Pirates on the Dock were back again this September for an explosive weekend. dBS Solutions were happy to be involved in another year of swashbuckling activities. The event saw the return of the famous two mask brig Phoenix which made it’s appearance on BBC hit shows Poldark and Doctor Who.
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Folk On The Dock
One of Liverpool’s most loved Festivals returned to Albert Dock for August bank holiday in its 3rd year of this very popular free festival.
Kevin and Karen Tour 2018
dBS Solutions once again have had the pleasure of providing lighting equipment and design for the Kevin and Karen dance show 2018 which finished touring last month.
Summer In Southside 2018
dBS Solutions took part in supporting Birmingham Hippodrome’s Summer in Southside 2018. The weekend saw the streets surrounding the theatre being transformed into a summer playground of fun which was free for kids of all ages.
New Stock Update
Wow, what a busy few months the summer has turned out to be. With the British weather almost cracking the flags, dBS Solutions have been working flat out in the sunshine on music festivals, arts events, tours and dry hire rentals. We’ve been so busy that we almost forgot to tell you about the great new equipment we’ve been adding into our rental stock for your next events.
Chester Zoo, Wild Worlds Festival
dBS Solutions are pleased to be working together with Chester Zoo on their first ever large-scale gardens and science festival throughout the summer: Wild Worlds.
The Visitor’s Book at Manchester’s Hope Mill Theatre
dBS Solutions were pleased to support Sarah Nelson & James Atherton’s production of ‘The Visitor’s Book’ at Manchester’s Hope Mill Theatre earlier this month. The new musical is an uplifting exploration on the impact of loss, abandonment and ultimately the importance of family and forgiveness.
Warrington Music Festival 2018
Warrington Music Festival 2018 organised by Score Creative Education in partnership with The Golden Square kicked off a celebration of music featuring headliner the Fun Lovin Criminals’ on the 5th May, it was believed to be the biggest, ticket-less music festival in the North West.
After some time away, dBS Solutions were delighted to return to supply full production to the festival which also hosted dozens of emerging bands from Warrington in the Old Market Place.
Commonwealth Games Handover Rehearsals
dBS Solutions had the privilege of providing PA equipment and mics for the rehearsal for the handover of the Commonwealth Games from Australia’s Gold Coast to Birmingham.
Les Mills BODYATTACK at David Lloyd Warrington
dBS Solutions were invited to provide Stageing and Sound for the biggest party of the year run by Les Mills UK and David Lloyd to celebrate 25 years and 100 releases of Les Mills BODYATTACK.
Feast of Fire
To celebrate the close of winter and the beginning of spring, dBS Solutions were involved in ‘firing up’ the festivities this Easter 2018 by supporting Walk the Plank’s Feast of Fire.
Chinese New Year Celebrations 2018
The annual festivities for Chinese New Year celebrations in Birmingham this February welcomed the year of the Dog and included a street party in the city’s Chinese Quarter. dBS provided full production for The Chinese Festival and were pleased to again be working with our friends at The Birmingham Hippadrome on this great community event.
Audio rental specialist dBS Solutions supply Damien Dempsey
We are pleased to this week be providing audio for Ireland’s Damien Dempsey as he visits
Warrington’s Parr Hall and thrilled to be working again with international concert promotors SJM.
Damien shot to fame in 1997 when his first single Dublin Town caught the attention of Sinead
O’Connor, who he later collaborated and toured with. Dempsey’s original folk flavour has seen
him win many awards such as Best Folk/Traditional Act and Best Irish Country/Roots Artist.
Turning Of The Screw
dBS Solutions are pleased to be supplying audio equipment to the Mercury Theatre Colchester’s production of Turning of the Screw. The UK tour of Henry James’s thrilling ghost story, is a co production with both Dermot McLaughlin and The Grand Theatre Wolverhampton.
Sound, Lighting and AV Freelance Engineers Wanted
We are currently looking for experienced sound, lighting and AV freelance Engineers with an exceptional all round knowledge in their field, plus client management skills to expand our freelancers portfolio.
Applicants will need to be registered as self employed and carry their own public liability insurance.
If you are interested, please send your CV to staff@dbs-solutions.co.uk
Walking in the air
Getting truly into the Christmas spirit, dBS Solutions have been working on The Snowman Tour 2017, where The Snowman film is brought to life on the big screen with live orchestral accompaniment playing the original soundtrack.
