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John Henry’s Ltd Buys First PM5D from Marquee Audio
After flirting with Yamaha’s digital platform over the years, they have now jumped right in — purchasing their first PM5D from their preferred suppliers, Marquee Audio. The desk immediately took up residency on the set of Strictly Come Dancing filming at both TV Centre and the Blackpool Tower Ballroom, where Clive Goodwin was senior sound engineer (and Jim King mixed monitors).
Says JHL’s special projects manager, Pepin Clout, “We’ve used some of the smaller boards for some years now — the O3D, O1V and O2R’s. We contemplated buying a DM2000 — but it wasn’t quite right for our applications.” When they received the preliminary spec on the PM5D from Marquee Audio, however, all that changed.
“Marquee has supplied us for many years and has consistently proved to be one of the most helpful sales companies in terms of support.”
JHL initially took a console on approval, which in addition to Strictly Come Dancing went onto the Shooting Stars Hospice fundraiser ball at the Dorchester and the Graham Norton Sound of Music special. That’s all it took to convince them.
“This desk is perfect for the Strictly Come Dancing type of show,” states JHL’s Robert Harding, who project managed the TV shows’ sound design, “There we have multiple inputs – 24 personal microphones, two presenter microphones plus back-ups, along with track, VT and live band feeds with up to 13 separate output mix zones. We find that with 48 analogue inputs to start with it’s fine for most applications. The control surface is very user-friendly, the display is big enough to be easy to read and with its inbuilt effects, dynamics and memory saving facility it offers the extra flexibility that our projects demand.”
Pepin adds that the Dorchester Ball was a classic example of where the desk’s lack of real estate came into its own. “We were given a small footprint on which to work, so we used everything in the desk, and no outboard at all.
“The PM5D goes much further than other boards we have auditioned — in fact on Sound of Music we used it as a full-blown monitor board and will be doing the same on the Later Hootenanny with Natasha Bedingfield.
“Everywhere we’ve taken it we’ve had a good response from technicians and clients alike. Radio 1 liked it very much when we used it on a recent live session with three bands playing back to back.”
After finishing on Strictly Come Dancing the PM5D moves immediately to another show spawned by the hit series — Strictly Come Ice Dancing at Pinewood Studios — and then onto another new show, Can’t Sing Singers.
In picture: two PM5D’s set up at the Tower Ballroom, Blackpool with Jim King at the monitor mixing position.
16th December 2004
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