GoodBuyGuys Blog

The interest in acquiring the broadcast spectrum currently used by many professional quality wireless microphones has been raging for a while.  Everyone knows that some changes will take place in February 2009, when the FCC reallocates some of the spectrum in the 700 mhz range.

I have written before regarding these licensing requirements and speculated at the time that the FCC could really make things chaotic for the entertainment industry. Get ready for a new player to turn up the heat!

As reported in Forbes, The Public Interest Spectrum Coalition, a coalition of consumer’s rights organizations has filed a complaint with the FCC regarding the failure of almost all wireless mic owners to obtain an operator’s license for what is essentially a low power radio transmitter.  This complaint accuses manufacturers like Shure and AKG of deceptive advertising in how their products are marketed.

This is a complaint that could potentially impact millions of microphone owners.

More importantly, it makes a very powerful argument on behalf of those companies that are vying for use of this part of the broadcast spectrum when digital televison comes online in February 0f 2009.

Bids of as much as $19 billion dollars have been placed for access to these airwaves and lots of major players are vying for the space.

While the FCC has rarely, if ever, enforced the licensing requirements for wireless mics, the law is not new and it may not be possible to ignore it any longer.

Want to know more?  Here’s a link to the FCC rule.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Enterainment 1 extension cords , OnStage Stand mic stands and quality speaker cables.  We’ve also got cables for “Wired” microphones!

I watch way too much video on the internet.  Between catching up on The Daily Show reruns and watching my daughters short films on Facebook, it seems like I’ve got something streaming all the time.

A new site which hosts documentary films is making this web video addiction a lot more of a problem.

The site is SnagFilms.com, which hosts hundreds of documentaries and does it in a way that allows you to embed them in a blog, attach them to an email, or use them as content in your own web site.  The site is free, and you are only shown a few very short advertisments during the film.

SnagFilms is free and you are only shown a few short ads during the screening of the film.  You can even view it a full screen mode.

This is a great way for a documentary maker to get lots of exposure and even make a little money, since you can buy a DVD of the film right from the site.

I just finished watching a film about life in the New York City Fire Department called “Brotherhood”.  Here’s a link: 

I try to blog at least once a week about some new innovation or clever device in the pro sound industry.  I spent 30 plus years as a “knob twister” and I try to keep up with new ideas.

Leave it to the British to bring us a decidely “low tech” solution to handling sound mixing for those interminable 8 hour corporate meetings or all night rehearsals.

Its the Canford Wine Rack, a 3 space rack mount module, designed to store up to four bottles of wine in an audio rack.

Apparently this is not a joke (even though I first came across it on “boingboing“).  It appears that you can actually order it.

Obviously cooling might present a problem if you prefer a Chardonnay or Reisling, but we are going to get to work right away on a nitrogen chilling system.

Check back here for updates.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords , OnStage Stand mic stands and quality speaker cables.

I spend part of everyday working to improve how our websites perform with major search engines like Google and Yahoo.  Its tedious work, requires patience to see results, and can be pretty mysterious.  Still it is incredibly satisfying (sometimes lucrative as well) to see one of the search terms for a product you sell move onto the first page of search results.

Occasionally, the results can catch you offguard.

Ever heard of a hexayurt?  I hadn’t either.  It turns out a hexayurt is a temporary structure built  from plywood or foam panels.  It is particularly popular as an accommodation for those who attend the Burningman Project, a festival that takes place at the end of August. It is also being promoted as a quick and inexpensive shelter for use after disasters or in areas where there is a need for any kind of shelter in a hurry.

Because we sell tape, a critical component in building a hexayurt,  several of our websites have been listed as a source for one of the critical products needed for building the structure, a tape called “bidirectional filament tape“.  We do sell a bidirectional tape, but, unfortunately, it is not suitable for outdoor use, as it can’t stand up to long term exposure to sunlight.  Like lots of other tapes, when exposed to UV rays, the adhesive dries out and the tape delaminates.

About once an hour for the last several weeks, we have gotten a phone call from someone looking for the tape needed for a hexayurt.  We are always (well almost always) happy to hear from a prospective customer, but, in this case, I’m afraid that the response from our customer service folks has started to sound like a broken record.

I contacted  Vinay Gupta, with the Hexayurt Project about our problem, and he was able to provide some additional information about the requirements that this tape needs  to meet.

We are going to work with one of the suppliers that provides our 2″ bidirectional tape in hopes of coming up with a solution for this problem.

For the moment, please hold your calls!

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords , OnStage Stand mic stands and quality speaker cables. Specialty tapes are our specialty!

In reading one of my favorite business oriented blog sites, ducttapemarketing.com/blog, this article resonated with me.

My blog (buygafferstape.com/blogs) is almost two years.  Its a project that I have really enjoyed.

The article I am referring to addresses the issue of bloggers trying to maintain their anonymity and not posting any information about who they really are.  It has never been my intention to remain anonymous, but the idea never crossed my mind to do a posting about who I am.

