Power for a stage?

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mparkstexas

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I am working a project where the owner is requesting a "kick a** sound stage" for concerts. The stage are is about 200 square feet.

Does anyone have any experience desiging something like this? I'm just planning on putting in a handful of dedicated 120V receptacles.

Am I underestimating something?

Thanks for the help.
 
The stages I worked on had CAMLOCKS for the incoming shows own distribution, to sound and lighting controls. The 120 VAC outlets on stage were for inhouse use, such as vaccums, drills ETC.

The CAMLOCKS were fed from 100 amp and 200 Amp fusible disconnects. The main Service for the stage was 2000 amps.
 
Like brian john said, the professional stages that I have worked on required a 200 amp three phase disconnect and a 100 amp disconnect (I cannot remember if it was single or three phase) cam locks are the prefferd and correct method of making a connection to them, but I have seen them land thier cables directly into the fused disconnect lugs.
If you are wiring the stage for local bands, most of the small timers just want a 50 amp Range recept that they plug thier own home made panel into:roll: the last bar stage I wired I just ran a 60 amp circuit and set a small panel and fed 8 dedicated duplex recepts on the stage, and one to the back of the room for the mixing table. there has been no coplaints from any of the bands that have played there yet.
 
200 sq ft? Like 20' x 10'?

Thats pretty tight, I would think a 100 to 200 amp single phase disconnect for lighting and a 60 to 100 amp single phase disconnect for sound would do it.

This assumes the shows coming in will have their own distribution equipment.

If not ......... install a ton of dedicated 20 amp circuits.

Very tough to pin down without knowing the types of shows that will be coming in.
 
It is indeed 20'x10'. Just for local, small town bands.

Thanks for the input, I guess I need to push for a little more detail from the owner.

Thansk again.
 
A lot of these bar bands want a three pin dryer connector, which they use with their home-made distro as either two hots and a combined neutral / ground, or as two hots and a neutral, plus undo a screw holding the connector and use that as the ground...

If you're putting a receptical at the back of house for the sound desk, please feed the back of house socket from the same panel that powers the stage. If you feed it from somewhere else there will be a difference in ground potentials, and many weekend warrior sound systems will then buzz like hell, which they will try to fix by undoing grounds. This obviously makes matters unsafe...

If you're putting in edisons I'd recommend GFCIs. One day they may save someone's life.
 
dbuckley said:
A lot of these bar bands want a three pin dryer connector
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I said range recept, but now that you mention it, it was a dryer recept they were wanting. All I know is I wasnt about to help them use there scary looking home made contraptraption (a general switch panel with a dryer cord hanging off of it, and every brand of breaker under the sun mounted on a piece of plywood with a bunch of blue plastic nail on boxes screwed to it fed with romex and uf or whatever.
 
ultramegabob said:
I said range recept, but now that you mention it, it was a dryer recept they were wanting. All I know is I wasnt about to help them use there scary looking home made contraptraption (a general switch panel with a dryer cord hanging off of it, and every brand of breaker under the sun mounted on a piece of plywood with a bunch of blue plastic nail on boxes screwed to it fed with romex and uf or whatever.
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and 30amp breakers supplying duplex 15a receptacles. I have even seen ones with toggle switches which disconnect the ground for a "ground lift" to get rid of hum. (in audio world when you need to lift a ground, you do it to the signal -not the power :roll: )
 
For something like that, I'd install maybe a 12-circuit subpanel just off the stage, with GFCI outlets, and as mentioned above, run a single circuit (two?) from there to the sound mix position. I might also make that an isolated ground, just to keep the peace with the band's roadies. Oh, and consider upsizing the neutral, since most bar-band portable dimmers aren't well filtered.
 
This might seem repetitive but, try to keep the stage lighting power and the audio power as separated as possible.
 
you want neutral per circuit for all receptacles, no MWBC as lighting dimmers, the switching power supplies in LED and other newer fixtures, and the switching power supplies in newer audio amps are all terrible non linear loads...
 
ultramegabob said:
What exactly does using a larger grounded conductor do to help?
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Think about non-linear loads and harmonics. (Some of the cheapo dimmers I've seen don't even have chokes to cut the harmonics, and others have undesize chokes.) I have seen the neutral lead carry more than the highest phase lead. Granted, it was a bad mix of small UPS, but it does happen. (I'm not suggesting doubling the size, just jumping up a size or two. You'll need to look at the expected/actual loads to know if it's warranted and how big to go.)
 
I just did a big club and we had to drop a 200 amp panel and hard wire the amps in a rack. Then som hack DJ brought his own amps in a requested 120v 30 amp receps.... The RV kind :roll: no NEMA number.
 
mikeames said:
I just did a big club and we had to drop a 200 amp panel and hard wire the amps in a rack. Then som hack DJ brought his own amps in a requested 120v 30 amp receps.... The RV kind :roll: no NEMA number.
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actually that does have a NEMA designation - NEMA TT-30

Crown and other amp manufacturers use this plug. I of course hack it off and install an L5-30.
 
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