It's the fifth year for Entec Lighting and the second year that Entec Sound have been involved at Guilfest. The departments provided sound and Lighting production services to the Radio 2 Main Stage and the Rock Sound Stage. The Lighting Department also installed a system into the Theatre Tent for the Howard Cragg's festival team to service.
Having taken delivery of their new d&b audiotechnik J-Series line array, Entec naturally used this for the main stage, where headliners included Embrace, A-Ha and Billy Idol. The system was designed by Stef Serpagli, and featured eight J8's and two J12 elements per side for the main arrays, neatly tucked in behind some elegant triangular shaped scrimmed PA towers. Together with twelve J-Subs, this produced a clean sound. Q7s were also utilised for in-fill and front-of-house delays, with Q10s providing out-fill.
d&b's Rope C remote control software was used by Serpagli to access and set levels, delays and EQ directly within the D12 amplifiers that powered the system.
Last year's main stage sound design (using the d&b Q1 line array) was a success in terms of containing the noise pollution, that this year the council increased the decibel allowance from 95 to 98 dB at FOH. The FOH set up included a Midas XL4 console. The rack contained a TC2290 delay, TCM2000 reverb, and a selection of classics including a Roland SDE 3000, a Lexicon PCM91 and Yamaha SPX990's.
Valve compressors included an Avalon 737 and a pair of Summit DCL 200 stereo channel devices. There were also 10 channels of dbx 160A compression, five Drawmer DS201 gates and the system rive/control was via three Lake Contours. The monitor set up used a Midas Heritage H3000 console, Entec's own APW wedges, Q-Subs for the drum fill and d&b C7 side fills. All were driven by Labgruppen amps with KT processors.
Main stage lighting was co-ordinated by Russell Matthews. Entec supplied a WholeHog II and expansion wing an Avolites Diamond 4 Elite console - all the headliners brought their own LDs - Dom Smith did Embrace, JoJo Tillmann for Ah-Ha and Brian Farris for Billy Idol.
With a 15 metre Orbit stage, space and headroom was fairly limited. To maximise every inch, they used three sections of jointed trusses for the front and back runs, which hinged down and followed the contours of the roof, with a straight run of truss for the middle position.
Matthews designed a rig with as much flexibility and latitude as possible. The moving lights of choice were Vari*Lites - 21 V*L 2500 Spots and 16 2402 washes. There were six Martin Atomic strobes, four JTE PixelLines on the mid truss, five 8-lights along the top of the front truss for audience blinders and six 2-lites at the back. Additional front truss key lighting was provided from six Source Fours. Four floor-mounted vertical lamp bars provided side-stage cross washes, which were great for the very neat illumination of people's faces. Two DF50 Hazers and Jem DMX Smoke Machines completed the look. The FOH mixer position housed three Strong 2K Super Trouper Followspots.
Niall Hannell ran the Rock Sound Cave which saw an array of punk and metal-orientated bands. Height restrictions didn't deter him, and four pre-rigged 8ft towers sat on the stage with scaff and truss strapped at every conceivable position to create shapes, angles and maximum impact. The towers themselves were fully loaded with Mac 700 Profiles, I-Pix Satellite LED fixtures, bars of 6 PAR cans, JTE PixelLine battens, ACL bars, source Four PARs and profiles, along with a handful of Martin Atomic Strobes. A starcloth roof completed the look.
The Rock Sound Stage was another d&b system, this time eight stacks of C4 and a pair of B2's & MAX in-fills provided ample coverage. The FOH co
