GC Pro Helps Burt Assembly of God After Devastating Fire

— GC Pro personnel in San Diego and Detroit teamed up to source a new sound system for the International Outreach & Training Center, an integral part of this house of worship in Burt, Michigan, and to act as the interface for the church with its insurance company’s claims adjuster —
WESTLAKE VILLAGE, CA, November 30, 2015 — When the Burt Assembly of God Church’s International Outreach & Training Center was heavily damaged by fire in 2014, the facility, located in Burt, Michigan, faced a devastating loss that also included the center’s music and sound systems. However, the loss was remedied, thanks to the national reach offered by Guitar Center Professional (GC Pro), the business-to-business (B2B) division of Guitar Center providing highly customized service for professional accounts.

GC Pro teams in San Diego, California, and Detroit, Michigan, acted as the interface between the church, still reeling from its loss, and the church’s insurance adjuster, assuring that the systems that needed to be replaced would benefit from the newest technologies and products. GC Pro analyzed the International Outreach & Training Center’s needs and specified a wide range of M.I. and pro audio systems and products, all of which were sourced through GC Pro’s massive inventory. These included a JBL PRX PA system powered by Crown amplifiers and mixed through a Soundcraft Si Expression 2 digital FOH console; Shure wired and wireless microphone systems; Pearl, DW and Zildjian percussion items; and other pro audio and M.I. products. The items were specified by the GC Pro San Diego office, which has had extensive experience dealing with insurance companies and adjustors and was able to help guide the church and the center through the difficult and often-confusing claims process. The eyes on the ground assessing the situation, and later the project manager for the installation of these products and systems, was the GC Pro Detroit office, which called upon HD2 Sound, a member of the GC Pro Affiliates Program, to handle the systems installation and integration.
 
“We worked closely with the church and with their insurance company’s claims adjustment service to determine what they lost, the value of that and the replacement values, as well as what the best replacement products and systems would be,” explains Kevin Hewitt, Account Manager at the GC Pro office in San Diego. “We also worked closely with our office in Detroit, the closest one on the ground to the church. Together, we were able to efficiently and effectively assess the situation and decide what would get them back on their feet.”
 
As Hewitt handled the logistics of the project, Paul Johnson, Account Manager at GC Pro’s Detroit location, handled system design, driving two hours each way to the work site, often several days a week. “When I got there, the building was a total loss,” he recalls. “I became the on-site project manager for the audio systems, measuring during the reconstruction process and letting Kevin know what the dimensions would be. We established timelines for deliveries and installation, coordinating between the insurance company, our vendors, our integrator, the construction crews at the site, and the church and center leaders. It was a huge undertaking, but the church was very excited to see that we could manage their project on a national basis.”

The church leaders quickly realized that GC Pro brings an enormous amount of power — in the form of resources and expertise, as well as our experience with loss claims — to a project. Especially for one like this, where they had suffered such a massive loss, GC Pro was the only provider that could manage this effectively from beginning to end. “Today, the church and the center are back,” says Johnson, “and it was gratifying for all of us at GC Pro to have played such an important role in that.”

For more information, please visit www.gcpro.com.

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About Guitar Center Professional/Guitar Center
Guitar Center Professional is the outside sales division of Guitar Center that focuses on the needs of professional users. Its clientele includes recording studios, audio engineers, producers, recording and touring musicians, live sound venues, post production facilities and more. Emphasizing extraordinary individualized service via local account managers, GC Pro offers expert consultation and a comprehensive selection of the world’s finest equipment for music and audio professionals. More information on GC Pro can be found by visiting www.gcpro.com.

Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship Takes Control of Its Sound

The main worship space at Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship, featuring an extensive arsenal of sound, video and lighting components sourced through GC Pro and installed through GC Pro’s Affiliate Program by affiliates Crown Audio Video and Trinity Group International.

— In addition to sourcing a wide array of audio, video and lighting components for an extensive upgrade to the Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship’s facility, GC Pro’s Affiliates Program connected the church with two highly specialized systems integrators for AVL and system control —
WESTLAKE VILLAGE, CA, November 25, 2015 — Dr. Tony Evans understands the need to make the message clear. He’s the pastor of the 10,000-member Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship (OCBF) church in Dallas, Texas, which he founded with wife and ministry partner Dr. Lois Evans in 1976, as well as president of The Urban Alternative radio broadcast that can be heard over 1,000 outlets daily throughout the U.S. and in over 100 countries worldwide. So when the OCBF needed more sound, video and lighting earlier this year, the church turned to Guitar Center Professional (GC Pro), the business-to-business (B2B) division of Guitar Center providing highly customized service for professional accounts, to both select and source the right components and to match the best systems integrators for the AVL and control systems.

The project was substantial, says Jeff McDaniel, Account Manager based at the GC Pro location in Dallas. “This is a large facility building, across from the church’s main campus, that houses their activities areas, such as their youth centers,” he says. “They needed a lot of additional audio, including a lot of speakers and DSP processing, as well as new video displays and new lighting. But they also wanted to add more sophisticated control over the AVL systems, to enable a wider number of users to access and configure the systems as needed more easily. That called for a Crestron control system. Installing audio, video and lighting requires one set of specialized skills, and programming a complex control system requires a different set of skills. So we matched Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship with two different Affiliate Program member integrators for this project.”

Crown Audio Video was assigned to the Crestron programming tasks while Trinity Group International took on the job of installing new audio, video and lighting. The latter aspect of the project included over a dozen ceiling-mount QSC speakers, including in-ceiling subwoofers, with QSC processing and amplification for the main activities hall; Community Sound all-weather speakers for outdoor use; an LG 47-inch LCD display and a Blackmagic Design HDMI SDI-to-HDMI conversion unit for one of the building’s youth centers and a Sennheiser wireless microphone system for a second youth center on another floor. Chauvet LED lighting components were also added to several areas. All of these were sourced through GC Pro.

Walter Jones, Media Director at the Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship.

“It was a pretty sizable project,” observes Walter Jones, Media Director at the Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship. “The main entrance area is huge at about 30 feet wide and about 300 feet long, and it serves as the main artery that leads to the other areas of the building. We wanted to have a zoned sound system in that area to support live events, background music and announcements. The video screen is now used as confidence monitor for those using our ProPresenter software. We also added LED lighting to the stage and some additional acoustical material in the second floor youth room. A major part of the project was the activation of our Crestron control system. Our first floor youth room is loaded with high-tech AVL systems. We really needed an easy way for our not technical staff and volunteers to be able to access and control those systems. I knew the programming would be intensive, but it had to be done right.”

And it was, thanks to GC Pro’s extensive inventory of technology products and its wide range of integration partners through the Affiliates Program, which allowed them to allocate the right resources and expertise to each aspect of the project. “Anyone who needs to use any of the spaces can access the audio, video and lighting from the Crestron control panels on the wall,” says Jones. “Working with Jeff was great on this project, and the choices of Crown Audio Video and Trinity Group International met our installation needs. We had a vision of what we needed to achieve here, and Jeff and GC Pro had the resources to pull that all together and make it happen. It all worked out exactly the way it was supposed to.”

For more information, please visit www.gcpro.com.

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About Guitar Center Professional/Guitar Center
Guitar Center Professional is the outside sales division of Guitar Center that focuses on the needs of professional users. Its clientele includes recording studios, audio engineers, producers, recording and touring musicians, live sound venues, post production facilities and more. Emphasizing extraordinary individualized service via local account managers, GC Pro offers expert consultation and a comprehensive selection of the world’s finest equipment for music and audio professionals. More information on GC Pro can be found by visiting www.gcpro.com.