The independent Harry's Bar is owned by local entrepreneur Nino Ronzitti, who comes from Sicily. He initially contacted Steve Howe from Howie Design to come up with an eye-catching interior design for the club. CP Sound and Howie Design have collaborated on many memorable projects in the last few years, and Howie put CP's name forward for the audio and lighting designs, supply and installation.
Harry's Bar has two floors - a feeder bar downstairs and the main club up above, with a total capacity of 350. It's a well-proportioned environment which demanded fully flexible sound and lighting systems capable of dealing with all genres of music. CP Sound's Colin Pattenden specified a Cloud Zone 8 for audio distribution, situated in the amp room on the second floor and also used for downstairs. This also contains RSE amplification, used throughout, and an 110-disk CD player, for pre-DJ music any time up or down.
The main dancefloor sound system is JBL, a favourite of CP Sound, featuring the new JBL MP212 top cabinets with JBL MP 255 twin 15 inch bass bins. The secondary dancefloor areas upstairs also features JBL - this time it's Control 29 speakers and MS125 twin 15 inch bass bins. Further Control 29s - with remote volume control - are used for infill around the bar. For The upstairs DJ booth, Pattenden used an Allen & Heath Xone:62 mixer, two Pioneer CD players and Technics turntables and a Control 29 DJ monitor.
CP also did the upstairs lighting design, a scheme complementary to Howie's colourful interiors. The main dancefloor lighting - which benefits from a decent height ceiling for a small club - has 10 MAD QScans and four MAD QStars as its core fixtures. The secondary dancefloor also has four MAD QScans and four MAD QStars, plus a further two MADScans around the room for additional movement. All these are controlled by a MAD 1 controller in the DJ booth. Ten Optikinetics Solar 250 projectors are rigged to beam all around the upstairs walls, whilst on the secondary dancefloor are another four QScans and four QStars.
A giant three-metre high sculpted head of Zeus (King of the Gods) resides up in the eaves of the roof, and glows eerily when lit with MAD QColors. To add a touch of electrical theatricality, yellow and blue neon lightning bolts, made by Simply Neon and supplied by CP Sound, fire out of the top and bottom of the head. Near the bar resides another major set piece 'the hand of God', also with neon lightning shooting out of the fingers. CP Sound also supplied an NEC digital video projector and screen, a Panasonic DVD and a Super VHS recorder for upstairs.
The main dancefloor and secondary areas in the bar downstairs feature eight JBL Control 29 speakers, and two JBL MS125 twin 15 inch bass bins, and the secondary area downstairs has the same. Four small speakers are located in the pool table area, and both secondary and pool areas have individual remote volume controls. Kit in the downstairs DJ box is an exact replica of that upstairs. The room is architecturally lit with 11 Pulsar ChromaDome LED fixtures, controlled by a Pulsar MiniPiece. Effects lighting - four MAD QScans, four QStars - is run from a dedicated MAD 1 controller.
(Ruth Rossington)
