BUILDING AN A/V BRIDGE TO THE FUTURE

A/V Installer Muzeekworld Redesigns & Builds Expandable A/V System
For Community Church of Joy Youth Center & Gymnasium, The Bridge
Glendale, Arizona

Not every design and build project starts from the ground up. Take the case of the new youth center and gymnasium for the Community Church of Joy, a progressive exponent of the Lutheran church in Arizona.

According to installer Andy Frank of Muzeek World in San Juan Capistrano, 'the church had originally contracted out the design and build with another company. They'd already worked with the architects and done the drawings but the project came in over budget and the church had to find someone else.

Andy was a friend of one of the Pastors who called him to come in and see what could be done about the redesigning what had already been done. Looking over what was already underway, Frank recalls not being 'too thrilled about the design. We knew we could put in a real Ferrari-type system with Martin Audio line arrays and still save them a lot of money. So they ended up going with us and we had to inte-grate a really high end system into an existing design that had a lot of anomalies in it.'

The A/V installation was for The Bridge a large worship auditorium in the youth center named after the church's youth program measuring 90 feet wide by 60 feet deep with ceilings that were approximately 30 feet high. There was no stage in the original plan, so a custom stage was built us-ing Stage Right platforms. At the back of the stage, Frank and his team built a video back wall made from a custom Global Truss frame with two Da-Lite lace and grommet front projection video screens.

Asked about the speakers, Andy describes it as a 'left, center, right line array configuration of Martin W8LMs, On the left and right clusters, we used two W8LMs and two W8LMDs, while the center array had two W8LMs with one W8LMD, plus a total of four WLX sub-bass speakers.

'In terms of amplification, we went with Martin Audio MA 2.8S and 4.2S power amps with two Martin DX1 speaker con-trollers. We ran the FOH system with a Yamaha M7CL 48-channel digital console.

'Mixing for floor monitors and FOH is all done from FOH which is dead center on the floor in the back of the room. The room's only about 60 feet deep, so the throw from the edge of the stage to FOH is only about a 40 feet.

Continuing the gear breakdown, Frank adds, 'for greater flexibility, we went with custom snakes by Wireworks so we could drop audio channels wherever they needed them on stage. We also installed an Aviom system with A-16IIs and a rack of A-16 R's with Sennheiser wireless in-ear monitors. We also included six Mackie SRM450 powered speakers which can be used as floor wedges for more flexibility and up to six additional monitor mixes that are controlled from FOH.

A multipurpose 500-seat venue, The Bridge has been designed for special events, weekend worship services and for con-certs with national Christian rock bands. As Frank de-scribes it, 'The whole vibe of the room is large a concrete floor with lots of couches for seating and a an espresso bar and café over in the corner. They pull out all the chairs for concerts so kids can either move around the open floor or just sit on the floor. They also have six roll up garage doors around the room so they can open those and ex-tend the seating into an outdoor courtyard area. It's really cool and comfortable for everyone.'

Asked about the church's reaction to the new room, Andy en-thuses, 'they're trilled with the audio quality because the Martin Audio arrays are really a high end concert system capable of filling rooms of 2 or 3,000 people and this room is for 500. The church also built for the future by setting up the room so that the main wall behind the stage is framed dry wall so they can knock it down and expand an-other 30 or 40 feet back.

'We wanted to make sure we had an A/V system with a port-able stage and portable truss--the line arrays, all of it--so that when they expand they can move the entire system back with them and still be capable of filling the room no matter what distance it is.

'Honestly,' Frank concludes, 'I've been in Phoenix for 22 years and there is no other room that has the audio system this room has.'