The Gearhouse South Africa, a principal event technical supplier in South Africa, recently increased their L-ACOUSTICS inventory. Llewellyn Reinecke, Senior Audio Technician at Gearhouse, explains why adding to their L-ACOUSTICS inventory puts Gearhouse in a league of its own.

“Gearhouse’s much anticipated expansion of its current L-ACOUSTICS range of V-DOSC, KUDO, KARA, dV-DOSC, ARCS II and HiQ to include the flagship K1 has become a reality in 2013. The purchase of a significant number of K1 and K1-SB enclosures was timed to coincide with the equally anticipated first South African tour of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, kicking off in February of this year.

The K1 enclosures were selected for their increased SPL output levels, the ease with which the captive rigging allows flying/dropping of the arrays, as well as the amount of headroom available when running at full blast. L-ACOUSTICS was also the natural choice because their equipment can be seamlessly incorporated into our existing stock. The K1 and K1-SB use the same amplifiers. It also offers the option of hanging either our older (66 x) L-ACOUSTICS dV-DOSC or our newer (24 x) L-ACOUSTICS KARA boxes underneath as down fills, which is a major plus for the Gearhouse system designers.

With the latest purchase, The Gearhouse Group now own 105 L-ACOUSTICS LA8 AMPLIFIED CONTROLLERS, enough to power every L-ACOUSTICS speaker they own, from the HiQ stage monitors right up to the new K1 and K1-SB. All of the LA8 AMPLIFIED CONTROLLERS can be fully networked, controlled and monitored from FOH. Show control is achieved by grouping various elements together and adjusting contour settings to fine-tune specific zones in a venue using L-ACOUSTICS’ Array Morphing facility in LA NETWORK MANAGER.

We have received numerous compliments about the new system, and how it sounded. Some of the ones which were repeated most often and pretty much summed it up as follows: “It’s so powerful, yet clear!’, “It’s as if the sound quality went from 2D to 3D’ and, “This puts Gearhouse in a different league, nobody in South Africa can compete with you on this level.’

Red Hot Chili Peppers was one of the first bands in the world to tour with the L-ACOUSTICS K1, and it seemed fitting that on their first tour of South Africa, they were also one of the first bands to play on our new PA.’