One starry night in Vegas, I had been asleep for a couple of hours when my cell phone rang. I looked at the number and it was Mike Burns from the MGM Grand Garden Arena. “Hey Mike, what’s up?”, I said as I shook myself awake. Mike explained that the band’s tech team arrived in the arena at 1 AM and listened to the PA system that had been provided for them. After a quick listen, it became clear that there was something terribly wrong with the speaker system. It was a quality, self-powered PA from a very popular manufacturer, but there was definitely something wrong with it. After an hour of troubleshooting, it was decided that the answer was to find another PA that was ready to rock and have it installed for the show that was scheduled for the next night. That is when I got the call…

AV Vegas had been providing live sound equipment and musical instrument rental for the MGM Grand Garden for several years, so it was natural for Mike to call who he knew and trusted. He explained that we had an hour and a half window in which to remove the bad system and install and tune our system and then turn it over to the band. “Mike”, I said, “No problem. Oh, by the way, who is the band?” His reply was Journey. Journey? Wow! I was so excited, I could barely get back to sleep.

It turned out that this was first show of their tour and their sound check / rehearsal was at noon the next day. We arrived the next morning, just as excited as we could be. Removing the old rig was slow going. The speaker cabinet rigging was difficult to deal with, but finally it was time to fly our rig, We flew our JBL Vertec 4889 boxes and checked their performance. All was good. Journey’s sound crew was cool under pressure until they saw the band walking in the back door of the arena. Just seconds after we finished the rig, the front of house engineer yelled, are we up and running? I yelled YES as he was walking quickly towards his console. He stopped and gave me the biggest high five I have ever had.

There are a few days in life that are truly, truly grand. The day you meet the love of your life, the day your kids are born. I may be accused of over dramatizing this event, but I will never forget the night I received the phone call and the day that AV Vegas got to provide a PA System for Journey. You see, it is not supposed to happen this way. The big sound companies always get to do the big bands. But on March 6th of 2008, years of preparation paid off. AV Vegas, a mid sized concert sound company got to be part of rock and roll history. I will always be grateful to be able to serve the great bands that I have grown up with. Journey is just one of them.

View the video here!

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AV Vegas has been nominated by Front of House Magazine for the Hometown Hero award. Winners from each region become the finalists for the annual Parnelli Award for Hometown Hero/Regional Sound Company of the year.

If AV Vegas has been your hometown hero, or you think we’re even mildly heroic, please vote for us here.

When you hire us to meet your needs, whether it be just a guitar amp at the last minute, or a Sound and Lighting rig for 20,000 people, we strive to always provide a superior level of service. We appreciate our customers for hiring us to do the job we love to do!

Sincerely,

John Hansen
Founder and CEO, AV Vegas

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Twice a year, AVVegas packs up a massive Vertec 4889 PA, a small army of PM5D consoles, and enough backline to fill a SEMI truck. This massive pile of gear becomes the main stage PA and backline supply for the entire festival, comprising multiple stages, thousands of people, dozens of vendors, and one delectable Funnel Cake stand. Talk about a fun job, hard work yes… but this is the stuff we practice for.

Here are just a few of the photos we snapped between set changes, for your viewing pleasure.

Drummer Playing Hard During Soundcheck

Dual Patchmasters Ensure Quick Changeover

JBL Vertec 4889 Line Array PA System

Newsboys Singer Michael Tait On Stage

JBL Vertec Sidefills

Sanctus Real On Stage at Spirit West Coast

L Acoustics 115XT HiQ Monitor Wedges On Stage at SWC

Shure UHF-R Wireless On Stage

Spirit West Coast Crowd Shot

Shure UR2 Handheld Wireless Microphones Locked On Target

The Orange County Supertones SKA Band Rocks On Stage At SWC

Patchmaster Will

The Orange County Supertones Using Shure Wireless

Monitor Engineer Goya

David Eaves Goya Phil Morgan Serious At Work

David Eaves Phil Morgan Having A Laugh

AVVegas Crew Deep in Thought

AVVegas CEO John Hansen and SWC Stage Manager David Eaves

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First off, if you haven’t heard of this oddly named company, you should check out Projection Screens by AV Stumpfl. Their rigid, perfectly square, unwavering structure make them rock solid installations, and the selectable aspect ratio is a big plus.

We also ran into our friends at SLS, who make those sweet sounding 8695 line array boxes that we love so much, turns out… they went ahead the built amps right into the box, giving us the new SLS 8695 series Self Powered Line Array (PLS8695V2).