The Last Ship sails
dBS Solutions had the honour and privileged opportunity to supply and operate sound at the Victoria Warehouse in Stretford for Sting’s launch of the UK premiere tour of his new musical The Last Ship, his ode to his shipyard hometown. Stings semi-autobiographical musical will head to Salford’s Lowry Theatre in July and the musical which is set in Wallsend in Northumberland, where Sting grew up, tells the story of a community amid the demise of the shipbuilding industry.
Rhiannon Giddens
dBS Solutions recently supplied audio to the Manchester show on Rhiannon Giddens UK tour. The North Carolina born singer song writer, began on her tour to celebrate the launch of her new Album ‘Freedom Highway’ a solo album with much of her own original material.
Joanne Shaw Taylor
dBS Solutions were pleased to be providing audio for Joanne Shaw Taylor’s Manchester show as part of her Uk tour last week in the beautiful Bridgewater Hall.
Joanne is a british blues rock guitarist and singer from Wednesday in the black country and described as Continue reading
A Swashbuckling Adventure
Albert docks Liverpool
We’ve just got back from a fantastic weekend at the Liverpool Albert docks once again supplying all the audio for the Pirates festival. Myself and the team here at dBS Solutions were thrilled to be asked again following the success of previous events.
dBS Find the Holy Grail.
dBS Solutions are pleased to have supplied additional audio equipment for the Mercury Theatre’s production of Spamalot. This laugh out loud production, sound designed by our director Christopher Bogg, opened to critical acclaim in Colchester before heading to Korea to form part of this years Daegu International Music Festival.
dBS Support LIPA’s season of shows with Digico consoles
Digico SD9T on Urine Town. Designer: Findley Clayton.
Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts is one of the UK’s premier performance training establishments, teaching not only those on stage but those that support the Arts, lighting set and costume designers, sound engineers, designers, and directors.
Happy New Year from dBS Solutions
dBS Solutions supply full production for Bury’s Transition Festival
dBS Solutions are delighted to be providing full production for this years Bury Transition Festival. The festival provides lighting and sound around Bury with live artists, sound sculptures and storytelling within the town’s garden areas. The events creators, The Hamilton Project contacted dBS after our work on Liverpool’s Pirate Festival. The event organisers were looking for a company with the right attitude to immersive arts events to provide sound, lighting, staging and power to a number of sites through Bury.
L30s Million Musical Fireworks
dBS Solutions were pleased to be providing the PA system for L30’s Million Musical Firework Display at Netherton Activity Centre this bonfire night. Our friends, Sirotechnics designed the display for Sefton’s local authority and when they had experienced audio that didn’t live up to the fabulous fireworks on previous events, Sirotechnics Director Simon Harding knew who to call. “The dBS Solutions team are awesome guys to work with. All Top notch.”
dBS Solutions provides UFC with audio in Manchester Arena
When the big planned UFC fight over at Manchester Arena needed a last minute audio system for an open workout, the arena’s Head of Events, Miriam Stone knew who to call. When an unforeseen venue change found the organisers UFC without a sound system, Miriam call dBS Solutions on the day of the event and by 14:00 our engineers were on site setting up in the Arena.
dBS Solutions hosts an introduction to MLA at LIPA
Martin Audio dealers dBS Solutions are pleased to be hosting an introductory session for Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts students this week, in the beautiful Paul McCartney Auditorium.
The session led by veteran live sound engineer and long term MLA user Simon Honywill will introduce Martin Audio’s revolutionary Multi Cellular Array technology to the next generation of audio engineers, serving as a grounding in the theory of the systems along with practical rigging in the field.
Folk on The Docks
We’ve just got back from a beautiful weekend on Albert Docks looking after production for The all new Folk on The Dock Festival.
The sun was shining as over 82000 fans descended on the site over the Bank Holiday weekend. They where met with Folk from across the spectrum along with some great traditional sea shanties including the first ever performance of “Our Liverpool song,” a specially commissioned Sea Shanty for the modern day, written by Jason Ellis and Kathryn Rudge.
dBS Solutions move into our new home.
We are pleased to announce that we have recently moved into our new home in the beautiful Cheshire countryside.
The new site over in High Leigh just off the M6 motorway is three times the size of our old place allowing us to dedicate more space to sales, demos & training areas along with more space to prepare hire kit.
If your passing on the M6 and would like to call in for a tour and a coffee feel free.
Our new address is Unit 5 Brook Farm, Swineyard Lane, High Leigh, WA16 0SD. All our numbers and emails remain unchanged.
dBS ensures the world hears the message. Justice for the 96.
