Less? A system with only six speakers may not look impressive, but Relles' long experience with this configuration in the Craterian demonstrates that you don't need to fly long stacks of speakers to fill a theater with superb sound - and, as with the Metheny show that night, leave a room full of fans shouting for more. For Relles, it's a clear case of doing the job right and not merely catering to the latest industry trends. "I once had somebody ask me why I don't bring a V-DOSC system in here," he recalled, "and I told him it's a simple matter of doing the math. To get the vertical dispersion I need to cover the floor and balcony, I would have to use at least six cabinets per side. Then I would be looking at twelve cabinets, not including subwoofers, just to get the coverage I need. That would mean bringing down another truck, and adding another person to the crew just to get it all up. "I toyed with the idea of getting a V-DOSC system for about two years, and I thought for a time that's what I would end up doing. But more and more, after seeing V-DOSC and listening to it in a variety of places, I realized that in most situations where I would use it, it wouldn't be as practical as a Meyer self-powered system. For example, I've yet to be convinced that a stand-alone V-DOSC system sounds better than an MSL-4 system in a soft seat theater of 2500 seats or less. It still doesn't seem to have quite the smoothness in the frequency response, especially in the upper midrange and top end, at least to my ear." To bolster his case, Relles cited a recent concert he attended at the larger Hult Center in Eugene, with the system coming from another provider. "For that concert they used nine V-DOSC cabinets per side to cover the room, plus near fields and subs on top of that. For the same kind of show, I can go in and fly four MSL-4's per side and cover the entire room, with all the dispersion I need, with just a pair of CQ-2s on the deck to get my near field." From Vaudeville to Reggae Relles readily admitted that, even in the smaller Craterian Ginger Rogers Theater, some shows demand a bit more "oomph" than a pair of CQ-2s can provide. "We did Jimmy Cliff in here, and for that show I brought four 650-P subs and six MSL-4s, three per side. My biggest fear was that the room would be a mess, that it could not handle that kind of SPL, that the low end would get muddy. But the show sounded fabulous. It was loud, almost nauseously loud in terms of the low end, but it was tight and extremely well behaved." High decibel reggae is certainly a far cry from the vaudeville shows that shared the marquee with vintage movies during the Craterian Theater's first decades. A young Ginger Rogers danced on the Craterian stage in 1927, long before she partnered with Fred Astaire and ascended to worldwide stardom. Many years later, she returned to the Medford area and built a home beside the Rogue River, where she lived during much of her retirement. Though somewhat reclusive, Rogers was nevertheless considered a treasured member of the local community, and thus the new Craterian was renamed in her honor. The original Craterian name pays homage to nearby Crater Lake National Park. October, 2000 |
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