|
| Before Setup |
It always seems to take longer to get up a recap than we want. I
guess that's a good sign as it's because we wind up with a lot of extra work right after the show and this year was no different
from previous years. So without further ado, here is the highlights for us at the show.
October 20, 2011: Load-in.
Well, the road to hell is paved with good intentions and despite a whole lot of extra planning and foresight, this
year's load-in was less smooth than last year. Part of it was the fact that we had a 10' x 20' booth rather than the
10' x 10' booth and part of it was that Murphy's Law seemed to be as persistent as the Laws of Gravity. Due to a variety
of reasons and delays, instead of having 6 people for set up we only had one. Due to a freight pickup issue in
Kansas, we were guaranteed to have our pallet on the floor when I arrived at 11 AM that morning. Apparently the special
handling was so special that no one could find it in its special place so it came about an hour later. Our
booth had also moved at the last second to a spot closer to the front- a good thing. However, not all of the service
folks had recieved that memo- a bad thing. So we showed up with no electrical, 8 chairs instead of 3 and no one
knowing where are paperwork was. After being told that I "just don't know how things get done in NYC" by a
member of the electrical union we eventually got the electrical straightened out and up and running. I eventually got
our pallet and started setting everything up. One by one, the other folks showed up and the booth was ready to go.
Just a lot more headaches than last year.
Dinner. Last time we were in NYC for AES we
found an awesome sushi restaurant that we went to three nights in a row. For two years we've been counting the days
until we could make it back to NYC so that we could launch a second gastronomical assault on the same said restaurant.
Since I hadn't eaten since breakfast and everyone else was hungry from traveling we went for sushi after we had finished with
the booth set up. Surprisingly, the manager remembered us from two years ago. Or not surprisingly as Oliver is
6' 7", I'm 6' 4" and we both ate a pile of food last time. We were not disappointed!
|
| Terry Manning and Chris Juried just before opening... |
October
21, 2009: Open for Business! We all got there early on Friday morning so that we would have everything
that had been shipped to the hotel brought to the booth and set up before folks would arrive. All of the mics needed
to be hung (with care...), Larry and Chris needed to set up their computer display, and Oliver and I had to arrange all of
the transformers, microphone part samples, capsules and other fun things for folks to look at. The first hour of the
show was on the slow side but I checked my watch at around 11 AM and when I looked at it again it was 4:30PM! Everyone
was active the entire time and we all skipped lunch because we just hadn't thought about it. With the four companies
at our one booth I felt like we had something for everyone to look at. Both Tube Equipment Corporation supply product
to other manufacturers so other companies were swinging by our booth to check out what we had. Everyone had something
for engineers and producers to look at and AMI had parts and components for the DIY crowd to check out for their next project.
Below is a rough idea of what we had at the show.
The Products
Blackspade Acoustics: At last year's
AES show in SF, we showed the first production unit of the Blackspade UM17 which garnered much interest. This year we
were able to show the new UM17R and the production prototype of the UM25. The UM17R uses the same circuit but includes
a Thiersch STW7 Mylar capsule, AMI power supply and other nice upgrades. Folks were especially impressed with the PCB
work that was done for the UM25- point to point on a Plexiglas circuit board. All three mics were available at our demo
event that we held offsite later on Friday.
|
| TAB Funkenwerk and Lucas products |
Lucas Engineering: At this year's show,
Lucas unveiled what should be the production prototype of The Moonray mic pre. While it was shown initially two years
ago, it was in a much more primitive state than what was brought to this year's show. Pending final studio testing by
Terry, The Moonray should be ready to move into the production phase in early 2012. Also shown was the upcoming CS-3
microphone, an omni-directional small diaphragm condenser microphone in the lineage of the historic KM53. Stay tuned
for both of these products!
Tube Equipment Corporation: Larry and
Chris hand carried The Moonray up from Florida and had their highly acclaimed SR71 compressor available for viewing at the
show. In addition, they showed off the new suite of computerized test equipment that they've been developing.
Their tube tester can test 20 vaccuum tubes at once giving digital read outs of their performance as well as which tubes meet
your predefined set of minimum requirements weed out rejects. Several manufacturers that work with tube based equipment
came by to check out their set up.
AMI, Inc.: We were able to show
the first production units of our upcoming UTC replacement transformers- the UT10, UT24 and UT26 transformers.
Also shown was our Neve style output transformer the NO73, our JU280T guitar output transformer and the production prototype of
our long awaited C12 kit. Yes we will be putting out the C12 kit. Hang in there!
|
| Joe, Barry Hufker, Jeff Roberts, Oliver |
TAB Funkenwerk: We brought with us
samples of all of our current TAB Funkenwerk products. The two developments here were that we have now upgraded the
exterior design of the V71DI to match the entire rest of the line and this was the first time that we had shown this at an
AES show. We also had the very first production unit of the V72M on hand which we had folks listen to at the demo event
later that evening.
With all of those products present we had plenty of topics to talk about
with the customers, in fact it seemed like we were all speaking for about 7 hours straight everyday! Several folks were
curious as to why we had these different companies all in one booth. Well it's because we all help out with each other's
products. Not only that, but everyone involved are nice people that are easy to get along with and we've become friends.
Plus with the amount of time that we have spent together talking about each other's products it made it very easy for any
one of us to talk to customers about each other's products. All in all it was a great first day of the show with plenty
of customers and old friends dropping by.
Friday Night Dinner: When you have a
pair of Teutonic giants like Oliver and I skipping lunch every day, dinner becomes a very important activity at the end of
the show day. However tonight, we had our AES Demo Event to go to so instead of having sushi we had some local pizza at the studios; Metaphonic Recording Studios and Mercy Sound Recording.
October 22 and 23: Rinse and Repeat.
After having a successful and fun demo event the previous night, it was back to manning the booth on Saturday and Sunday.
Terry kept asking when we were going to start haucking the booth but we thought manning it was better for all involved.
Come on, it was little funny. Not even a little? No? OK moving on then. Saturday was crazy busy day
the entire day that we were there. Non stop traffic in the booth with folks really excited about all of the products
that we were showing. We spend so much of our year locked in our offices and manufacturing facilities that the AES Show
provides us with a great opportunity to hang out with our customers and ask them questions about what they like, don't like
or wish they had. It provides so much inspiration to go back home to our respective offices and plan future products.
Thank you so much to everyone who stopped by to give us insight or just say hi. It makes all of the hard work the rest
of the year worthwhile.
|
| Exahusted Joe, Terry and Larry |
October 23: Load out. Well if load-in
was the road to hell then load out was the waiting room for the DMV in hell and all of us needed to renew our licenses...
After a mind numbing 2 1/2 hour wait just to get our pallet and boxes out of storage, we were able to pack up everything that
we had broken down. The show ended at 4 PM and we left the building a little after 8 PM. To put that in perspective,
two years ago, Terry and I loaded everything out by ourselves in under 45 minutes... Go figure.
Dinner October 22: Super secret sushi.
Dinner October 23: Super secret sushi.
|
| Super Secret Sushi. Well maybe not that secret. |