This week dBS Solutions where very proud to have been asked to assist with suppling audio for the press conference in Warrington for the Hillsborough family support group following the juries findings. Its been such a honour to be involved in something that has helped bring closure and clear the names of so many families.
dBS Invests in Allen & Heath for small scale touring
This month sees dBS Solutions investing for the first time in Allen & Heath with their QU Series of mixers to service our growing need for compact tour-able mixers. With two shows this month alone leaving us to be flown around the world in suitcases finding something that sounds great and fits in a case under 30KG was crucial. The QU series has USB streaming and midi over USB from Qlab which is great for us so combined with a midi button box also powered over USB the whole system can fit in a Peli case in an aircrafts hold.
Celebrating Viola Beach
Just a few weeks ago the guys at dBS Solutions like everyone else, woke up to the tragic news that the Viola boys and their manager and old friend Craig Tarry had been in a terrible accident. Only weeks before we had been talking to Craig about their show in Warrington where we would be supplying PA and another future date for the town. The team at dBS where delighted when SJM concerts asked us to look after the audio for this weeks musical event at the Parr Hall to celebrate the band.
New mains distribution systems added for summer festival season
dBS Solutions have just taken delivery of our newest items to hire stock. A number of large format mains distribution systems to work along side our current stock with 125A three phase incoming supplies and several single and three phase outlets with MCBs & variable time and current earth leakage across all three phase outlets individually.
New Year, New Toys!
As we’ve had a busy start to 2016, the team have barley had chance to look up since our well earned rest over the festive period. We’ve had Avenue Q begin its UK tour once again, all the pantomimes return to us and as we look towards the summer we have been adding to our stock in preparation.
A theatrical end to 2015
Mathew Barrow as The Wolf from little red riding hood.
Its been a great end to the year with several theatre shows going out with sound supplied by dBS Solutions. Miracle on 34th St UK tour and the Dubai production along with a fantastic new production, the UK Premier of Red Riding hood.
All Pantomimed out.
It’s been a great pantomime season for dBS Solutions this year with several productions around the country in London, Birmingham and our new addition, UK Productions flagship show in Sunderland Empire.
Now its all over, the team have time to reflect back on the season. dBS Sound designer Matt Chisholm talks us through the design for Sunderland.
dBS Supplies sound and lighting for Willemijn Verkaik’s sold out west end concert.
Theatre sound specialists dBS Solutions where thrilled to be working with producer Paul Taylor Mills on this exciting concert in the heart of London’s West end. Continue reading
Street Dancer 2015 at the Printworks
dBS Solutions Engineer’s where out throwing some shapes last week at the 2015 Printworks Street Dancer Competition.
dBS Solutions invests further in Martin Audio
Pro audio rental specialists dBS Solutions have added Martin Audio XD15 loud speaker systems to their rental infantry. The new additions were joined this week by yet more WS218x subwoofers just in time to finish what has been a busy festival season for the expending rental company.
dBS Solutions gain Momentum at the Edinburgh Fringe
dBS Solutions where pleased to be asked to provide the audio systems at this years Edinburgh Fringe for Momentum Venues at St Stephens. This exciting new venture houses three performing spaces providing the location for shows such
as Ushers the front of house musical, There’s a Guy Work’s Down The Chip Shop Swears He’s Elvis and many more.
dBS Solutions spends the weekend herding up those beats
dBS Solutions was built on live music roots and work on several music festivals over the summer months. We were super pleased this year to supply two stages at Beat Herder in Lancashire. “Talks with the festivals directors had been brewing for a few years and its great to finally get on site and start herding those beats” says dBS Director Chris Bogg.
dBS Solutions all set for summer!
Well what a busy month its been, with several new shows secured and leaving in June and July. From a UK tour for Park Resorts, to three exciting new venues in Edinburgh, we’ve been investing in new hire stock to meet the demand. With the addition of more moving lights from Robe in the shape of the Robin 600e spot and more Digico consoles added with another SD9 in stock we are all set for the summer. We also can’t get enough Sennheiser evolution radio microphones adding more to our rental inventory in a new RF band. This new range gives us the option of up to 24 channels of radio mics within the Uk shared licence that we supply free with your rental. A great win for those clients wanting more than 12 channels without the cost of fixed site licences.
dBS welcomes new Projects and Development Manager
dBS Solutions are pleased to welcome a new arrival to our team. Matt Chisholm will be taking up the role of Projects and Development Manager from April. Matt has previously worked for The Liverpool Arena and Convention Centre as their Senior Sound Technician and prior to this, was an Installation Engineer for J&C Joel. He is looking forward to the challenges of a busy rental company. Responsible for managing the company’s larger projects and assisting with the ever-growing rental stock, Matt brings a wealth of experience to the team.
