Waitakere’s Newest Youth Music Venue

29 August 2008

Zeal was established in 1995, Central Wellington by CEO Anthony Walton. Originally named Global Tribe, the venue was initially a huge success and saw over 100,000 young people come through. Unfortunately the hype only lasted six months until the reality set in that All-ages are nearly impossible to run at a profit. The Venue closed down leaving the youth of Wellington without a cultural and social home or hub. In 1998 the Wellington City Council, realising the tragedy of the closure, joined forces with Anthony to re-launch the charitable trust known as Zeal.

Zeal is designed to be a place of creativity, whether it’s jamming with your mates, performing your solo tunes, showing your first art exhibition, or just being entertained by a great night of rock, hip hop, acoustic shows and more.

In 2006 Zeal was approached by the Waitakere City Council to apply for the position of provider for their new youth facility. The organisation happily accepted the opportunity to grow and expand to accommodate the needs of young people in New Zealand.

Recently, JANDS was involved in designing and installing an audio system and recording studio for the Waitakere venue. The team were given a small budget to work with and together with local retail store, Go West Music (Henderson), all equipment required was provided on time and within budget.

The setup was fairly standard and straight forward with the only main challenge being how to get an isolated split from the live venue to the recording studio. The use of Whirlwind isolation splitters and a custom multi-track snake were implemented, resolving the issue and completing a job well done.

Equipment List:

For the Main Stage: Four QSC HPR 15” 3-way powered loudspeakers, four QSC HPR 18” powered subwoofers, 5 QSC HPR 12” 2-way powered loudspeakers, a Soundcraft 32 Mono 4 Stereo Console, three DBX IEQ dual 31 band graphic EQ, a DBX 4 channel gate and quad compressor/limiter, two DBX dual compressor/gate/limiters and a Lexicon four channel multi effects processor.

For the Acoustic/DJ Stage: Two QSC HPR 15” 2-way powered loudspeakers, a QSC HPR 12” 2-way powered speaker and a Soundcraft 16 Mono 2 Stereo RTN console.

For the Rehearsal Rooms: Three Soundcraft Gigrac 600W 8 channel portable mixer amps, six JBL JRX 15” 2-way loudspeakers, six Whirlwind 7.5M speaker cables and eight speaker stands, six Whirlwind DI boxes, one Whirlwind 32 channel multi-track snake and six 4-way splitters.

About Go West Music: Go West Music was established in 1990 by Kerry and Michelle. In 2006 Len and Svargo (with Tulsi the guard dog) took over and have been providing musical instruments and PA to schools, churches and the public in West Auckland.

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