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Fuzion Make Lucky Strike in Gloucester
The £4.2m multi-zone rebuild of the 500-capacity venue includes an American Pool area, Café Bar and three interlinked conference facilities — in addition to the lanes themselves. It operates from 10am until midnight seven days a week.
And when Kevin Hughes’ Technation (UK) Ltd successfully tendered for the sound and vision element of the rebuild, he decided to break from the company’s traditional speaker brand and use Nexo PS 10’s for the first time.
Kevin explains: “While I was familiar with the Nexo PS range I had never installed it before. I was determined to measure all the specs alongside the brand they had been using previously. I looked at dispersion pattern and SPL’s, and there was no comparison. The PS10’s were ideal and I’m delighted with the results. I particularly like the size of the box measured against the output power — and the dispersion is spot on. Because it’s a rotatable horn we were able to fly them horizontally to provide even coverage across all 26 lanes.”
In fact, Technation ended up shopping extensively from Fuzion plc — the Nexo distributors — adding to the six PS10’s and LS500 sub multiples of t&m Systems’ SA800 and SA450 amplifiers, and an Australian Monitor AMIS 120P to power the small 100V line system in the service area.
For Kevin Hughes, Tenpin represents much more than amplifying sound effects among the clattering of bowling balls. For at the press of a button this automated environment can switch to the highly-charged, DJ-driven ‘Cosmic Bowl’ feature, when full AV and FX lighting comes into play: the UV and LED colour-change effects mix it with the powerful scanner beams, cutting through smoke that billows out across the lanes as the DJs interact with the customers.
To simulate the effect of a full-on dance environment the highly-specified DJ front-end can now pump up the volume through loudspeakers with a strong nightclub pedigree.
According to Kevin Hughes, that was very much the intention all along. “The hierarchy in this company have come from a nightclub background and the quality of the sound had to reflect that,” he explains. “There is plenty of headroom in the system and we have been careful to set the correct thresholds. The PS10’s are run flat, just allowing the PS10 system controller to do its bit.” And while the SPL is set fairly high over the lanes, the usual paging mic overrides automatically duck the system so that announcements can be heard clearly.
While the PS10’s are powered by three t&m SA800 amplifiers, the five SA450’s address the attractive ceiling speakers, which cover all the peripheral areas.
DMX Music have ‘personalised’ the venue, supplying the audio and visual content via hard disk. The latter includes the venue’s own station ‘Tenpin TV’ while also showing on the plasma displays and LCD monitors are Freeview and VHS sources.
General manager Stafford Scally is delighted with new-look venue, which was conceived by experienced leisure industry designer, Peter Shacklady, of Bignell Shacklady Ewing. “The technology has brought us into a new era; we felt we were advanced before but the sound quality is now far better, and we have more lighting and effects.”
The company has 39 Bowls, and in terms of design, the Gloucester model is expected to point the way to the future.
In picture: PS10’s over the lanes
9th December 2004
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