The Audio guy's personal Tech Kit

I have been working on a show this past week with a couple of good Audio tech's and curiosity got the best of me about what they carry in their tech kits.

For those of you that aren't in the business, What I am referring to as a "Tech Kit" is all of the gadgets that you would bring to a show to help you do your job, basically the way you want to do it. 

The company you are working for brings the main equipment, but there are always things to bring to make your life better. A good example would be a good pair of headphones. The company might bring a set of cheap headphones in their audio work box, but as the A-1 or A-2, you are going to want to have your own good set. 

Tech kit's develop over many years in the business. Young guys in the business start out carrying a messenger bag or a backpack. And that works just fine for a while. Right up until you start bringing smaller pieces of equipment with you, that just don't fit well in a messenger bag. The process then becomes, you carry a messenger bag and throw those other things in your suitcase. Eventually you will be walking through an airport and see one of your colleagues rolling a Pelican 1510 or a Pelican 1560 through baggage claim. You might ask them, "what's in the case?" and when they tell you it is just my tech kit, you realize that the backpack you are carrying that is about to rip your shoulders off, just might not be the most efficient way to do this anymore. 

You will go and buy yourself a Pelican, SKB, or Storm Case and empty your backpack into it. Then and only then, you realize that you don't have enough stuff to really justify the size of the case you bought. 

So, you start adding stuff to it. This process goes on for months if not years. Eventually you hone down your tech kit to the right case, with the right tools and gadgets. Then you see someone else's tech kit and they have something supercool and probably expensive in it, and you want it in yours too. 

So, the more of this story is, that with time and experience comes a pretty cool tech kit, that never seems to be completed, but is always pushing itself closer to the mark of being what you really need on a show.

With that, I thought I would post what I am carrying in my tech kit. For a while now, I have had my tech kit in a SKB iSeries case because it was just a little bit bigger than the case I really wanted to have it in. Last night however, I figured out a way to put it in the Pelican 1510 that I wanted to have it in, and I will see how that works out for me. The SKB and Pelican 1510 are essentially the same case, the only difference is that the SKB case doesn't have a handle on the top of it, just the side. This is a huge fail and while you might not think it is a problem, this one little handle really makes a huge difference in the ergonomics of using this case. 

Inside the case, I have the padded divider bottom and the lid organizer and:

2 Marantz PMD 660 Audio Recorders
Cables for Recorders (The cables, adapters, and power supplies for the recorders are in a little pouch)
2 Dsan Laptop Sound port DI's
Pelican 2360 LED Flashlight
Gerber Diesel Multiplier (this isn't my favorite tool, but I liked it cuz it was black)
Nite Ize Pock-its Belt case for flashlight and tools
1 Leica Disto A2
1 Shure Mic Bag with Sharpies, C-Wrench, Pencil Screwdriver, Blue LED Flashlight Spare Gerber Multi-Tool (Gerber Method)
1 Shure Mic Bag with 10' 1/8" stereo to Mono 1/4" plug cable
1 Shure Mic Bag with DBX Reference Mic, Clip, and USB cable for Digi-design USB interface
1 DigiDesign Mbox 2
1 Pair of Sony MDR-7506 Headphones
1 Whirlwind Q-box
1 USB Passive Hub
1 Display port - VGA Adapter
1 Micro VGA Test Generator 

1 Box of Breath mints
1 Organizer of Misc Audio adapters
1 Back up Flashlight (Pelican 1900)

2011 so far.....

I have decided to move to the Phoenix area. After I got back from the east coast from getting stranded there during the holidays, I started packing up my belongings. I put a trailer hitch on the Jeep and rented a small trailer. then I drove a load of stuff down to Arizona and started working. I have about 16 days of show this month not counting shop time, so that is a really positive thing.

This past week was spent in the shop with a couple of hundred feet of 1" steel tube cutting, welding and grinding away. Jonny and I had to build three foot by three foot cube frames. Once they were built and all the welds had been ground smooth, we sent them off to be powder coated. 

Jonny and I cut 20 pieces of plywood and painted them white. and then when the cubes got back from powder coating, we had to cut and attach wood strips to the insides of the cubes. We cut white spandex into strips, and wrapped the cubes with the spandex and stapled them onto the wood strips. 

The final product ended up being ten 3' x 3' cubes wrapped in spandex and we will put a LED light fixture in the bottom of it and light it from the inside with different colors.

It was a lot of work and we finished it up just in time to get them loaded on the truck and headed out to Palm Desert.

