This has been one of the busiest weeks of my life. We decided to start a new project in the sanctuary of our church. For years we have been plagued with a little sound booth that sits so low you can’t get your legs under it and barely has enough room to put any of our sound equipment in. We bought a new computer over a year ago that was supposed to run our video on Sunday mornings, but unfortunately we could never use it because it wouldn’t fit on the sound booth. That has all changed now.
| Starting on Monday we began the process of tearing down the old sound booth. I had to mark all of my wires, make sure I knew where everything went on the Sound board, and then move all of the stuff. We took the old booth and gave it to the janitor who wanted to use it as an entertainment center in his house. Here is a picture of the raised platform after we took the sound booth out. As you can see we sat on a little raised platform that our chairs barely fit on. Many of us have had the experience of our chairs falling off the back of the platform causing us to fall backwards. |
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On Tuesday they began the construction and by 5:00 p.m. they had the new platform, counter top, and the wall up. Here is another picture of the new sound booth. If you compare it to the picture above you can see that we took out two of the back pews and stretched the booth to fit all the way across the back instead of being to one side. This created a huge, nice working space for the Audio Visual team. It has small, locking doors on each side of the booth and is probably large enough to hold 3-5 people comfortably. I spent most of the day Tuesday preparing for youth on Wednesday so that I could spend my time on Wednesday to help with the sound booth. I did learn one important lesson…drilling holes in concrete is extremely loud! |
| On Wednesday the top piece of wood and the inside walls had to be stained. We began drilling holes, running electrical outlets, running wires, and doing whatever it took to get this project completed in less than a week. I spend my entire day working on this project and continued to do so until dinner time and youth that night. You can see from this picture the newly stained walls and oak top. Those are just a few of the many wires that needed to be run and of course this picture is a commercial for Diet Pepsi, the drink of choice while working all day. I also spent three and a half hours setting up a portable sound and video system for our Wednesday night children’s program since our normal system was out of commission. |
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Today, which is Thursday, we spent most of the day running wires and cutting holes in the counter top and wall to run more and more wires. I re-organized our wireless mic system and spent a large portion of my time working on sound equipment and setting the board back up. I also set up several surge protectors under the counter in order to give us more plug-in space on separate circuits. In this picture you can see the CAT5 board we ran all the wires through. It took a lot of time wiring this up, luckily I didn’t have to do that job. |
We didn’t quit working tonight until almost 7:00 p.m. There is still a lot to do to get this ready for Sunday. The carpet is supposed to be done tomorrow and I hope they finish painting the wall tomorrow as well. Then I have to get all of the stuff in racks that are supposed to come in tomorrow as well. I am also going to the city tomorrow to buy chairs, wires, and some other accessories that I need for the board.
I am looking forward to using it.
That looks nice (I’ve been meaning to say so on Michael’s blog — but I happened to be over here, so I shall say it here).
We have our A/V setup split on two sides of the choir loft — one side for the sound board, etc., and one for the computer, visual equipment, etc. I suppose putting them together has the big advantage that one person could easily operate it all, especially for smaller events when it isn’t so practical to have two people manning the equipment.
Of course, maybe I should be happy that it is the way it is. If we had a setup like yours, I’d have no excuse not to know how to run the sound.
Thanks Tim and yes one person can do it. It is not the beat option but it can be done. I have not done it since we went to the new configuration but it should still work. I will find out on Wednesday night.
Why did you terminate your sound wire on a telephone terminal block(66 M-150)?
That is the way it was done 15 years ago when they first put this system in place. We have plans to re-do the actual sound system in the near future, but until then they just put it back the way it was. I was perplexed by the whole ordeal.
I was dissapointed that the pictures did not show up. We are getting ready to move our booth from the “closet” over the stairway to a new location at the back of our sanctuary. I was hoping to get some additional ideas from your pics. Oh well.
Tim I will email you some before and after photos.
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