The 300-capacity Pleasance Theatre stages drama, live music, dance and comedy throughout the year, as well as hosting lectures, conferences and film screenings. Both professional and amateur companies use it and, with the venue also rented out for performances during the Fringe, it's rare to step inside and not find something going on.
"The theatre had previously had been an empty space with some tabs, a few hemp bars and a 125a socket," says Tom Lawes of EUSA. "It was used by a variety of student societies to put on various shows and occasionally some in-house events. We bought the LS9-32 in preparation for redeveloping the theatre, which was mainly the installation of a technical infrastructure which would allow events to occur on a much more regular basis."
While waiting for the rest of the upgrade to take place, Lawes and the student union team used the console on shows in other venues.
"We started off using the desk mainly on rock and folk gigs and found the wealth of outboard within it was a great feature. I come from using the Yamaha Rev 500 and SPX 990 and found the effects were great and that there were so many options," he says. "I particularly found the recallable scenes to be a great time saver when dealing with multiple bands. One of the reasons we chose the LS9 was because of its reputation for reliability and it coped extremely well in the beer and sweat-soaked environment of those shows."
Since the Pleasance Theatre's refurbishment was completed the LS9 has taken up virtually permanent residence, being used for everything from a single microphone and some playback for a comedian, right through mixing a full orchestra and choir.
"We have found it to be very flexible when dealing with all the challenges that we have presented to it," notes Lawes. "Everything is very clean sounding and accurate, which is of especial benefit as you don't necessarily get the best representation of what is going on in the auditorium at the mix position. Using the monitoring functions of the desk I can trust what I hear in my headphones. We also do a lot of folk music so detail in sound is important and the desk transmits this well."
(Jim Evans)
