Penguin Media Hire have been involved with Grillstock Festival for a few years now, with our involvement starting off with the supply of a couple of modest Ohm outdoor rated speakers and a small amp rack, for a little party area known as MeatRave!

This grew in popularity and size over the years the festival has been running, from a crowd of 2-30 people, to upwards of 1500-2000 for the last parties, the MeatRave / King of The Grill stage becoming festival stage no 2. Of course, when the crowd grows, so does the equipment needed to keep them happy! The last festival dates in Bristol meant not only did we need more SPL for the larger audience, we also needed a way of carefully controlling the overspill and dispersion of the sound – that’s where the Martin Audio MLA Compact system came in. MLA’s Hard Avoid feature meant we could contain the audio much better within the audience area and concentrate on the consistency of the coverage from front to back.

We used a cardioid subwoofer deployment which is designed to keep the bass more in front of the stage, with Martin Audio’s WS218X subwoofers, fed from our Powersoft K series amplifiers and processed using the Martin Audio MLA Merlin DSP.

Depending on time of day, the stage was dual purpose; during the day, it was used for food demos, competitions, judging, as well as presentations. When that was all over, a swift changeover to party mode meant bands and DJ’s were ready to go. A Soundcraft Performer 2 mixing desk side of stage along with a couple of wireless mics for the day use, a full industry standard DJ setup (Pioneer DJM900 Nexus, CDJ2000 Nexus and Technics 1210 setup) for night time.

There was more to this stage than the audio, though. We also supplied a 3.9mm pitch LED video wall for back of stage along with Blackmagic Design video mixing, so everyone could see the action during the day. This doubled up nicely as a backdrop for the DJs every night, with visual content created by Penguin Media for the event. Lighting was kept simple yet effective, using Chauvet ColorRail LED battens either side of the screen (or on the ground using tank traps for some of the dates) and Look Solutions haze machines.

Grillstock may have taken a break for 2018, but MeatRave as a production in its own right are looking for other suitable homes, so I’m sure we’ll be re-joining the team for another one very soon!