Saturday Morning, Audra took me to the airport at 5:00 am. I was going to park there, but she told me no and while I was completely willing to park my jeep there, I was pretty happy when she wouldn't take no for an answer!

My flight was on Delta and it left at 7:00 am and I landed in Atlanta around 12:00 noon or so.

I got my bag and took a taxi to the hotel and started setting up the show. 

One of my old friends from the Seattle days is the Director of Operations at this hotel and it was really cool to see him. He came down at the end of our setup day and brought a bottle of The Macallan 25 year old Scotch. That was a wonderful treat, and was very generous.

 There was a huge party at the hotel last night where 2500 people came in drinking and dancing till about 2:00 am. This translates into probably 1000 of those people  staying in the hotel and stumbling back to their rooms talking too loudly... banging on the wrong doors and screaming at each other down the length of the hallway at 2:30 in the morning. Needless to say pretty much all of us on the crew didn't get much sleep last night.

Fortunately the show didn't start until 2:00 pm today and while I am still feeling sleepy, it will end soon enough. Tomorrow is day two of the show and will most likely end around 3:00 pm. We will strike the show and then I am scheduled to get on a plane at 9:45 pm. 

I will land in Phoenix at midnight and then at 8:00 am on Tuesday morning, I will drive to Palm Desert and join a show that is in progress for the rest of the week.

America's Favorite Past Time

The show is in the truck and as Jonny said it in his Facebook post. Peace out Florida!
Yesterday the general session ended at 9:30 am and it was game on. We had about 20 people working to pack up all the equipment plus whatever Mike had on his lighting crew. So, you can imagine the energy in the air as all these people scurried around like a small army.
Once the stage was cleared, the lighting truss came down and the set was unbolted.
It was a pretty fast strike, and just about everything was pretty much in it's case around noon.
We pushed the gear that was ready down to the truck and they started loading it. The 11 breakout rooms were still going and finally they ended, so a crew of guys went on to strike them. Meanwhile our AV sub rental vendors showed up, so we had to rush and get all of their equipment ready to go. When the break out rooms were struck and the equipment started rolling into the ballroom, I started sorting it and putting it back where it belonged. Front of House cables in this case... PCS Microphones in that case...  wait.. where did that EQ case go? ""Will someone go get it off the elevator, it wasn't supposed to go until it was full."
It was good work though. I have no doubt that as the show gets unpacked at the shop in Phoenix, there will be a lot of cables that didn't make it exactly where they were supposed to go.
We finally had sent everything down to the truck that was ready to go, and now we had to wait for the two last rooms to finish. About 6:15 they broke and in about 40 minutes we had struck them and were rolling the equipment to the truck. When we closed the doors on the truck in Phoenix, Eric said that he thought this truck was the most packed truck he had ever sent out. When we loaded it this time, we disassembled some scaffolding and tightened it up even more. This was because we wanted to get 22 more cases on the truck. All of the projectors that were rented out of Houston had been shipped out to Orlando at a big expense. So, if we could pack the truck tighter and get the Projectors on the tail, Jonny could stop in Houston and save some money. It was very difficult to figure out how to put the last pieces of this puzzle together. It was like we had 10 feet of truck left, and 12 feet of equipment to put in there.
We finally got it to all fit, and closed the doors to the truck.
A few of us staggered over to Blue Zoo to meet a few of the guys for a drink, and that was nice, but all of a sudden my body said "Stop sitting here and get some food and then go directly to bed" Fortunately I had the common sense to listen to it. Evan, Allen, Jonny and I went over to "The Fountain" restaurant, and I got a bowl of chicken noodle soup. While I hadn't really eaten much all day, I was so tired, I just didn't feel like I could eat much of anything. The soup was good, and at the end of that, I went back over to Blue Zoo to say goodbye to the guys.
I went back to my room and packed, and then fell into bed exhausted around 11:00 pm. I set my alarm for 4:00 am and then called the front desk for two wake up calls.
This morning, Jay, Eric, Allen and I shared a van ride to the airport and got on a plane headed for Phoenix. I feel right asleep once I got on the plane, and have no recollection of us pulling away from the gate or taking off. I woke up about two hours into the flight.... Flying coach is no fun. US Airways isn't horrible, but when I fly United, most of the time I get the upgrade to First Class. Even when I don't get the upgrade, there is Economy Plus Seating which gives you an extra 5 inches of leg room and it just doesn't feel so crowded.
On the positive side, US Airways has Wifi available on the plane. I am currently writing this little story at 35,000 feet or somewhere way up here.
In a few hours, Allen and I land in Phoenix. We will relax at Eric and Audra's today and tomorrow hop in the Jeep and drive back to Folsom. It has been a solid month since either of us have been home, and I am really looking forward to being able to get home.

