Enlighten Festival Canberra

Hoodoo Gurus with Canberra Symphony Orchestra. 10 March 2024

Marshall Cullen is a music industry veteran with over 30 years’ experience both locally and internationally. He’s handled FoH and tour management for Lloyd Cole, Paul Kelly, Sarah Blasko, Ballpark Music, Sunnyboys, Violent Femmes, and more. Marshall found himself in front of JBL A Series supported by Chris Neale of Eclipse Lighting & Sound to mix Hoodoo Gurus with the Canberra Symphony Orchestra.

“We had about 80 lines off stage,” reports Marshall. “Hoodoo Gurus were playing through smaller amps than they usually would, backed by the 38-piece orchestra. The show was about two hours long, with an interval.

Peter Kubow was system tech, I mixed the Gurus and Chris Neale mixed the orchestra.”

“We had 12 A12s per side, A8s as infill, and 15 subs in five stacks of three, run in cardioid. With just a single hang of 12s per side, it was very, very efficient PA. They expected 8,000 people to this free concert, and the final guesstimate was 15,000, almost double what they expected. It broke the record.”

“I run an AVID S6L. After Peter had done his system tuning, I went to the graphic EQ I run across the left-right with my preferred little notches and flattened most of them out. I was a good 50 metres from the front of the stage, and we were metering 100dB-A, so it must have been 105dB-A down the front. It had tonnes of grunt, there was a lot more there if I needed it. I couldn’t go crazy with an orchestra there, but I’d love to get the Gurus on their own on this system and crank it up! I just thoroughly enjoyed the whole system. It had really good imaging and was just so well defined.”

Eclipse’s Chris Neale concurs; “I had lots of gain before feedback with the orchestra. The rear rejection was really good. It sounded nice as soon as we turned it on, and we didn’t have to do a whole lot to it to get it sitting nicely.”

“The rigging is sensational. This is definitely the next iteration of modern rigging design. A Series stores folded up in an arc. You put the pins in it while it’s in the arc. Then, as you lift it, depending on where you put the pins, it clicks itself into those spots. On the way down, there’s red levers on each box, and whichever boxes you pull the levers on, it allows those to fall down back into the arc. It’s quite elegant and simple. A lot of boxes that I’ve used are often a lot fiddlier than that.”