Stage Electrics has expanded its audio inventory with an L-Acoustics ARCS Wide and Focus system. The investment follows the appointment of Rob Collett as Audio Hire Manager, and his remit to ‘ensure the standard of equipment within the hire department is in line with needs and the expectations of its customers’.
‘One of my first roles was to evaluate the audio equipment we offered and identify opportunities to invest in new technology,’ he says. ‘Stage Electrics’ aim is always to be at the forefront of the industry and our policy is to ensure that our hire stock reflects that.’
Servicing high-end corporate clients, as well as West End and touring theatre productions, Stage Electrics needed a system that delivered intelligibility from a compact footprint at an economy price: ‘ARCS Wide and Focus is an extremely flexible product. It can be a plug-and-play system when required and can be used on an extremely wide variety of projects from large-scale to small-scale, from bands to high-end corporate events,’ Collett says. ‘You can ground stack or fly it and set up is pretty foolproof as the angles of the cabinets are pre-determined. This means you can simply put it together, turn it on and off you go, so I’m totally confident I can send it out as a dry hire item.
‘It’s also a very financially suitable system for us. Because the cabinets are passive, it’s a lot friendlier with amp channels, so you can run four cabinets from just one L-Acoustics LA4 amp. Our clients like it because they are getting a big system at a very cost conscious price, but with no compromise on quality.’
One of the system’s first outings was for Motorcycle Live at Birmingham’s NEC: ‘It worked brilliantly,’ Collett reports. ‘The engineers came back raving about it and the support from Stuart Down and the team at L-Acoustics.’
As well as its ARCS Wide and Focus system, the Stage Electrics inventory features Shure UHFR radio mics, Lake LM26 and LM44 processing, Yamaha QL1, QL5 and CL5 mixing consoles, SD11, SD9 and SD8 consoles from DiGiCo and L-Acoustics Kiva and coaxial speakers.
‘It’s all about making the right purchasing decisions,’ Collett says. ‘I’m very ready to invest in more equipment if we need it, but I won’t stock anything that will just sit on the shelf. I am really excited by the opportunities ahead as we grow and develop the audio hire business. I know that we have a great range of fully serviced products and I’m confident that we can provide whatever our clients should need.’
