For this year’s Buffalo Chip Music Festival, held during the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota, Sure Sound & Lighting came up with a unique combination for the main PA rig: Lab.gruppen Powered Loudspeaker Management systems driving a new design of line array cabinets from Renkus-Heinz. “The [Versys] VLX3 arrays fly very easily and, with external PLM amps, the load-in was a lot easier,” says Grant Stramel, Sure Sound’s lead system engineer. “Last year we used the self-powered Renkus-Heinz STXLA/9 line array. But, with the type of weather we get here in Sturgis, when it rains it’s a major advantage to simply throw a tarpaulin over a rack of PLM amps rather than climb the array and cover the [integrated] amps.”
Visiting sound engineers at the music festival were very happy with the combination. “We just plugged in and went for it,” says Steve Cross, who mixed FOH for Kid Rock. “I’m a big fan of Lab.gruppen amplifiers; it was a great experience.”
“The Lab PLMs are the next step in amplification,” says Greg Price, who handled FOH for ZZ Top. “I’ve two must-haves: A Digidesign Venue D-Show console; and Lab.gruppen amps with Dolby Lake processing – it really does improve managing a sound system. The EQ is superb.”
”The system did me well,” recalls Randy Meullier, who mixed FOH for Alice Cooper. “It was a very comfortable mix! Having Lab.gruppen PLM amplifiers – which offer a lot of ‘punch’ – makes a lot of sense, since we can trouble-shoot stage-mounted racks easier than with flown systems.”
Carl Devino was at FOH for Foghat: “Being an old-school guitar band, Foghat needs a lot of mid-range presence to relay that sound of wide-open Marshalls. I’ve always been a big fan of Renkus-Heinz’ horns; they are accurate and very smooth sounding, especially with the Lab.gruppen amps. The PA rig was real smooth even with no adjustments. We were very happy with the experience.”