SOUND REINFORCEMENT

All,

A report for September 2, 2013

The sound of Ukuleles

The hot topic of this Board meeting will certainly be Uke New Jersey. Congrats to Scooter and the Board and the volunteers for seeing it through and putting on an energetic and enthusiastic show. The sound squad of Greg More, Larry Flanigan, Bob Safranek and Mike Agranoff were cheerfully flexible enough to roll through both days with barely a glitch. This was a new format with multiple sound systems handling the varying needs of many performers and video presentations. The result was a clean event. Thanks to all of the soundies for a job well done. All of the new faces at this festival got a good presentation.

Minstrel sound system:

Some changes are again in store for The Minstrel sound system. The Mix-Wizard console from The Sanctuary Concerts was installed into The Minstrel cabinet back in June while the Folk Project's Mix-Wizard went to Dave's Sound to repair a noisey channel 9. Since then The Sanctuary board has been developing a few intermittent problems in a couple of channels, which were heard this past weekend. The original Minstrel board has been repaired and in the next couple of weeks will be put back into the cabinet to allow the Sanctuary board to go in for repairs. The channel 9 problem with The Minstrel board was an offshoot of its power-supply problems from the end of last year. Simply, the ribbon cables near the back off the board are beginning to fail. In the near future we'll find a way to protect those from the weekly handling -- the act of moving the board to an inclined position often results in fingers getting a grip on a ridge behind the board through which the ribbon cables pass. This is causing stress on the soldered connections of those cables within the chassis.

The charge for this repair was $90. The entire console was cleaned and checked. The Sanctuary console will go through a similar routine soon to have two boards in working order available.

Other repairs included the replacement of all of the rubber swivel washers in the microphone stands. No longer should mic stands droop during a performance. The cost of these washers was $23.00

On a related note, my personal Mackie S808 eight-channel powered mixer has been completely overhauled and renewed by Dave's Sound. Every control, slider and connector is new or cleaned. This unit has been the monitor amp and work shop / dance sound system at recent festivals, while also doing house-concert duty.

Sound recruitment

New bodies in recent weeks have included musicians John Mahon and Toby Walker, the latter a relatively recent resident of Denville. Others are still in training or deciding. There were two interested candidates among the Uke crowd who would like to give it a try.

Upcoming Fall Festival

That sound team is in place: Greg More, Bob Safranek, Andrew Dunn and possibly one of the Uke crowd.

MUF Improvements:

Very little has moved forward with this discussion from the MUF end, which may be related to the plans for a rent increase and the resulting meetings since then.

Respectfully submitted,

Mike Del Vecchio