Members lifeloverwg Posted September 18, 2012 Members Share Posted September 18, 2012 Some of you will recall I was taking a PA to Burning Man this year for the theme camp I was involved with and I thought I'd give you a look at how it worked out. Our camp was called The 7 Deadly Gins and we served gin & tonics daily from 4 - 6 PM or until the days allotment of 2 cases of Bombay Sapphire ran out. Our camp had 24 members from all over the US, UK, New Zealand and Australia. Different people brought different elements of the camp and many of us had never met each other prior to arrival. Our bar was meant to have an end of the British Empire lost colonial oasis feel to it and it all came together splendidly. ' alt='>'> Here's a shot of the bar just before we opened one day later on in the week. The dust is starting to build up, but it still looks good. Between the two sections of bar you can see the single TH-Mini I took for the low end. It's covered with a sewn together canvas cover my wife made for it and has stenciling and rope tied around it as part of the decor theme. Behind the bar on either side you can see the two coaxial monitors I used for mains hanging from the dome in black cargo netting bags. ' alt='>'> Here's the line out front waiting to have their ID's checked on Tutu Tuesday. Yes, even at Burning Man you have to check for ID unless you want to risk getting shut down and paying a very stiff fine for serving minors.... It makes it a lot more fun when the doorperson is wearing pasties though. ' alt='>'> Another camp member was responsible for bringing playlists for the bar, but he quickly had his friends offering to DJ when they saw and heard how great the bar and PA was. As you can see, their view was generally very nice. Both of the guest DJs were excellent and never drove anything into the red! No, really! Under the open laptop on the far right is the box I built to house the mixer, crossover and amps. It had a furnace filter on the back to filter out most of the dust and a foam covered open grill on the front, but I need to add an additional fan in the future as the Carvin amp driving the mains did go into thermal protect once on the hottest day of the week. The PLX 1202 that was bridged into the TH-Mini was working harder, but never hiccuped. We ran it with the front opened up for the rest of that day and I pulled the mixer out that night so I could rearrange things to put more space between the other components for the rest of the week. The six people in my group who camped and cooked together all went in on buying a new true sine wave 2000 watt generator to run the PA which worked out really well and it will come in handy in the future. ' alt='>'> It was the first year at Burningman for this guy who built all the breakdown bars, benches and couches that were in our dome. He made sure the bars were strong enough to support dancers and couldn't keep that grin off his face all week as he enjoyed the many juicy fruits of his labors. ' alt='>'> Dust, what dust? I bought a used Peavey SMR 821 rack mixer off of Ebay to take, but when I hooked everything up two days before leaving, it wouldn't pass signal.... Our church has had a little Behringer 602 rattling around for a few years doing nothing because it didn't have a power supply. I looked at getting a new supply overnighted, but it didn't make sense to pay more than half the cost of a new mixer for that, so I went and bought a new Xenyx 802 and took the old Eurorack mixer for a backup. It came in handy, as the new Behringer quit passing signal to LR after the second day. Otherwise, the only glitches I had was the Carvin amp kept not wanting to accept signal on one channel if the TRS was all the way in so I had to jiggle it just so every day when starting up. Otherwise, the PA was perfect for the space as it got plenty loud but not so loud that you had to shout at people and everyone raved at how clean and nice it sounded. At Burning Man there are plenty of high quality systems at the big dance club camps, but most of the smaller systems tend to be low end gear driven beyond it's capabilities. Another excellent time was had and we plan on doing the bar again next year. There are more pictures for anyone interested at our public facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/?ref=tn_tnmn#!/The7DeadlyGins Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members agedhorse Posted September 18, 2012 Members Share Posted September 18, 2012 Very cool. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Rbts Posted September 18, 2012 Members Share Posted September 18, 2012 Yea - totally cool. (The pictures confirmed what I suspected -chicks look better in tutus than dudes do.) Sounds like you ended up with a Honda EU 2000 generator? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members lifeloverwg Posted September 19, 2012 Author Members Share Posted September 19, 2012 Yea - totally cool. (The pictures confirmed what I suspected -chicks look better in tutus than dudes do.)Sounds like you ended up with a Honda EU 2000 generator? No, would have liked to but we went with the CPE from Costco. Cost just under $500 before tax and ran like a champ, but we'll have to wait and see how it holds up long term. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members stangconv Posted September 19, 2012 Members Share Posted September 19, 2012 I just heard of burning man like a week ago.... Now I really want to go. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members scharris_99 Posted September 19, 2012 Members Share Posted September 19, 2012 Awesome! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Bugzie Posted September 19, 2012 Members Share Posted September 19, 2012 That must have been one hell of a good time. I'm way to anal about equiptment to deal with that dust. Ack! Amazing setup though. I can't imagine the organization required to pull that off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members lifeloverwg Posted September 19, 2012 Author Members Share Posted September 19, 2012 That must have been one hell of a good time. I'm way to anal about equiptment to deal with that dust. Ack! Amazing setup though. I can't imagine the organization required to pull that off. Yeah, I was a bit concerned about taking good gear out there, but I'd been before so I knew what I was getting into and took what I thought were reasonable precautions. After I got home and unpacked the trailer, I took the TH-Mini out of it's canvas cover and barely had to wipe any dust off of it. My wife and her band actually own much of the gear I took, and one of the members wasn't very onboard with the notion of me taking their very nice monitors out there to use as mains. So instead, I borrowed two from my friend who reps the drivers in the US. He wasn't concerned with the possible dust as they were his older version monitors and they have been to many dirty dusty outdoor shows in the west through the years. They needed more of a wipe down than the sub, but looked the same as when I got them when they were returned to him. The amps and crossover in the box got surface dust on them, but when I opened up the cover on the Carvin to see what might have built up inside of it, I found it to be almost perfectly clean inside. The fan had some dust stuck to it, but hardly any was inside. The fact that I was pulling the cooling air through a furnace filter definately helped. The mixer was supposed to be a rack mount one inside the box, and the $70 replacement Behringer started out inside but it had to move when I rearranged the rack for better cooling, hence it's being gaffed up to block dust from falling into it's unused jacks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Telecruiser Posted September 19, 2012 Members Share Posted September 19, 2012 Nice chi chi's on those gals. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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