Three levels of service are offered, specify only, specify & supply and turnkey

Obviously, the price you pay depends on the service you require, with the Specify Only service costing a flat £100 per room. Thereafter it is hard to give an price without knowing what you require, but as a rough guide a budget level PA for a small hall will cost £650 for specify and supply service, or £1000 for a full installation service with the same hardware. The cost of any survey work may be deducted from further services, if they are ordered within 6 months of the date of the survey for that room, this is so you can get a quote, go away and find the money then order the equipment and services you require.

Survey

The survey is your starting point, we need to know what the room looks like, what you want to achieve, and what skills you have available to you before we can put together a specification and price for you. We request that you complete a simple questionnaire before we arrive, outlining the size and shape of the room, what you think you want (and maybe give us an idea of your total PA budget). Doing this in advance saves time when we come to visit you, because its no good us turning up expecting a 100 seat village hall and being faced with a 1000 seat, multi level ex-cinema with a £1M budget (that would be nice). On completion of the survey you will receive a report detailing the room, with our recommendations for the type of PA that best suits the hall and your budget. Normally this is delivered to you within 14 working days of the survey, but we may request additional information, or we may have tasked you

Typical budget PA

Mixer amp, with 3 mics, stands, 2 small speakers with stands or brackets (to your choice), all cables, installation instructions, and post installation inspection and basic operating instruction of one operator

Obviously this can be expanded somewhat, additional mics may be added, either at the time of initial order, or at a later date. The limit being the number of free mic inputs on the mixer amp

Typical mid range PA

Separate mixer, amplifier, with 6 mics with stands, 2 speakers with stands or wall brackets (to suit your choice) and all cables, dedicated CD player (or CD + Tape), "feedback destroyer", installation instructions, and post installation inspection and basic operating instruction of one operator.

A recommended extra to this PA is a rack mounting case, two standard finishes are employed, either a lightweight (but "road strength") plastic case, as used on our small hire rig, or a more substantial, but heavier ply & aluminium flight case.

Typical high end PA

This is getting into the serious end of the market, similar to the mid end PA, but with additional mics (up to about 40 or more), musical instruments (dozens), recording, foldback, live feeds to other rooms (say the creche), multiple pre-recorded source inputs. The list is endless, and the price just goes up and up! If you want it, we will supply it, and we can install it!

Typical add-ons in this sort of PA would be, compression on all vocal channels, fx on selected channels, multi-channel speaker systems, with delay bans (not in your 100 seat village hall please), radio mics, lectern mics, choir overhead mics etc.......

We would also arrange appropriate operator training, with equipment manufacturers if necessary, These requirements would be discussed with you, a separate quotation supplied if required.

Furniture

We can supply, at a reasonable cost custom built furniture. Employing craftsmen to produce bespoke furniture that blends in with your decor. We place you in contact with the craftsmen, and work with them to ensure that the final product satisfies both your aesthetics, and technical requirements.

Within furniture (for no other reason than it sort of fits!) is the provision of wall plates, floor sockets and the like. However such fittings are intrusive into the building fabric, thus we would require assurance that such works are permissible to the owners and/or trustees (including English Heritage where the building is listed) of the building, and on the basis that you will be responsible, with our assistance, for gaining such approval.

Please note, that while we are prepared to perform work on listed buildings we will require written assurance from English Heritage that the complete works are approved prior to commencement of the ORDERING of equipment - we don't want you to have equipment that you cannot install or use.

Installation Service

Our comprehensive installation service is available on all equipment supplied, a quotation for this service may be requested as part of your survey report. This will include any required electrical inspection in the first 12 months, provided no unauthorized modifications to the equipment or installation has taken place.

Induction Loops

At its simples an induction loop installation consists of a microphone, a loop amplifier and a loop of cable round the room to be covered. The cost varies with the size of room to be covered, but loop amplifiers start at about £160 for a small room (about 7m x 10m). It is worth remembering that some or all of the VAT may be recovered (or be Zero rated) on equipment supplied for the hearing impaired, the RNID and HMRC both produce guidance notes on the subject. These notes may influence your choices, so please read them before ordering, as we have to provide you and HMRC with the appropriate statements and certificates for you to be able to recover the VAT.

Choice of Manufacturers?

Not being tied to any one manufacturer gives us the ability to supply what reallysuits you, not what we are "forced" into selling you. That said we have a few preferances, AKG make really nice drum mics, Martin have to be one of the bes speaker manufactures around, Sennheiser radio mics work well, Shure SM58s must be the greatest rock vocal mic ever. Gibson make good guitars, (but Gordon Smith make even better ones - ask anyone who has played mine red SG lookalike...). I used to say Chameleon made superb amps, but sadly they aren't trading now, so I'm looking around for a range of amps, but haven't settled on any one maker yet.... Mixers, two names come to mind, Soundcraft and Allen&Heath. These are the sorts of names that will crop up in many of our quotes, but not every time, as the likes of Behringer, JBL, Samson, TC, Crown, Tanoy and Audio Technica do good stuff, so they will get a look in as appropriate.