165 Wentworth St Surry Hills has been home to many a club night, salsa dancing classes and even comedy nights. The location and outlay of the venue ma...
165 Wentworth St Surry Hills has been home to many a club night, salsa dancing classes and even comedy nights. The location and outlay of the venue makes it a perfect location for a night out, after work drinks or a dinner date in one of the smaller, more intimate areas of the venue. This time around the club is also under new management with a whole world of new events and projects coming up.
Sasha Mukhin caught up with Ben Peterson, new owner of the venue, to check out the outlook for the near future as well as Jimmy Polar to chat about the lighting and sound deck out.
Sasha : Why did you decide to buy Mars Lounge?
Ben : Sydney needs more quality entertainment options, we are renovating the space to become a live performance space with a large stage, world class PA and lighting.
Sasha : What is your favourite feature of the venue?
Ben : One hundred year old timberwork throughout the venue.
Sasha : What have you been doing differently since you bought the venue?
Ben : Built a stage, all new furniture, World Class sound and lighting, totally new entertainment program including live music and performance including burlesque, art shows and much much more.
Sasha : What is your future plan for the club?
Ben : To be Sydney’s premier 300 person live music venue.
Sasha : What can we expect from Tone in the near future?
Ben : Lots of internationals, album launches and special events coming up. Check out www.tone.net.au.
Sasha : Anything else you would like to ad?
Ben : Everyone who mentions this article and buys a drink at our venue gets any meal from our menu for half price for the month of October 2010. (One per person per day.)
Sasha : Jimmy, tell us a little about the venue sound and lighting gear around here.
Jimmy : This is a multi format venue, it can host an incredible array of performances from dance parties, to hip hop mc battles to live funk, soul, jazz and electronic performances. The stage has three fold back sends with large front of house (F.O.H) full range boxes. There are also several wedge shape vocal boxes for sweet fold back on stage.
The main club system is custom built and flown. Passive three way QMX mid/high boxes are flown directly over the front of the stage and four double 15” subs are built in under the stage. The rig is driven by hand built Australian monitor Mosfet amplifiers, 3800W on each of the subs and 3200W to the mid high boxes. At this point the crossover is being handled by a DBX system processer but they are beginning to experiment with analogue components, URE filter networks and old style soft and warm stereo compression from a 1970s URE replica Rane rotary DJ mixer. Opting for a recording style F.O.H. console for some future development in the area of live recordings they chose a mid budget Soundcraft Ghost with nice preamps and versatility.
The main mix is picked up by a pair of BSS 31 band graphics with nice filters and adjustable notch. The DJ equipment consists of a pair of Technics turntables, Pioneer CDJ1000 and DJM800 mixer. The lighting is an American DJ Triphase, four Lightmotion LED Parcans, and Lightmotion Sputnik moving head. On special occasions they also bring out the Antari smoke and Lightmotion bubble machine.
Sasha : Thank you Ben and Jimmy.
