Woodlawn Baptist Installs Soundcraft GB4
Mar 16, 2006 8:00 AM
Woodlawn Baptist Church in Baton Rouge, La., has joined the rapidly growing roster of houses of worship benefiting from Soundcraft GB series consoles.
When the church’s 20-year-old console finally became too problematic, a 40-channel GB4, purchased from Bob Sanchez at local retailer Live Music, was installed as the first phase in updating the audio system for the 700-seat sanctuary.
According to Rick Thornhill, Woodlawn Baptist’s sound committee chairman and volunteer audio engineer, the GB4 more than adequately satisfied all of the church’s mixing requirements for its future system upgrade.
“Our primary criteria were that the new console have eight auxiliary sends for stage mixes, four mute groups, and a minimum of 36 channels to accommodate Christmas and Easter productions,” Thornhill notes. “When initially looking around at consoles a few years ago, it seemed that all of the boards meeting these requirements were far too expensive for us. However, when I recently came across the GB4, I was impressed. Aside from being in the right ballpark price-wise and possessing the features we needed, it had a nice uncomplicated layout for our lay engineers, an onboard matrix for routing feeds around the building, and a very responsive EQ with two sweepable mid bands. Plus, we had so many people whose opinions we trusted recommending Soundcraft to us as a quality manufacturer, it definitely seemed to be the right choice.”
Now that the GB4 has been installed up in the balcony seating area, Thornhill and his fellow operators are delighted with its sound quality. “We had no idea how much audio fidelity we were giving up with our old board until we put this one in,” he says. “By simply changing out our console, we were suddenly able to hear all of these highs and lows that we had never heard before.
“It sounds so nice now and really makes us wonder what it’s going to sound like when we update all of our amplifiers and loudspeakers! Needless to say, we’re all anxiously looking forward to the next phase of our system retrofit so that we can fully utilize the power and flexibility that this board will bring us for years to come.”
For additional info visit www.soundcraft.com.
