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.

Helping Light the Gas Monkey Bar N’ Grill

— Martin Lighting’s new Rush Series of cost-effective LED fixtures makes this barbecue-and-music destination a real Discovery —
You wanted cast-off hot cars brought back to life before your very eyes? Gas Monkey Garage proprietor Richard Rawlings’ reality-TV hit Fast N’ Loud has done exactly that for four seasons on the Discovery Channel. You wanted to chow down on Texas brisket in a place like that? Rawlings brought the Gas Monkey Bar N’ Grill, his Dallas barbecue emporium and live-music destination, to life last year. The Gas Monkey Bar N’ Grill combines two of reality television’s biggest draws — food and cars — into a major-league music venue with world-class sound, video and lights, with all systems designed and installed through GC Pro’s Dallas office.

What touring artists like Anvil and Uncle Kracker — both of whom visited the club this year — will find at GMBG, as the place has come to be known, is rider-ready equipment such as the 180-degree, 32,000-watt D.A.S. Aero line array sound system capable of hitting 121 dB and composed of two Aero 40A cabinets, four WR6412DX weatherized enclosures, a dozen D.A.S. Road low-profile monitors and two D.A.S. Avant 118 subwoofers. These cover an outdoor concert area that can hold as many as 1,500 people. Inside, eight D.A.S. Aero 8A compact line array columns and four D.A.S. LX215 subwoofers keep crowds in the 19,000-square-foot dining space amply entertained. Music is mixed through a Behringer X32 FOH console indoors and a Midas Pro 2 digital desk outdoors.

Hot Lights
Matching the sound is world-class lighting, with one of the first major installations of Martin Lighting’s new Rush Series of products. These include six Rush MH1 profile moving-head LED fixtures, six Rush MH2 wash moving-head LED fixtures, and four Rush MH3 beam moving-head fixtures. These and other fixtures are controlled through a Martin M1 lighting console with a built in folding touchscreen. The emphasis on LED lighting is what makes GMBG as flexible as it needs to be — you never know when Rawlings and company will show up with cameras ready to show that barbecue is done and the joint is rocked.

But lighting of this level of sophistication wasn’t this readily accessible or this affordable before Martin’s Rush Series became available last year through GC Pro. “This is a great match: Martin’s Rush and GC Pro,” observes Greg Jones, senior manager for installation products for the Harman Pro Group, which acquired Martin Lighting in 2013. Martin Rush fixtures hit a home run with target markets such as small to mid-sized venues like GMBG that need sophisticated LED and moving-head fixtures. The Martin brand and reputation is recognizable and acceptable to compete for national touring acts, and with the NEW RUSH line by Martin it is now possible to keep costs reasonable. They’re a perfect fit, too, for GC Pro’s broad market that ranges from small cafés to large clubs that can handle national concert acts and more.

“We were originally contacted by one of GC’s Lighting Champions, GC Pro Account manager Jeff McDaniels, who brought this opportunity to the table,” says Jones. “Sometimes timing is everything. With the recent launch of the Martin RUSH Line, the new Partnership between Martin and GC and the fact that GMBG was looking for a professional system that delivered and met every expectation, it all seemed to fall into place. We are very excited to work with the likes of Jeff and the rest of the GC Pro team on many projects to come. If GMBG is an example of what’s ahead then who wouldn’t be!” GMBG was also sold on the Martin Rush two-tear warranty. Alex Mendonsa, General Manager of the Gas Monkey Bar N’ Grill and a veteran of high-profile multi-use venues (having managed the House of Blues in Las Vegas), knows the value that products like Martin Rush can bring to a complex AVL project. “It’s been a seamless experience, thanks to GC Pro, and GC Pro Affiliate Program Member Trinity Group International, which also installed the audio components,” Mendonsa notes, though he adds that there were plenty of twists and turns. “For instance, we had to raise the roof on the stage, and we needed custom trussing fabricated for it. No problem for GC Pro. They got us out of a pinch on several occasions.”

Jones says that the Martin Rush Series fixtures are at the leading edge of a revolution in entertainment lighting, not unlike what the advent of affordable digital audio technology has been for music recording and production. “LED technology is exponentially making lighting better, replacing the discharge systems that had been the standard for decades. LED has allowed an option that is lower in weight and power consumption, smaller in size, and affordable without sacrificing features. With products like Rush that really leverage the power and price-performance of LED, we’ve got a whole new market of venues, like Gas Monkey Bar N’ Grill, open to us. And through GC Pro, we now also have a way to find them. Instead of clubs having to wait until they were working on a national level to be able to afford Martin lighting, now Martin can be their first lighting system and follow them as they expand. GC Pro has become our gateway into that market.”

As it turns out, the Gas Monkey Bar N’ Grill has been greenlit for its own reality-TV pilot on the Discovery Channel. And thanks to GC Pro, the club has the entire package it needs to make Gas Monkey Bar N’ Grill as ready to rock as it is to cook.

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

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About Guitar Center Professional/Guitar Center
Founded in 2001, 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.