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Speaker hire types
Written by the founder Steven Thompson
Let’s see if we can quickly help you with a topic you might be thinking through if you’re interested in hiring audiovisual equipment.
This isn’t completely specific to hiring from us, and there are other reputable hire companies where these considerations would help too.
So you need to hire, for example, a pair of speakers, maybe a subwoofer and a mic, and some lights, and you’re wondering, should I come and collect it, or would it be better if someone brings it to me and sets it up?
Firstly the three typical formats of hire are:
- DRY, you come and collect and then return after a specific period of time
- DELIVERED: The specification of this varies between hire companies, but in our case one of the options within this is to include the setup, test and packdown followed by collection.
- OPERATED HIRE: Which is the full works, when an audiovisual hire company brings the equipment to your event space, sets it up, tests it, and then does the technical operation throughout the event before taking the equipment away
choosing a type of hire
In my experience, some people choose dry hire straight away when they’ve some prior experience of setting up speakers of lighting.
In fact, that is one of the first questions I ask new potential customers: have you done anything like this before?
A number of our customers have DJ’d and played in bands, and are totally capable of setting up, for example a two speaker PA.
Whereas our customers are more likely to a go straight to wanting delivery if they either:
1. Don’t have a vehicle to collect. That’s fairly self explanatory and of course makes sense
2. Beyond that, even for those people who potentially have a suitable vehicle and dry, but but who choose to have use deliver the equipment. It seems to me that it’s just a case they don’t want the hassle of driving to collect, then having to set up themselves and then, just when they think the party's finished and they can relax, they then need to bring the equipment back.
An example is in the case of weddings, customer putting more value on their time in those surrounding days, and so asking us to deliver, is common. Put simply, at the time when there's lots of other important things to get organised and get together, do you really want to be faffing around setting up speakers? And would you not rather instead have someone who does it often, and therefore can do it quickly and right, do it for you and take that responsibility?
For the third format or type of hire that we offer, that’s operated hire, that usually kicks in as the more ideal choice for larger or higher technically challenging events with enough prestige that, everything needs to be looking and sounding perfect first time, and there are no second chances to go back and change things so having the best person on the job first time is essential.
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FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS
So perhaps some of those points I've just spoken about on dry, delivered, and operated higher are fairly obvious, they may in fact have been things that you've already considered. But let me put a few further considerations into the mix, perhaps some of these you didn't know about yet:
Firstly, in favour of dry hire. it seems to me, after having around 15 years experience hiring audio visual equipment, that the biggest hesitation In the minds of many customers thinking about coming to collect the equipment themselves, is whether they're going to be able to set it up on their own. So over the past few years we've been working to make that piece easier here are some of the things we've done that appear to have made dry hire a much more Viable option even for people who haven't set up Sound or lighting equipment before.
- We've recorded, and continued to record explain a tutorial videos about how use our AV packages.
- we've put together these cable kits, with laminated instructions
- we offer every single dry hire customer the opportunity to see and hear their equipment working at the time of collection, including a hands on walkthrough explanation For how to set it up and pack it away again.
- we've created a 24/7 access, coded self service locker for returns to make it much more convenient for customers to return after their event at a time which happens to suit them.
- we help you load into your vehicle and I've got lots of experience loading many different types of cars.
Our records show that dry hire has become more popular. In the last year some of that might be to do with austerity But it’s also highly likely to do with those steps we've taken to make it easier to collect from us and set up yourself.
