A-List Retailers At The Santa Monica Place Mall Get Top-Flight Sound And Staging Through GC Pro

— Upscale mall adds live music and event capability with technology supplied by GC Pro —

WESTLAKE VILLAGE, CA, October 17, 2012 — The Santa Monica Place has the stores, the views, the food and the fresh, open-air design – a shopping and dining destination that’s just right for this iconic beach city. Included are a custom-designed Bloomingdale’s made for the beach-chic lifestyle, a brand new Nordstrom, and a collection of A-list retail names, topped by a rooftop Dining Deck with six chef-driven restaurants and gorgeous views of the city, the mountains and the Pacific. And now Santa Monica Place has one more aspect that will draw and entertain shoppers: A new stage with an extensive sound system and lighting truss, all supplied by Guitar Center Professional (GC Pro), the outside sales division of Guitar Center that focuses on the needs of professional users.

GC Pro provided just about everything that Santa Monica Place needed to make its atrium into a performance venue. That included a JBL VRX line array system with 12 VRX932 enclosures and two MRX518S single-18 subwoofers and an MRX528S dual-18 subwoofer, four Crown XTi power amplifiers, a Soundcraft Vi1 console, AKG IVM4500 in-ear monitoring systems and dbx DriveRack® 4800 system processor. The Global Truss 24' x 16' stage and truss system has its own runway for fashion shows, with a Lex Pagoda power distribution system. A Telex BTR-24 multichannel radio communications system with eight headsets and beltpacks keeps everyone in the loop.

The entire collection of equipment, including the stage, is designed to be stored when not in use and set up as needed. This, says GC Pro Account Manager Josh Dawkins, who specified the products and handled the sale, gives the mall’s operation management more flexibility and offers them the opportunity to recoup some of the capital cost of the equipment through rentals. “They can rent the space and the sound system as a package, which makes it very attractive to potential users,” he says.

Dawkins says that HARMAN’s sales representatives were very helpful in choosing which systems and products best fit the needs of the mall’s management. “That’s one of the things that GC Pro brings to customers like this,” says Dawkins. “We have such depth of resources throughout the pro audio, lighting, video and staging industries that we can count on being able to access all of the expertise that the brands we represent can offer. That’s something that a commercial client like Santa Monica Place really appreciated.”

Mike Schoen, National Accounts Sales Manager, Harman Professional Group, stated, “We are very pleased that GC Pro chose a wide selection of Harman Professional products for the Santa Monica Place Mall. Working closely with Josh Dawkins, we were able to put together a comprehensive package that suited the venue’s needs.”

For more information, please visit www.gcpro.com.