UK rental company SSE has supplied an L-ACOUSTICS KUDO line source system for Maximo Park’s sellout UK academy tour.

The system needed to have a small footprint yet provide enough power and headroom for the band, while being flexible enough to handle venues of differing sizes. This ranged from six groundstacked KUDOs per side for the smaller venues, through to 13 KUDO cabinets flown per side at the two Brixton Academy shows. This system – powered by nine LA8 amplified controllers in three LA-RAKs - also incorporated eight SB28 subwoofers, three dV-DOSC cabinets across the stage for front fill and four ARCS for infill around the venue.

“KUDO’s an incredibly powerful system for its size,” says Maximo Park’s FOH engineer Huw Richards. “It’s a punky show so we need a system which can throw out and provide plenty of headroom. For the smaller venues it’s been really easy to groundstack. L-ACOUSTICS has obviously put some thought into this, as although it’s a hefty box it’s remarkably stable.”

A big ecological benefit for the tour has been the system’s low power requirements. “Using the LA8s, the amount of power we’ve been consuming has been remarkably small,” says system tech Nick Pain. “We haven’t been drawing more than 25 amps per leg on three-phase which is an incredibly small amount for the amount of noise that comes out. This bodes really well for the new K series, the SB28s and the K1, which SSE has just taken delivery of.”

Both engineers have also been impressed with KUDO’s K-LOUVER technology, which can be adjusted to provide a choice of four dispersion patterns. “In venues like Brixton, where the PA is close to the side walls, the last thing you want is a big wide box splashing the walls, wasting energy and causing problems for the FOH engineer,” says Pain. “I can set the louvers asymmetrically so I’m firing wide into the centre of the room and narrow against the wall. We could almost get away without the dV-DOSCs we’re using for infill in the centre of the stage, they’re really just there to add a little more sparkle.”

SSE has just joined L-ACOUSTICS’ K1/KUDO pilot scheme.

More information on : www.sseaudiogroup.com