You can reach Matt at: matt@dbs-solutions.co.uk, on our office number or why not call in for a chat and a brew.
Seussical the Musical take on Hong Kong
dBS Solutions where pleased to be supplying audio equipment for the Hong Kong production of Seussical The Musical this November. Originally produced by Sell a Door for the West End last year, and produced out in Hong Kong by ABA Productions, this exciting vibrant childrens show is a real hit with Dr Seuss fans world wide. dBS Solutions director Christopher Bogg sound designed the original London production and was thrilled to be asked back for the Chinese revival.
Much of the sound equipment was sourced locally through Mad Music, a company we have now developed good links with for future productions in Asia. dBS Solutions did however supply all of the shows playback requirements with dual redundant Qlab systems and control along with our radio mic capsules to ensure the consistency of the shows sound across the world.
Thanks goes to Danny Clare for his work on the shows preparation, George Chapburn the shows console operator, Can Dog and all at Mad Music and staff at HKPAs Lyric theatre for their invaluable help.
BBC Philharmonic choose dBS
When the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra joined forces with Manchester Imperial War Museum North to tell the true story of world war one solider Arthur Burke, the BBCs Special projects manager called upon our lighting designer Christopher Bogg to assist.
The collaborative project composed by Richard Taylor and with book written and directed by Di Sherlock was performed within the war museums main gallery space in traverse which brought a unique set of challenges. The project also featured video content across all of the walls behind the audience of original footage from the archives designed by Soup Collectives Mark Thomas.
Christopher explains “although the space was equipped with some theatrical lighting, much of this was in use for the museums main exhibition, still open during the day times. We where able to use carefully selected fixtures from the in house lighting rig augmented with dBS Solutions lighting equipment” Equipment ranged from ETC source four profiles, to Robe 300 spot fixtures and wireless DMX by Wireless solutions. The museums opening meant that there where very tight turn around times between the museum closing and our performances beginning. Much of the lighting system designed was done so in such a way that it could remain in place during the day times connected together with wireless control systems keeping turn arounds to a minimum. Much of the rigging, focusing and programming happened through the night.
The event was a huge success with attendance from many world war one connections including the relatives of Arthur, the stories main character among other veterans. The performance was also filmed by the BBC and broadcast on BBC Radio Manchester.
Thanks goes to all our dBS Solutions crew on the show, Danny Burrows, Martin Winton and Christopher Bogg. Also to those at the BBC and IWMN for their invaluable help, Laura Willson and Ric Douglas
Summer in Southside
Birmingham Hippodrome theatre again asked dBS Solutions to supply this years Summer in Southside festival over August. The event spanning four weekends across the month saw dBS engineers look after the multiple sites across the city supplying PA systems ranging from speakers on stands for music playback all the way up to large scale systems for live music, DJ play back or musical theatre performances.
Each weekend saw the squares around Southside filled with various acts, artists and unusual happenings. The festival was very well received by the Birmingham public. dBS Engineers Chris Taylor, Damian Breeze, Matt Chisholm, Craig Stewart and Danny Burrows on site across the weekends.
Avenue Q UK tour
When dBS Solutions, was tasked by Sell a Door Theatre Company to design a sound system that would take the touring version of the hugely successful, long-running West End show Avenue Q the length and breadth of the UK, the company’s Director Chris Bogg was faced with a stiff challenge. The size of venues the production would be visiting varied enormously; and on tours of this type, where truck space is at a premium, touring the minimum amount of kit, while keeping the production scalable, was crucial.
Chris designed a system based around the New Martin Audio XD12 speaker with front fills and delays being delivered by the DD6 compact cabinets recently added to stock. All of the processing for the system was undertaken by XTAs DP226 processors wirelessly controlled from a tablet PC system. Monitoring for the 6 band members was undertaken by the p16 personal monitor system allowing for each band member to have full control over their monitor mix. All radio mics where Sennheiser systems with DPA 4061 mics hidden in each actors hair line. This allowed for crisp defined details from the cast vocally whilst staying desecrate to those audience members in the front rows.