Here goes!

After 20 years in the special event and concert production industries our company, Harrison Bros. Inc. gradually migrated from being a “hands on” production company to a seller of production supplies online.

My background as a sound tech and special event producer covered both freelance work and a stint at Duke University Technical Services during the 1980’s.  I left Duke at the end of 1985 to start Harrison Bros.

As a production company we offered multiple services, including sound, lighting, staging, labor brokering and production management.  The scale of the events we were involved in spanned a huge range from building dedications with one microphone to constructing the stage for one of the stadium dates on The Who’s 1989 “The Kids Are Alright Tour”.

It was challenging work and I had a chance to travel the country and work with some really high profile acts-Frank Sinatra, DollyParton, Bill Cosby, and lots of others.

Realizing that there wasn’t a great future in hands on work for someone staring down the barrel of his 50th birthday, I knew that it was time to turn our little company in a new direction.

We started out selling colored duct tape, and quickly found that there was a customer base for production supplies out there who were more than happy to tell us about production supplies they needed that were either difficult to find or way to expensive.

I gradually added other tape products like gaffers tape, then batteries, flashlights, tie lines , extension cords, etc. to the point where we now offer about 400 products.

We started by doing catalog sales and direct mail marketing, long before the internet evolved into a  an ecommerce engine.

It didn’t take long to realize that the internet provided a perfect medium for marketing and selling and we rolled out thetapeworks.com and buybattery.com. This took a little while to gain traction, but after a year or so, it really took off.

2003 was a really important year in our business development.  We left Main Street in Carrboro, where we had been since day one and built a new building about 5 miles south of Chapel Hill, and only four miles from my house.  The entire back of the building is a 100′ wide loading dock and having a “purpose built” facility has provided a tremendous  asset for our growth.

In the summer of 2006, we rolled out an important new web strategy, goodbuyguys.com.  This allowed us to combine lots of websites, including buytape.com, buybattery.com, buyextensioncord.com, buywireties.com, buyspeakercable.com, buymicstand.com and buymiccable.com, under the same web portal.

One of the best things about developing this site was being able to use cartoon characters that my Father, Bill Harrison, had drawn for his 1960’s comic strip “Guess Who“.  They are great spokesmen for our company, and using them to represent us has really helped me “find my voice” when blogging and creating web material.

I spend my spare time gardening, sailing, building furniture, and doing metal sculpture (my yard is full of this work).

Even though I left Duke University as an employee, I am a charter member of the Duke Chapel Congregation.  My wife Gina (we were married in Duke Chapel) is a 25 year member of the Duke Chapel Choir and I enjoy being part of the usher team there, along with my two children, Charlotte and Kevin.

Being able to work for myself for the last 23 years has been a wonderful blessing, and I am grateful to all our loyal customers who have helped our business grow.

I am anonymous no longer!

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords , OnStage Stand mic stands and quality speaker cables.

Livenation, the king-of-entertainment wannabe, is setting the record for reinventing themselves.

This ill advised attempt at vertical integration in the concert and entertainment business is getting ready to fail yet again.

The idea of owning every component of  an entertainment venture from the performer to the venue was a bad one from the start.  Livenation continues to prove how bad an idea it was every single day.

Their stock (LVY) has lost 40% since the beginning of the year and is down a whopping 200% over the last 12 months.  Their sale of controlling interest in many of the theatres  they ruled to a British theatrical producer during the winter gave them a little breathing room, but their most recent spending spree on artists may be the final nail in their coffin.

It appears that the strategy of controlling venues and ticket distribution is now morphing into ownership of artists.  They are paying ridiculous sums to concert performers in exchange for their future earnings in performance, recording and merchandising and the stock market continues to vote with investors’ dollars.  The vote is a resounding “NO”.

Today’s announcement regards Nickelback, a band that’s been over for longer than they were popular.  Livenation has made a deal for somewhere between $50 million and $70 million for these Canadian has beens, and  the stock is now flirting wtih its 52 week low.

Add this deal to those for Madonna ($120 million), Jay-Z ($150 million), U2($120 million), and its obvious that Livenation won’t be alive much longer.

Even still relevant acts like U2 and Jay-Z (hasn’t he retired a couple of times already?) can’t possibly generate enough revenue to make these deals pay off.

Every move that Livenation has made into the entertainment business has been bad for the consumer and for local venues.  We can only hope that their continued failures will lead us back to local control and booking of venues, fair pricing of tickets, and the chance for new entertainers to reach an audience.

Lets hope that this is the beginning of the end for this failed experiment.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords , OnStage Stand mic stands and other quality concert production supplies.

Many years ago when I worked in the Technical Services Dept. at Duke University, we embraced a speaker cable connector standard that seems to have fallen by the wayside.  We used the standard XLR3 connector for speaker cables-the same connector that was used on microphone cables.

