We’re excited to share that we’ve expanded our rental inventory yet again by adding some Shure TwinPlex TH53 headset microphones! The TH53 is designed to meet the needs of demanding audio environments, making them an exceptional choice for houses of worship, theater productions, corporate events, and more.
The Shure TwinPlex TH53 stands out for its pristine audio quality and innovative design. With a patent-pending dual-diaphragm capsule, it captures natural, full-bodied sound with incredible clarity. Whether it’s a speaker delivering a sermon, a performer commanding the stage, or a presenter leading a corporate meeting, the TH53 ensures every word is conveyed with precision and warmth. This level of performance makes it an invaluable tool for any setting where clear communication is essential.
Equally impressive is the TH53’s discreet, ergonomic design. Ultra-lightweight and fully adjustable, the headset offers a secure yet comfortable fit, making it ideal for extended use. This ensures that speakers and performers can focus on their message or performance without distraction. Additionally, the microphone’s sleek, low-profile appearance allows it to blend seamlessly into any production or event.
Durability is another hallmark of the TwinPlex TH53. Built to withstand the rigors of live events, it features sweat-resistant construction and robust materials, ensuring reliable performance even in high-energy environments. Available in a range of colors and connector options, it’s also highly versatile and compatible with a variety of wireless systems, making it easy to integrate into existing setups.
One of the key features of the TwinPlex TH53 is its omnidirectional polar pattern. Unlike directional microphones, with tighter polar patterns that focus on sound pressure coming from a specific direction, the omnidirectional design captures sound equally in a sphere-shaped pattern around the microphone. This ensures a consistent and natural sound, even if the source moves a little during a presentation or performance. With an omnidirectional microphone, you also benefit from reduced handling noise and minimal proximity effect—issues that can often color the sound when using a directional microphone. This makes the TH53 a perfect choice for dynamic settings, such as worship services or live performances, where clarity and reliability are paramount.
Interested in renting Shure headset microphones from TC Furlong? Call our office today at 847-367-9588 or send an email to rental@tcfurlong.com.
Interested in purchasing your own Shure headset microphone, or any other professional audio products? We are dealers for over 100 pro audio manufacturers. Call our office today at 847-367-9588 or send an email to sales@tcfurlong.com and we’ll get started on a quote!
Historic Venue Achieves Exceptional Sonic Clarity While Preserving Its Architectural Grandeur
The Genesee Theater in Waukegan, IL recently upgraded to a new Meyer Sound Panther system in 2024.
The landmark Genesee Theatre in Waukegan, Illinois, set a new standard for state-of-the-art sound with a Meyer Sound PANTHER system, marking a major upgrade to its nearly century-old tradition of live entertainment.
Originally opened in 1927 as a grand movie palace, the 2,400-seat venue, owned by the city of Waukegan and managed by the nonprofit Friends of the Historic Genesee Theatre, shifted focus in recent years to present concert-heavy programming that called for a more robust sound system.
The theater’s Meyer Sound M2D system, installed in 2004, was designed for musicals, speaking events, and films. But as the venue hosted more concerts, it bolstered the installed system with rental equipment.
Integrator TC Furlong, Inc., in collaboration with Meyer Sound and Genesee’s skilled union crew, designed and installed a powerful new PANTHER sound system that delivers an unrivaled audio experience in every seat while seamlessly blending into the theater’s iconic architecture. With the upgrade, the theater, renowned for its architectural grandeur, now offers a state-of-the-art audio experience for both audiences and artists.
For the historic theater, it was critical to preserve the aesthetics of the ceiling, the centerpiece of the building’s grand historic architecture. This meant the new system needed to be unobtrusive both visually and in installation.
Furlong designed the PANTHER system around a low-profile deck stack with flown arrays for the balcony; hung elements of the system, finished in custom pale yellow paint, virtually disappear into the ceiling.
“It’s an unusual deployment,” explains TC Furlong Inc. founder TC Furlong, who designed the new system and the previous Meyer Sound system installed two decades ago. “The balcony has its own system and the main floor has its own system, because when they did the remodel in 2001, the balcony was cantilevered down really far. So when you’re in the back row at the mix position, you’ve got a tiny window to see the stage. Even though there’s an excellent under-balcony system, if a guest engineer comes in and doesn’t see the speakers that are on the stage, they don’t like that.”