The audio console was a Midas Pro 1 system with remote stage boxes for the band. The whole show has been programmed scene by scene allowing the faders and channels needed to be brought to the operator via population groups. Scenes and sound effects as well as the shows video animations are played back and controlled from the custom built dBS Solutions Qlab systems.
The show has been touring around the country to great houses and reviews alike Its still not to late to catch this show in Portsmouth and Birmingham running until September 20th before heading to Hong Kong in September.
Scouting for Girls
dBS Solutions have been Warrington Music Festivals production supplier since the festival started so we where thrilled to be working again this year on the event which has been really gathering momentum over the last few years. This year the main stage in the old market place was supplemented by a big top over in Bank Park with nights ranging from A heavy rock night on the Friday, The annual Proms in the Park run by the 75th engineers regiment and cumulating in Warringtons youth carnival on the Sunday. With all the different styles of music and acts the system had to be flexible to provide both the detail needed for orchestral amplification and also the sound pressure level for the heavy rock events.
dBS Director Christopher Bogg specified 8 stacks of our Ohm TRS system with MC2 E series amps to drive the system. Desks where Yamaha LS9s along with Ohm wedges to compliment the front of house sound. Lighting was a mix of pars for colour washes and white light with Robe Robin 300LEDs and Chauvet Colourdash Quad battons.
Main stage audio in the market place was comprised of 16 Martin Audio W8LM Line array speakers with 8 WS218x subs along with some in fills. Monitors where LE1500s with W8DVQ on side fill duty. Consoles where all Midas Pro series.
Lighting on the main stage again saw our Robe Robin 300s and 600s washes and spots along with Chauvet Slim Par Pro pars Atomics and Sunstrips.
dBS Solutions engineers Danny Claire, Simon West, Martin Winton, Chris Bogg, Danny Burrows, Sam Edwards, Keiron Murphy, Al Johnstone,Zak White, Dan Williams and Damian Breeze where on site to ensure all went smoothly.
dBS Supplies PA and lighting to launch the new Hamleys Store
dBS Solutions where approached back in November to help design and arrange the lighting, audio and effect needs of Hamleys London for the launch of their Manchester store in the Into Trafford Centre.
Having worked with dBS before, event manager Max Mayer came to us as he knew that he could trust us to deliver this event within the tight timescale required.
For the soft opening back in December dBS Solutions provided a PA system for the event comprising of our Martin Audio F15 speaker system, with a selection of radio microphones. The lighting design incorporated several of our wireless LED up lighters both around the malls pillars, and in the store. These also doubled up as wireless receivers for the Robe moving lights and Magic FX confetti systems utilised to drop Hamleys red confetti on the big opening.
For the launch of the larger store in February Max contracted dBS Solutions to supply lighting. Our uplighters again where utilised around the store with truss towers containing robe moving lights with custom Hamleys gobos projected onto walls and floor space. dBS Engineers George Chatburn and Martin Winton where on site to ensure all went smoothly for the openings.
All went very well, we have had some great feedback from the events team at Hamleys saying the product provided by dBS was of fitting quality for our international brand and was installed discreetly yet effectively. The staff at DBS are highly knowledgeable and provided a professional and personable service that exceeded our expectations
Thanks to all involved.
dBS Support 911s Illuminate UK tour
dBS Solutions are pleased to announce that we will be suppling sound and lighting design, equipment and staff for this months tour by the band 911.
Following their featuring on ITVs big reunion, the band approached dBS Solutions after working with us around two years ago on some one off projects to look at the staging and custom props for the tour. dBS Solutions lighting designer Martin Winton has worked closely with the band to develop a lighting concept for the tour that is impressive and scalable across venues. The bands Illuminate tour will take in a wide variety of venues across the country.
dBS director Christopher Bogg has designed an audio system to work across the tour using some elements of the house systems for delays and fills. Our Ohm TRS system will be deployed providing coverage for the audience with TRS218s and TRS112h high packs. Infills will be TRS112s all driven from MC2 E series amps and processed from Ohm Creds. The show is mixed from one of our Yamaha LS9 compact consoles with Sennheiser radio mics and in Ear monitor systems.
Wintons lighting design features Robe LED Wash 300s Robin 300e spots along with Pulsar Chroma Strips to compliment the hose lighting rigs. All control if from a Chamsys MQ100 Pro.
dBS Staff Craig Stuart, Martin Winton and Alistair Nickolson will be looking after the boys on tour.