Hadley Massachusetts-The congregation of Visalia EV Free Church, in Visalia, California, had decided to invest in a renovation of the sound reinforcement system in their church. They called on Rodney Wright of JD Audio Visual, also in Visalia California, to help them select components and install the new system. The speakers chosen were a pair of EAW’s from the versatile AX series, one an AX364 and the other an AX366. The pair needed to be clustered horizontally one over the other, and center hung at the front of the church.
Before they could be hung, the pair of AX’s needed to be joined together. Although both the install site and the installation contractor were located in Visalia, California, JD Audio Visual called all the way across the country to obtain the rigging hardware for the job. The company they called, Polar Focus of Hadley, Massachusetts, is the exclusive source for the RGB-AXHB, which is a simple bracket kit developed by Polar Focus, working with EAW, for the AX series. Each RGB-AXHB, or “AX Kit”? for short, joins a pair of AX speakers together so they can be rigged as one unit. The kit, made of steel, is a lightweight hinge and binder plate system. The hinge component goes on the rear of the speakers, and the binder plates go on the front at the top and bottom. The angle between the centerlines of a pair of boxes can be selected according to which bolt holes in the binder plates are used.
Once the speakers were joined together in the correct orientation, rigging them was a matter of finding out what the cluster could be attached to in the ceiling. Mike Akrep, head engineer at Polar Focus, suggested to Rodney Wright that there was probably a steel beam lurking above the acoustical tile ceiling. And when Rodney investigated that possibility, there was a very serviceable steel beam running from the front to the back of the room. Therefore it was a straightforward process to neatly cut four small holes in the ceiling tiles through which two rigging chain sling kits would pass and go over the beam. The chains attached by shackles to a Polar Focus ZB-20-880-W, which would provide pan angle adjustment. Under the Zbeam, a heavy duty (420 lb. rated) Tilt Cable Kit attached to the clustered pair and adjusted to the desired tilt angle.
Both the Zbeam and the AX kits were white to match the speakers, a standard choice provided by both Polar Focus and EAW.
Visalia EV is now Free to enjoy years of excellent sound reinforcement to come, with the assurance of knowing that these dual-trapezoidal enclosures were safely and attractively rigged the “Wright”? way, with Polar Focus.
http://www.polarfocus.com/eawaxseries.html
http://www.eaw.com/products/AXSeries/