Of course, LED’s were everywhere in the Lighting partition of the show floor, which come as no surprise to AVVegas, who has been talking about our 3 watt LED wash lights for quite some time. Our LED’s are still brighter than anything we saw being showcased at InfoComm. We did find a prototype display of the soon to be released Martin Mac 350 LED Moving Light, which was real cool to see in action!

In the end, there was just one product that was so new, so cool, so innovative, and so “it’s about time” necessary, that we just couldn’t help ourselves, we bought this little gem right out of the booth, taking the demo units straight home to our shop. I’m talking about the Sound Projections SM-4neo Portable PA system. This big little system is a 2 speaker self powered PA, with batteries that go for hours, a built in mixer, CD player, and usb port for mp3 audio. It’s even got built in ducking (the music fades when you talk into the mic). Oh yea… did I almost forget the best part… two built in Shure 90 channel wireless receivers for wireless handhelds or belt packs.

This past weekend I used the SM-4 system for the first time in the field, for a Grand Opening ceremony at a retail outlet. First… there was no power outside the building… so I did the ribbon cutting ceremony completely on batteries! Then I played music on my laptop, which was patched into the stereo inputs on the back of the main speaker. Later when our local 93.1 “The Party” radio station stopped by to do an on-the-air promo, I patched their radio rack right into the SM-4 and saved them even having to pull their PA out of the truck.

The whole gig consisted of two SM-4 speakers (master and slave), stands, an AC cord (that I didn’t need), a laptop, and a couple xlr’s to patch the radio station. This all fit easily into the back of my SUV, leaving our trucks behind, watching me longingly as I drove away, wishing they could come along, but knowing that… at least for this kind of small job, I didn’t need them any more.

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One of our favorite parties on December 31st takes place on the Brooklyn Bridge, the one at the New York New York Hotel & Casino that is. Every year the bridge gets closed down for the week leading up to the big night so we can transform it into a massive outdoor party zone, with hundreds of lights and enough sound to awe the crowd out on Las Vegas Blvd.

There is a new technology that has been growing rapidly in both quality and demand, and AVVegas is proud to be on the cutting edge. LED Lights have been available for nearly 4 years, but only recently has the technology exploded into the mainstream. In preparation for this New Years we bought a boat load of brand new LED based Par Cans, several hundred to keep up with demand. These new lights are bright enough to rival their conventional counterparts, but you can run 10 of them on a single electrical outlet! The light you see in these pictures is from either our LED Pars, or our MAC2000 moving lights, no par cans in sight!

See you next year!

See More Photos at our Facebook Page

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AV Vegas gets the “Lions share” of  the out of town companies coming to Las Vegas to do their shows. Of course that’s great! Yet we still love to handle all of our local venues and clients too! After all, if all of the Las Vegas Hard Rock venues and Cafe’s only turn to AV Vegas…… Nuff said!

We have in stock at our warehouse well over $2,000,000 in inventory ready to rent. We have everything needed to do the best job for your next function from the small backyard party up to your full blown arena concert. We are not limited to just Audio. We also do Lighting, Rigging, Backline, AV and more!

When you are ready to feel “taken care of” give AV Vegas a call, big or small we got you covered! (702) 878-5050

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For all of our Hoodie pics click here

To view video click here

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Here is AV Vegas at their best – Building a super structure out of truss within 24 hours of receiving a picture of what it was that they had to build. No plans just a picture of …” what we had last time.” No Problem was said over the phone and the rest in the pictures! The dimensions were 28 feet tall by 70 feet wide. The top of the arch was over 6 feet tall alone! This was for the start and finish line in the finals for the TORC series truck rally. Our client was Red Bull Racing.

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All this color doesn’t just happen, it must be designed and programmed by a qualified lighting designer. Eric at work!

We also lit the outside patio that was just out to the side of the banquet room.  What a great atmosphere for guests who wanted to catch some evening air.

These photo show some of the incredible table decor created by Destinations by Design. Between the professionalism of the Bellagio, the creativity of  Dest by Design and the technical excellence of AV Vegas, we created a look that was incredible.

The roll that teamwork played in this event can’t be overemphesized.  It would have been  nice without the lighting, although it was stunning with the lighting.  The lighting would have enhanced the room without the decor, but the decor sealed the deal!  It is an amazing feeling to work with professionals like these!

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