There was really something special about this show. First of all, I have to say thank you to Rick for having me on it. We basically just rocked out the AV for America's Favorite Past time.  It is pretty cool when you get the chance to be involved in something as big and as cool as this is.
Rick has over time put together a very cool team of people. When we first see each other, we greet each other with big hugs and it is always really good to see each other. Not many people would say in their lives that they were really excited to see their coworkers. Even our clients comment on this. Our MLB client mentioned that she thought it was pretty cool that we all hugged each other.
I also want to say a special thank you to Eric for bringing Allen and I down to Phoenix and giving us a months worth of work, putting us up at his house and feeding us Chili Cheese Coney hot dogs with  Jalapeno peppers at 9:00 am in the morning for breakfast. It has been a great month full of laughs and hard honest work. Lastly, thank you to Audra Gilbert. Eric's wife Audra is amazing. She takes amazing care of us throughout all of this madness. Home cooked meals, rides to the airport... Rides from the airport. Audra is a wonderful host and she and Eric have become close friends.

Major League Work

I am working on a show in Orlando for Major League Baseball. While it is a nice change from all the Pharma work that I normally do, it is a massive show and that means a massive amount of work.

For the last three weeks, I have been working in Phoenix at my friend Eric's shop prepping gear, doing little shows here and there in the Phoenix area, and getting the shop ready to make this show happen. About 1400 feet of 1' x 2' steel was purchased in 20' and 24' lengths, and three of us made an assembly line. I measured and cut the steel, Jonny welded it into frames that were 10' x 4' and 8' x 4' with 2' blocks in the center. Once they were cut and welded, Allen ground all the welds smooth. 

Then we had to drill holes in strategic places to connect the pieces to each other, and build carts for all of it to ride in. Once all of that was done, which took about 3 straight days, we had to build a podium to match and a table.

We set up some lighting truss out in the parking lot and flew a couple of test pieces of the set to make sure that it was all going to work.

 All of the steel went to a powder coating company, and a couple of days later, we picked it up and continued to to build on the set. We had to rip pieces of wood into 1" wide strips and attach them all around each set piece and inside the podium. In the midst of all of this construction, emails are flying through cyberspace changing the big picture plan all around us. Equipment was being purchased. Gear was being rented like mad. Eric, Jonny, Allen and I were pulling the show, labeling equipment, packing stuff in cases, and getting all of this madness ready to be loaded onto a 53' semi truck. While Allen and I were building stuff at one of the shops, about 200 feet away, Eric and Jonny loaded the tractor trailer. The load was packed floor to ceiling, front to back, and there really wasn't a bit of room left in the truck when we closed the doors. 

We had a nice BBQ at Eric and Audra's house with some good friends, and then Jonny left around 5:00 am in the truck and drove for the next 4 days across the country to Orlando. Allen, Eric and I all flew to Florida, and on Friday morning, at 7:00 am, the truck doors were opened and the set was rolled into the ballroom and assembly was started. we worked for about 2 hours on the set and got a good jump on getting it together when the rest of the crew arrived, and we all started to unload the rest of the truck. This seemed like it took forever and was a tremendous amount of work because there was so much equipment in the truck. The push from the truck to the elevator and from the elevator to the ballroom was pretty long, so everyone was pretty tired by the time everything was offloaded.

We divided into teams and everyone worked very hard putting all of the pieces of this huge show together. We had about 40 people working like ants moving equipment around and unpacking cases. It is always exciting to see how a truckload of boxes comes to life and through the talent of many diverse technicians, it grows into something so large, you would never believe that it came out of road cases.

Through out the day, the lighting, audio, video all flew up in the air on lighting trusses, as well as our creation, the set.

Once, the entire set was hung from the lighting truss, long sheets of vinyl were stapled to the frames and stretched tight.

When it all finally was put together, and lights were focused, video projectors were aligned, the set came alive.

Photo: Courtesy of Mike Steighner

While it would seem like that is entirely enough work for anyone to do, the main ballroom is only a portion of this project.

