Club Troppo Gets A Makeover
Connections Magazine - October, 1999
The NSW Central Coast's biggest venue - Central Coast Leagues Club -
plays host to a Saturday night event called Club Troppo. When the Central
Coast Leagues Club recently under went major renovations, the organisers of
the event Rock Circult Promotions, decided this was a great opportunity for
a fresh look and Total Concept Productions were given the task.
Jonathon Rutledge at TCP Sydney acted as Project Manager, with Bill Coghill acting as On-Site project technical manager.
The old DJ box, previously located halfway down the hall, has been moved on to the stage. The equipment is now in large wheeled flight cases - one for Audio and one for Lighting with the video system split between the two boxes - allowing for a quick and easy setup.
Audio
In a departure from the usual Disco System arrangement in rooms this size Rock Circuit Promotions choose to go for two flown arrays above the stage edge. An all Meyer Powered box system was chosen.
Four MSL-4 long throw High Q boxes are supplemented with 4 PSW-4 15"+18" Sub Boxes. The arrays are flown on both sides of the stage. The subs are part of this flown array, an option which at first seemed risky.
"We were concerned that the main dance area may be lacking bottom end, and that the bass might not cut it in such a large room" said Harry Della, Director of RCP. "But with advise from Steve Devine from Meyer Australia, we went with it".
The system was tuned by consultant Adam Townsend from PKA in Sydney. Tuning with JBL Smaart-Pro and pink noise took 3 hours. The PA was metered at 112dB during the first night.
Flying
lain Messner was contracted to provide all the flying points in the room as well as the specially designed frames for the PA. These were built with the flying angles set in the metal work, so that on site it was simply a question of hanging it all up.
Iain and his rigger Gary looked after hanging points for the Truss rings and the Motorised Arm sections, which are controlled by a hoist control system developed in-house at TCP by Bill Coghill.
Lighting
Club Troppo is one of the first major outings for the FutureLight MH-660 Moving yoke fixture, with 4 in each of the four truss "arms". These, as well as the other room fixtures, are controlled by a Martin Light Jockey system running on a standard PC, with the Fixture Profiles created in house by Bill Coghill and Andrew Brajbisz.
Other fixtures include 28 Gladiator SceneSetter colour changers, 8 Studio Due Predators, around 80m of neon, and 8 Coemar Mini Ultra Scan 2 moving mirror fixtures.
Video System
The club chose to keep their existing Sony Video Projectors, although they relocated them to each side of the stage. A Night-life system uses custom pressed Music Video CDs to allow clubs to choose from various categories of discs to suit the clientele.
