Case Study: The Thirsty Pirate Pub

The Thirsty Pirate Pub a new venue at the Renaissance Festival that will have live performances and live music. When the owners came to us as a referral, they had a few requests – and unique challenges.

The first thing that comes into play is their commitment to live performances - something we're experts in. Our team at Brightengale was tasked with creating a custom audio system that would serve this venue all year round. Due to the whimsical nature of this place, here are the three nonnegotiable factors we designed this system around.

Requirement #1: The audio visual system must be weatherproof.

As many of you know, the Renaissance Festival is active for two months out of the year. Although the event itself acts as a popup, the system will live at the Thirsty Pirate Pub all year round. More so, Renaissance Festival floods, so the system had to be weatherproof. One way we achieved that is to make the stage disconnect. The art of engineering was at play here.

For the speakers, we went with the JBL all-weather series, which are typically used for sports complexes because of their high output and extreme weather resistance. You typically do now see these as a music venues. It made sense here because of the budget and the output we wanted to create. The speakers are weatherproof and can withstand extreme conditions, making them the perfect for this occasion.

Requirement #2: The system installed needed to be modular.

The stage itself is modular for the weather reasons just mentioned and its use. During the season, the stage can be removed, depending on the performance. For live music, there is more of a traditional use of the space, while standup requires a slightly different setup. The way we worked around is that the stage can be taken down depending what show is on.

A bonus challenge: the drum riser is on top of a skull. It's not an easy location to work with because there isn't much room for movement and convenient footing for the install itself. All and all, it took about two months to work on the design and install.

Requirement #3: The sound quality must be loud, but contained.

We had to find a balance between being loud enough for everyone, but not overwhelm the other vendors. We decided on the Berringer X32 because it's pretty standard across operators. And, this particular venue had a lot of operators, so the convenience served it well. At this point and time, everyone in the audio space knows how to use Berringer X32.