The following day we started on the break out rooms. We have 11 rooms with full audio, and video systems that have to be put together. We spent the entire day scurrying around with a ton of gear and about 16 people setting up these 11 rooms.

The setup day we worked about 13 hours, day 2 was about the same, and today we finished up the breakout rooms and had rehearsals going all day and most of the evening. Today was about 13 hours as well. Evan and I ran around the entire day from room to room and floor to floor troubleshooting problems, delivering cables and equipment to technicians and fielding questions from clients. I am pretty exhausted and tomorrow will start the first official day of meetings for this show.

It is a great feeling to work with a world class crew and be able to be a part of something so enormous.

More to come......

Scottsdale, AZ

The alarm went off and it was very difficult to get out of bed. I finally did and finished packing, hopped in the car with Allen and back to the airport. No problems with my flights and Eric picked us up at the airport. We went to the hotel in Scottsdale and picked up Larry and went to a great place and had a fabulous dinner with Eric and Audra.
On Sunday morning, we loaded into the ballroom around 9:00 am and pretty much set the ballroom and breakout rooms by around 3:00 pm. It was great working with the crew and everything went very smoothly. It helps when you have good people and good gear.


A drink and an appetizer with Larry, Dan Kathy and Allen at the hotel bar, and I went back to the room to get a good nights rest.
This morning, Allen and I got up and drove off property for an Egg McMuffin and then back for a 9:00 am start. All morning we have had very low key rehearsals and everyone seems happy with the support we are giving them.
We will have a quick lunch soon and then back to the ballroom for a 2:00 pm start.

Prague and then Home

Austin and I landed in Prague and there were a couple of drivers there to pick us up.

I got to the hotel and Rick was standing there in the lobby waiting for me. It was great to see him. I checked in and dumped my luggage in the room and joined Rick, Miles, Priti and Elaine for breakfast. Evan and Tom had gotten delayed coming out of Moscow and missed their flights in London. After we got done eating, I went up to the meeting room and joined Andrea and Stephan who were already starting to setup the equipment. After working for most of the afternoon I was about 90% done and at a stand-still till the room was finished being set by the hotel. I was really dragging by then, and decided to go and take a nap so that I could have some energy for dinner.

When I came back down to the room a couple of hours later, Evan was there and was already half finished with the work that I had left to do. That was a nice surprise. We finished up and met down in the hotel bar for a drink before dinner. I could see that no one was in a real rush to go eat, and finally Rick, Tom and I bailed from the group to go get some food. 

We walked to the historic square which was pretty close to the hotel. Tom hadn't been to Prague before but has traveled extensively and I am sure he was tired of Rick and I telling him how cool everything was. We strolled around and found a little Czech place to eat and had a nice quiet dinner. Afterwards, we walked over to the Charles Bridge and walked across to take in the views. It was really nice and not crowded at all. I was feeling great because of my little afternoon nap, but didn't want to push it, so we went back to the hotel and I got a good nights rest. 

Call was at 7:00 am and the show started at 8:30 am. It was a short day and ended around 12:30. we grabbed some lunch and then went to help Andrea and Stephan strike the gear and load it into the truck. By this time, we were all pretty tired and after a farewell drink with Andrea, I went back to my room for another nap. 

It was really hard to get up from this nap, but I did, and we all met in the lobby to head to dinner at our favorite restaurant in Prague called "Cartouche"

It is a medieval restaurant in the basement of an old building and there are rough cut timber tables, brick walls, a huge wood fired oven where your food gets cooked, and about 80 percent of the restaurant is lit by candle light. They keep replacing the candles and never disturb the wax, so there is this beautiful mound of wax that has dripped off each candle placement. It is such a great restaurant and the food is outstanding. We all got huge platters of meat for entrees. Rick and I shared the medieval meet platter and ate until we were sick. At the end of the meal, I had this amazing desert of cheesecake and vanilla ice cream over warm strawberries with hardened caramel on top. It was just ridiculously good, and at the end of the meal we had a great conversation about a plan to replace some equipment that we needed.

We walked around the square and did a little shopping while Evan and Tom snapped some photos. I had decided that I needed to be back at the hotel by 11:00 pm because I had a very early departure from the hotel in the morning. We all met back at the hotel for a drink and I got to say goodbye to Miles and Priti as well as the rest of the boys. I went up to my room about midnight and packed my luggage. I had developed a pretty painful headache in the last 15 minute and was glad to be able to get into bed.

