In a short space of time Brice's company has established itself on the city's late night circuit; venues he has fitted include the ultra chic Bar Pam Pam's in Clifton - which features a Denon DN-S9000 double CD/MP3 player, with platter jogwheel - along with other high-profile venues such as Zeebar, Bar Wash and Shadow Rooms. Brice won the contract at Brownstone having previously worked for the venue's owners, the fast-developing A3 Leisure; the venue has in turn been developed and operated by Rich Donaldson, who has quickly turned around the fortunes of the former Steamrock student venue with a 2am license.
Brice has been using Denon equipment since his DJ days, when he himself was resident at many of Bristol's leading venues. "I spent as much money on the Denon table-tops at Brownstone as I could within a limited budget," he explained. "It was important that we had a player with the Alpha Track facility, enabling DJs to access different tracks from the same CD simultaneously and mix them."
Also at Brownstone, Brice employed the newly-launched Martin Audio AQ architectural series, first previewed at the PLASA Show back in September. Brice has favoured Martin Audio enclosures since setting up his company, and now has many prime sites in Bristol using with all Martin loudspeakers supplied by Stroud-based dealers, CAV. With product support from Howard Williams at CAV, Brice designed the venue to enable a pair of the new Martin Audio AQ12s to replace the temporary front-facing Martin Wavefront W2s. Elsewhere, a pair of low-profile WTUBs, designed for front-fill, handle the vocal range, a Blackline S218, recessed into the concrete DJ booth, looks after the low frequencies and a series of tiny 5in ICT-principle EM15's cover the peripheral areas in the hard-surfaced rectangular room - stripped back to its original brickwork as part of an interior design makeover by Interaction.Brice has also installed Martin Audio at A3 Leisure's Bar Pam Pam, with a further pair of AQ12s added to the configuration. Again Mike Brice has built the rest of his design around a pair of WTUBs for front-fill in the main bar, this time using a combination of EM26s and EM15s to provide coverage throughout the multi-zone venue, which includes the stairwell and main bars/dancefloor. A pair of twin 10" EM150 ultra-compact subs provide the LF rumble, and the playback is routed and EQ'd by an Allen & Heath DR128.
(Lee Baldock)
