Holy Trinity Brompton Road is the home of Alpha, a worldwide course which allows people to explore the big questions of life, and also the Worship Central movement founded by Tim Hughes, which places great emphasis on music in its endeavours. Holy Trinity Brompton Road has been using wireless microphone systems since a large-scale refurbishment in 2006, and the systems have gradually spread to the other churches in the group.
Four churches, including St Jude's in Courtfield Gardens, South Kensington, now the seat of the St Mellitus religious training college, belong to the HTB group, and have all been refurbished in recent years. SFL Group have been working with HTB for over a decade; initially they helped out with live hire kit for outdoor musical events, and then became involved in the project to regenerate the main church and its AV infrastructure at Brompton Road in 2006. Since then, they have also supplied advice and equipment when the other three sites in the group, Onslow Square, Queen's Gate, and Courtfield Gardens, were renovated in the years since.
"HTB used a mixture of wireless systems over the years," explains Tim Horton of SFL Group, "but whenever they did live events, they used the Shure PSM900 in-ears and UHF-R wireless mics from our hire stock, and grew to like it. When they upgraded their wireless kit in 2010 following the digital dividend, they brought their first PSM900 in-ear systems for Holy Trinity Brompton Road and Onslow Square, and they were going to buy UHF-R mics to mirror our systems - but Shure were talking about bringing out ULX-D at the time, so they waited.
"They were early adopters of ULX-D at Brompton Road, putting in four channels when it was released. The RF mics at Brompton Road are now entirely ULX-D, with the exception of one mic," adds HTB production coordinator Josh Fountain.
"Last year, we supplied HTB another four channels for Onslow Road," continues Tim Horton. "Together with Shure Distribution, we're currently looking at putting in Shure PlusChannels to control the wireless systems from iPads and iPhones, and supplying another set of ULX-D systems in this long-term installation."
"We're very proud to be involved with HTB at so many of their sites," comments John Ellis of Shure Distribution UK. "ULX-D is really put through its paces each week at HTB, because of the large role music plays there - less well-specified wireless systems would definitely struggle. We're delighted that the ULX-D systems are continuing to work well for them, and look forward to working closely with them on the refurbishment of their remaining sites."
(Jim Evans)