The alarm went off at 3:15 am and I was pretty confused as to what that annoying sound was. At the same time the phone started ringing and I got up to try and make it all stop. Then the clouds started lifting and I realized what was happening, shut the phone off.. took the wake up call, and then got ready to go. My driver was waiting for me and gave me a quick trip to the airport. At 4:00 in the morning, it only took about 15 minutes to get there, and I checked in and got a quick bite to eat. 

The flight to Frankfurt was pretty quick… it only took an hour and fifteen minutes or so, and then I had about a 5 hour lay over. I went to the Lufthansa club, and got a couple of free cokes, and then wandered the terminal a bit. I plopped down somewhere and watched the movie Avatar to kill some time. Just before I boarded the flight from Frankfurt to Washington DC, I went and got a little Pizza and wolfed it down. The food on the plane wasn't going to be that good, and I figured if I could just get on board and get to sleep, it would be the best thing I could do.

I was successful and woke up with only about an hour left on the flight, and I felt pretty refreshed. When I got off the plane and went towards Customs and Immigration, it was really crowded and as I turned the corner, I could see I was towards the back of the line behind what was about 1000 people. The Customs staff were doing a very poor job of getting people where they needed to go and kept saying that the line was moving pretty quickly. They only had six Immigration officers in the booths and long story short… it took almost 2 hours to get through. I had plenty of time though, so it was nice to not have to stress. My flight to Sacramento left on time, and I landed, got my bags took the shuttle to the economy parking lot and got home around 11:30 pm. 28 hours and 41 minutes since I left the hotel in Prague, I threw my clothes from this trip in the laundry and went to bed because I have a 2:00 pm flight tomorrow to Phoenix for another show. And this is Life In The Corporate Theater.

The show in Moscow

The good news was the group that was in our room finished early so we got access to the room at about 5:00 pm. Evan called Maria our AV contact and she told us that the crew was not going to be able to get there before 7:00 pm. We asked her if we could start setting up without them, and we were told no.
In the mean time, one of the Doctors who was supposed to be the trainer for the meeting first thing in the morning, called in to inform everyone that the Airport in Tel Aviv had gone on strike, and that he wasn't sure if he was going to be able to get on a flight. So, we had to work out a solution using Skype to video conference him in and still get his presentation to the attendees.
We went to a computer store and picked up some speakers and a web cam and did a test with skype. It all worked just fine. Even though we were struggling with the AV Equipment side of things, the one thing that was really good in Moscow was the bandwith at the hotel. There was 15MB Download and 17 MB Upload. So it was a really fast connection and skype looked great!

We waited around till 7:00 pm and checked in with Maria. The crew was stuck in traffic. Big surprise....
8:00 pm rolled around and no sign of the crew. Evan told Maria, we were going to start setting up without them, and to please get the hotel to unlock the room with the equipment.
She agreed, and about 30 minutes later, we finally started getting some equipment.
Just after 9:00 pm, over two hours late, the crew started showing up. The setup went pretty well though. All of the changes that we had asked for had been made, and we ended up with close to the right tools to do the job. We finished about 11:00 pm and said good night to the crew.

The next morning, everything went well... the show started at 1:00 pm and finished about 45 minutes early.
I went back to my room and took a 30 minute nap. It was really hard to get out of bed to meet the guys for a little photo excursion, but how often are you in Moscow Russia right?

We walked down to Red Square and started getting ready to shoot some photos. I immediately got stopped by the Russian Police for using a tripod in Red Square. Apparently you have to have a permit to use a tripod there. So we walked on and shot out of our hands.



After about 45 minutes of shooting and walking down to the river past the Kremlin, we were all starving and went back to a cafe in Red Square.
After we got a bite to eat, it was dark and as we walked through Red Square, there was a guy shooting photos with a tripod, so we decided to take a chance and get a shot.
I walked out to the middle of the square and extended the legs of my tripod, put the camera up on it and was just about to take my first shot, when I heard vehicles reving up and turned around to see the cops...two of them in two different police cars racing in my direction from each side of the square.
I quickly and as discreetly as I could, popped the camera off the tripod and started heading for the exit, doing my best to make it look like I was just holding the tripod and not using it to shoot photos.
Evan had rushed over and we both thought it best to double time it into the crowd and try to get lost. The cops drove past us and went over and started yelling at the other guy we had seen with his tripod.
My heart was racing a bit, and I think I dodged a bullet.

Evan and I jumped in a cab and went back to TGI Fridays for a drink, and then an early bedtime because we all had early car service to the airport.