With my background in pro sound, I was familiar with both the quarter inch standard , and the Canon EP    multipin standard. I had never seen the XLR used for speaker cables.  I quickly became a convert. Here’s why.

Because speaker cables with XLR connectors have a male connector on one end and a female on the other, its easy to extend the length of a cable without an adapter.  Not using an adapter  means not losing an adapter.  This is a really valuable feature when doing long outdoor speaker cable runs.

Each pin in an XLR3 connector is rated at 15 amps.   That’s more than enough current carrying capacity for most practical amplifier outputs.

The flexible strain relief boot on an XLR connector is flexible enough to handle 2 conductor 14 gauge, or even 12 gauge cable.

Each pin makes independent contact with the mating connector, unlike a quarter inch connector where the tip must make contact with the sleeve before it mates with the tip.

Finally the solid, easy to use locking mechanism on the XLR3 means that no additional securing of a connection is necessary when cables are linked together.

A couple of amplifier manufacturers adopted this standard back in the 1980’s, but they let it fall by the wayside when the industry as a whole failed to sign up.

On more than one occasion, I must admit that I used a microphone cable as a temporary speaker cable when I ran out of speaker cables.  Try that with a Speakon cable!

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords , OnStage Stand mic stands and quality speaker cables.

Neutrik, the maker of a broad line of audio connectors, has a great new product that every sound person ought to know about.  Its a new style of XLR connector called the Convertcon.

How many times have you gotten to the end of a long XLR cable run, only to discover that you had the wrong gender connector in your hand?  The Convertcon makes that a thing of the past.

By simply sliding the connector barrel forward or back, a male XLR3 connector can become a female XLR3, or vice versa.  No more coiling and rerunning the cable or digging through your tool box for a turn around.

While the cost ($12.00 or more) keeps this connector from being practical to use on all mic cables, those special long run control cables or the ones you use to interface with someone else’s equipment are where this innovative connector shines.

The problem of running a long interface cable “blind” to a remote patch bay, an outboard production truck, or an unknown facility interface just got a whole lot easier.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords , OnStage Stand mic stands and quality speaker cables.

It is something of a stretch for me to go from selling audio visual supplies to watching the commodity markets. Unfortunately, volatility in the base components of everything we sell means that this vital information just can’t be ignored.

Between the price of the petroleum derivatives in tape adhesives and the cost of trucking these very heavy products, the cost of oil impacts the cost of every kind of tape we sell. There has been some short term moderation in the price of a barrel of oil, so we are hoping that our suppliers can hold the line a little longer. It is hard to connect the price of filling up your car with what you pay for a roll of gaffers tape, but the connection is real.

After peaking at $4.00 a pound in April, the price of copper is down about 10%, closing at just over $3.60 earlier in the week. As our cable business expands, the cost of the most important, and heaviest component, in an extension cord or speaker cable has forced suppliers to raise prices several times this year. Maybe those increases are over for a little while. Hopefully, this decrease in will help battery makers hold the line as well

Unfortunately, it seems like what one market gives back, another takes away. Dow Chemical’s announcement that it will raise chemical prices by up to 20%, effective this month, is going to impact much of we sell. Tape adhesive resins, battery components and cable jackets all have chemical components, and even if Dow isn’t the supplier, most other major suppliers are sure to follow.

We are grateful to our loyal customers and will do all we can to work with major suppliers to address pricing pressure.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords , OnStage Stand mic stands and quality speaker cables.

Today we introduce the newest of our GoodBuyGuys.com website, BuySpeakerCable.com.

BuySpeakerCable.com is hosted by Speaker Cable Sam , the latest addition to the GoodBuyGuys family. Sam is ready to provide lots of valuable information about speaker cables, speaker cable connectors and the proper set up of sound system speakers. Sam draws on 30 years of work in the concert production industry to help you make decisions about purchasing and using the best speaker cables and accessories, no matter what your application.

Buyspeakercable.com features cables from Mitee Cable. Mitee cables use quality connectors and wire to insure that your speaker cables deliver all the sound possible from your amplifier to your speakers. They have tough rubber jackets and copper wire that is durable, easily coilable and ready to stand up to the tough use sound and audio visual pros subject their equipment to every day.

Of particular interest is the in depth information provided about Speakon connectors, the new standard for pro audio speaker cables. Mitee Cables feature Speakon connectors that are fully compatible with the Neutrik NL2 & NL4 series connector, available at a fraction of the Neutrik price. Here, you will find valuable guides about wiring and using Speakon connectors, along with adapters that make Speakon speaker cables compatible with other connector types.

With the addition of BuySpeakerCable.com, you can turn to GoodBuyGuys.com for all of your audio visual and sound system cable needs.

GoodBuyGuys.com is your online source for Shurtape gaffers tape, Duracell Procell batteries, MagLite flashlights, Nashua duct tape, Bay State wire ties, Electratrac and Coast Wire extension cords , OnStage Stand mic stands and quality speaker cables.