A church where installation started before the contract had been awarded

Kernow Installations, prominent member of the ISCE, has been installing sound systems in churches and chapels since 1985 and have completed more than fifty to date including a Cathedral.

Although primarily covering Devon & Cornwall they have been known to stray into Somerset and Dorset too. One of their most unique contracts began with them commencing work before they had even provided a full and detailed quotation! St Fimbarus Church in Fowey was in the midst of a complete refurbishment including some innovative new lighting and the renovation of the ceiling timberwork.

To this end, the extremely lofty church was filled to capacity with scaffolding to a height of 8 metres or so. As Stephen Gilbert of Kernow Installations was recommending a centrally flown line array speaker above the rood screen, it was agreed that this needed to be installed whilst the scaffolding was in place hence the bizarre contractual arrangement. The speaker involved was a TOA H3S slimline line array speaker suspended with steel cable high enough as not to impede the sight-lines of the stained glass window above the altar.

Another pair of smaller TOA H2S speakers were wall mounted in each of the side aisles to ensure even coverage. St Fimbarus Church is not only lofty but long.

However, the TOA H3S provides even coverage the full 25 metre distance to the back of the church. “These slimline column speakers are ideal for speech and background music and are also suitable for light acoustic groups” said Stephen Gilbert. “To this end, we needed to provide more than the usual number of inputs at the front to run to the rack position at the rear of the church”.

To achieve this effectively without using costly and unsightly multicore, it was decided to use four Clever Little Box SONET-4 CAT5 audio distribution boxes which provide four XLR links in each. This made installation very discrete, particularly as the inputs were to be split across the church.

The power amplifiers and wireless microphone receivers were rack mounted behind the organ at the front of the church and the Yamaha MG20-6C mixer with Behringer Ultradrive digital processor were mounted in a rack case on castors so that it could be locked away when not in use. Overall a very fulfilling installation and one quotation that Stephen Gilbert had been quite confident would come his way!

For more information and ideas visit www.kernowinstallations.co.uk