The main system is anchored by ground-stacked left/right arrays of three PANTHER large-format linear line array loudspeakers in narrow, standard, and wide-coverage variants, along with two 2100‑LFC low-frequency control elements per side.
“One challenge that we’ve had with that balcony hanging really low is pushing through underneath the balcony,” explains Genesee Theatre’s Production Manager, Mack Folkert. “We had Meyer Sound MTS-4 speakers on either side of the stage driving as ground stacks before. We wanted to do that again with ground stacks so that we could push underneath. With PANTHER and with the subs that we put on either side of the stage, we’ve been able to really drive underneath that balcony.”
Furlong points out that deck-stacking the PA also minimizes image distortion, since the speakers are on the same plane as performers. “You sacrifice a little bit of uniformity in level, meaning that the people who are closer to the deck stacks are getting a different level than the people who are further from the deck stacks, but PANTHER sounds so smooth that people who are closer don’t mind it. They actually like it.”
Because there was no provision to fly subwoofers, Furlong placed two 1100‑LFC low-frequency control elements under the stage, creating what he likes to call a “two-way subwoofer system”: “The two 1100-LFCs cover everything from 50 Hz down. And then the 2100s go from about 40 Hz-ish up to up to a little over 100 Hz. It’s really effective. You can turn on and off the 1100-LFCs and you can save them for when you want to really pressurize the room.
“It’s a great special effect,” he explains. “There are people sitting maybe 10 feet from the subs. They don’t hear them, directionally, they just hear the room.”
Two ULTRA‑X42 narrow-coverage compact loudspeakers serve as front-row in fills, and four UP‑4slim ultracompact installation loudspeakers serve as box fills. Two ULTRA‑X20XP compact wide-coverage loudspeakers serve as out fills; Front fills are five ULTRA‑X20 compact wide-coverage loudspeakers, and nine ULTRA-X20 loudspeakers cover under-balcony areas. The system is driven by two Galileo GALAXY 816 network platforms.
“I want to stress how capable and phenomenal the ULTRA-X20s are for under-balconies,” says Furlong. “That under-balcony is the best under-balcony I’ve ever been in in my life. If they have a loud show in there, there’s no issue at all. ULTRA‑X20 is a marvel of a modern speaker.”
The new system debuted in late 2023 to unanimous acclaim from fans, visiting artists, and staff. “We’ve had a lot of tours come in, and they’ve been so excited to use the new system,” says Folkert. “I’m also happy to see Meyer Sound more frequently on riders,” he adds. “That’s made me feel good about our purchase.”
“A big goal for us was having the same sound upstairs and downstairs,” he concludes. “Consistency has been great, especially under the balcony. It just sounds so much more full, and the clarity has been a huge improvement. We’ve been really happy with it.”
TC Furlong is a full line Meyer Sound dealer. Interested in renting or purchasing your own Meyer system? Call our offices today at 847-367-9588 or email us at rentals@tcfurlong / sales@tcfurlong.com for a quote!
We are excited to share that we’ve added the Shure AD600 Axient Digital Spectrum Manager to our rental inventory! As an industry leader in wireless technology, Shure has once again raised the bar for spectrum management with the AD600, making it an essential tool for events that demand flawless, interference-free wireless audio performance.
Why the Shure AD600?
The Shure AD600 is designed to be the brain of any large-scale wireless system, especially in environments where available spectrum is scarce. It provides an efficient way to scan, monitor, and manage frequencies across a wide bandwidth, ranging from 174 MHz to 2 GHz. The AD600 is also a key component for productions with many wireless devices operating at once, ensuring every frequency remains interference-free.
Key features include:
Real-time spectrum scanning: With the AD600, you can continuously scan a vast portion of the RF spectrum and quickly detect any interference. This ensures you stay ahead of potential issues before they impact your audio quality.
Comprehensive frequency coordination: The AD600 works in tandem with Shure’s Wireless Workbench software to automate frequency coordination, making it easier than ever to manage large systems.
Remote control and monitoring: Its integration with other Shure Axient Digital components allows for seamless, real-time adjustments and monitoring from a centralized location. Combine the AD600 with the AD610 Access Point and ADX1 or ADX2 transmitters together for a frequency agile Axient Digital system with ShowLink.
