PALESTINE, TX – As they were moving towards a blended worship service, Southside Baptist Church members found that their old sound system in their 1,250 seat main worship center was a poor match for the demands of contemporary music.
"We just have one service per week, so on different Sundays we do different types of services," noted Wayland Hazel, minister of music. "Sometimes we have a youth praise band that also plays."
To accommodate the variety of services, Hazel relies on his band, with drums, bass, piano, acoustic guitar, with Hazel on keyboards, and occasionally an organ, and sometimes an orchestra. Three to four praise singers and a 50-member choir cover vocals.
Dr. Scott Weaver of Troubadour Solutions in West Chester, Ohio noted that "they had a cluster of horns up there that weren't matched or even pointed in the right way, and half of them didn't work. The sound was terrible."
Weaver recommended they try an FBT system, specifying a single array rigged front-and-center "It's the two full range cabinets, the Modus 40 and the Modus 15, to get the line array curve. They had a limited budget, and they needed something that was simple to deal with."
The FBT Modus series modules (Precision Coverage Vertical Array) proved to be just what the doctor ordered in providing a quality, yet cost-effective, loudspeaker solution for the church.
As Weaver recalls, "That was actually my first Modus line array that I've installed. And, I was rather impressed, because of a couple of things; First of all because of the install, we had the system up in the air in an hour and a half, with just two of us. So because we don't have as much labor involved, that's less they have to pay. And the other side is that you're getting a line array type cabinet, but it's a third of the weight of the other line arrays that I carry and we were able to use existing flywear because we didn't have to put up a lot of extra chains and rigging. The whole system weight was less than 500 pounds.
"The difference in sound is night and day from what we had before," Weaver added. "It's made a huge difference. The clarity is so much better. We have a balcony, and our sound system operators are in the balcony and the line array configuration allows us to hear the very same quality of sound that they're hearing on the floor. It's just awesome."
Weaver also supplied FBT Verve 8m wedges for choir monitors and powered FBT Jolly 5bas for the band and for the praise team. For the choir room Weaver installed a pair of FBT Verve 10s for rehearsal playback. "Then after the installation, they called me up and purchased a FBT Maxx 4a Active Powered Speaker for their youth department to be able to do outdoor things. So we put in a lot of FBT there."
For more information, please visit www.fbtusa.net.
