Peavey Powers Main Stage at Mandalay Water Festival

World-renowned musical equipment manufacturer Peavey Electronics® was honored to sponsor the main stage at this year’s Mandalay Water Festival in Mandalay, Myanmar.

Just as Mardi Gras is enjoyed as a festival of celebration and dancing, Myanmar’s Water Festival invites participants to an exuberant party associated with the Buddist custom of water blessing at the dawn of the new year.

Recently, this regional tradition of music and water together have culminated in a series of extravagant stages with successions of live bands performing for audiences who walk or ride from one stage to the next around the beautiful lake which surrounds the royal palace in Mandalay.

This year, Peavey was invited to host the largest stage in the festival. Measuring 150′ wide by 50′ deep and 25′ high, it became the hub of music for the week-long festival.

Thanks to the lead taken by Kway Zin Latt, the managing director of Tri-Treasures International, Peavey’s Myanmar distributor, all necessary equipment was on-site and organized in time for the three-day long set-up process to begin.

With Mark Lim, sales manager for Peavey APAC, and Jauhari Rais, Peavey’s resident technical lead in the region on-board, the systems took shape in an orderly and professional manner.

A dozen flagship Versarray® 212 line array cabinets, flown in twin hangs of six, provided sound for the primary listening audience, bolstered by ten Versarray 218 dual-18″ subwoofers located beneath the main deck, supplemented by four Versarray 118 subs on stage. Outside areas were covered by two hangs of six Versarray 112-II ribbon-based modules while each side wing was handled by a ground stack array of three Versarray 112-II modules atop a Versarray 218 subwoofer. Front-fill was managed with eight PV® 115 cabinets while eleven SP® 15M monitors held down stage reinforcement duties for the performers. Powering all these cabinets fell to the formidable combination of forty-eight Peavey CS® 3000 and CS 4000 power amplifiers controlled by five Digitool® Live DSP-LMS processors.
The house band played through a Peavey KB® 5 keyboard amp, Tour™ 700 bass head with twin Headliner 410 cabinets, a pair of 6505 Straight 412 cabinets powered by a 6505+ head and a Versarray 118 to give the drummer needed low-end reinforcement.

To honor the legacy of Hartley Peavey and the time-tested products which bear his name, Kway, his father and grandfather chose to emblazon the stage with images of Hartley and his famous lightning-bolt Peavey logo.
Once the systems were rigged, configured and tested, the party started, with dozens of Tri-Treasures employees using high-volume hoses to soak the revelers as they danced in the street, in the back of trucks and on top of platforms nearby.

With thousands of participants enjoying national acts ranging from traditional folk music to metal, the Peavey system was able to deliver outstanding response and throw to every corner of the celebration. Despite the 100 degree temperature, excessive humidity, constant water splash from the hoses and incessant direct sunlight, the Peavey system never failed.

As Kway noted at the end of the festivities, „We are so proud the be the national distributor for Peavey in Myanmar and this has been borne out by the fact the festival director awarded the Peavey stage the first-place prize for Best Sound Stage.”

Peavey Electronics is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2015. For more information, visit www.peavey.com.