Our 4 brand new AD600 units, prepped and ready for upcoming rentals
Ideal for High-Stakes Productions
Whether you’re working on broadcast events, large concerts, theater productions, or corporate presentations, the AD600 is the perfect partner for any situation requiring meticulous RF management. Its advanced features ensure that you can operate numerous channels without worrying about dropouts or interference, even in the most challenging RF environments.
Interested in renting from TC Furlong? Call our office today at 847-367-9588 or send an email to rental@tcfurlong.com.
Interested in purchasing your own Shure wireless accessories, or other professional audio products? We are dealers for over 100 pro audio manufacturers. Call our office today at 847-367-9588 or send an email to sales@tcfurlong.com and we’ll get started on a quote!
At TC Furlong, we pride ourselves on being ready and able to answer the call. Over the last 50 years, we’ve made a significant effort to prove ourselves as a beacon of reliability and expertise among the many professional audio service providers in the greater Chicagoland area. Every day in our shop, our team of dedicated audio specialists work tirelessly to ensure that the music never stops and the shows always go on.
One of the key service values offered at TC Furlong is the Emergency Audio Response hotline, a lifeline service available to our customers, 24/7 + 365. We’d like to give you a little insight into how one of our customers recently took advantage of this service, and how our timely response helped save their whole weekend of performances.
One fateful Thursday evening, the hotline rang with urgency. On the other end of the line was a voice wrought with desperation… a customer in dire need of professional audio assistance! With less than 24 hours until show time, a troublesome power amplifier/DSP unit, matched to the manufacturer’s loudspeakers, started to act up. The customer’s show, a carefully choreographed masterpiece months in the making, hung in the balance, threatened by a pesky technical failure. But for TC Furlong, challenges are but opportunities in disguise, and the team wasted no time in springing into action.
By the next morning, a TC Furlong representative had already removed the affected amplifier from the venue, and the techs in the shop began work on getting a replacement unit in line from our rental inventory. This was no ordinary swap; it was a seamless transition, a ballet of technology orchestrated with finesse. The replacement amp arrived at the venue by midday Friday, pre-loaded with all the necessary DSP presets, which were downloaded from the defective amp back at the shop. After some adapters were added, the amp was a drop-in replacement; a plug-and-play solution born from the marriage of technology and expertise, and a testament to TC Furlong’s unwavering customer support.
As the curtains rose on the evening’s performance, there was a palpable sense of anticipation in the air. But thanks to TC Furlong’s responsiveness, technical knowhow, and dedication to excellent customer service, the show unfolded flawlessly. TC Furlong’s Emergency Audio Response hotline helped amplify the night, once again proving our reliability and excellence amidst the ever-changing and unpredictable landscape of live performance entertainment.
Interested in renting from TC Furlong? Call our office today at 847-367-9588 or send an email to rental@tcfurlong.com.
Interested in purchasing your own gear? We are dealers for over 100 professional audio manufacturers. Call our office today at 847-367-9588 or send an email to sales@tcfurlong.com and we’ll get started on a quote!
At TC Furlong, we provide our customers with a myriad of professional audio service offerings like system design, wireless systems analysis and coordination, system commissioning, and also sound system tuning and alignment with Rational Acoustics SMAART. Our team of seasoned engineers is prepared to help you get the most out of your gear for the space it’s in — Whether it’s a previously installed system, a mobile rig, or your Church’s brand new line array, we have the tools and experience necessary to tune your sound system to achieve its best performance using SMAART.
We’ve recently upgraded our SMAART Suite to ver. 9
Our measurement and analysis tool, Rational Acoustics’ SMAART Suite, is an industry leading system measurement software. It is designed to provide real time analysis of system response, phase coherence, and many other useful analysis tools to optimize audio system performance. SMAART Suite also has SPL monitoring functions, and is a popular choice for live sound engineers to keep track of volume levels over time.
One of our Earthworks M30 omnidirectional measurement microphones in action
At the front end of our rig is the Earthworks M30 omnidirectional measurement microphone, which is a popular choice for engineers looking for a reliable measurement solution. With a notably flat frequency response from 3hz to 30khz, the M30 provides an accurate representation of your system within the room.
Our SMAART system helped us tune our flown Meyer Sound LINA line array system for a recent in-house event
Are you interested in getting your system aligned or one of TC Furlong’s many other professional audio services? Call our office today at 847-367-9588 or send an email to align-design@tcfurlong.com to get started.
