LEVELLING UP:

Source Venue Magazine

Chris Cinerari and Richard Garland had a business in Melbourne installing old school pinball and arcade machines in pubs and clubs. 18 months ago, the duo moved to Sydney to build and open Hunky Dory Social Club. It took them that long to build the place, and get it through all the red tape. In fact, the pair designed and built it themselves, except for the odd licensed trademan. “We’ve grown up in the bar scene in Melbourne,” says Cinerari. “We know what we like.”

“We’ve called it a social club because it’s about the lifestyle. Everyone that either owns or operates the premises 25 or under,” continued Cinerari. “We’ve got four levels. We didn’t really anticipate it was going to be that big when we got into it. Originally we were planning to do just the top two levels as a bar, but the council wanted us to put an elevator in. The compromise was that we would take the bottom level and provide a similar service and we didn’t have to provide the elevator. It’s evolved from just being a bar to a bit more of an establishment.”

Lightsounds put together the sound system, which had to accommodate high sound quality across all four levels without breaking the budget. It also had to be able to be controlled from each bar, and be able to switch from anywhere to anywhere.  “We can run the DJ from the rooftop bar, in the main room, the restaurant, we can even run him in the toilets,” says Julian Lacey, Lightsounds Head of Projects, also pointing out that Hunky Dory is apparently the first full dB Technologies speaker installation in Sydney. “dB has been pretty bulletproof, we’ve now installed them in a few venues,” says Lacey. “We’re using the K162 speakers for most smaller rooms, the rooftop bar and toilets. It’s quite punchy and has a high output for a small 6-inch active box. We’ve used four speakers from the Arena 10 series in the main room, which is a beautiful sounding box for the price, along with the Opera Sub. They also went for as high a quality DJ box as they could, the DJM2000, two CDJ2000s, and as far as I know the last two Technics SL1200s sold in NSW — which I told them to make sure they hold on to as if they’re made of platinum, because they’re almost as valuable. We used a Cloud Z4II 4-channel zone mixer with remotes on in each bar to control the system. It’s my favourite mixer, because the quality that you get for the price is better mthan anything else I’ve found on the market. The guys have a great sense of style, and have put an enormous amount of time and effort into the design, so we didn’t really want to break any of those lines with nightclub lighting, it’s more of an atmosphere bar.”

For more information or help with your next project call Lightsounds Projects on  1300 577 911 or email projects@lightsounds.com.au

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