More than 100 people turned up to the centrally-located Ricoh Arena in Coventry, including visitors from as far away as Belfast and Glasgow, Wigan and the West Country. Sean Maxwell's eight-person team from Shuttlesound was supported by an all-star cast of presenters including Bill Gelow, EV's head of engineering, Joseph Plager, EV's head of amplifier development, Alex Cooper, the director of console development for Midas, and Shuttlesound's own project design and support specialist David Howe.
With Midas' flagship XL8 digital console at front-of-house, there were demos of all three line-array designs in EV's Compact categories; XLC, XLD and XLE. All three were flown from Trabes Lift towers, alongside a groundstack of XLD. Demo systems were powered by EV's new Tour Grade amplifiers, and featured a range of subwoofer models. Shuttlesound's Jason Kelly and David Howe, the production managers for the event, were assisted by Phil Jameson and Steve Galland from LeisureTech in Wigan, who dressed the room and provided lighting and projection.
"We've had a very successful debut," said Shuttlesound sales director Sean Maxwell, "and I now feel confident we can make this a regular conference for existing and potential customers.We wanted to focus on all three of the brands that we distribute - EV, Midas and KT - and to show the results of the investment by Bosch over the last two years; how that has borne fruit in terms of product design and availability, and customer service."
(Jim Evans)
