Great Barrington — The town’s community radio station, WBCR-lp, seeks financial help from the public to replace a 20-year-old audio-mixing console at the station’s office on 320 Main Street. The station has owned the Wheatstone Professional Audio Radio Mixing Console Board since its launch in 2004.
According to acting station manager Asa Steady Hardcastle, the mixing board has reached the end of its functional lifespan. “The Wheatstone was a nice piece of gear for its time, and it is modular, which means that you used to be able to order modules that you could put in it,” Hardcastle told The Berkshire Edge. “It was possible to switch out a microphone module or add a telephone module. But over time, as always [happens] to electronics, things wear down.”
Hardcastle said that the station has had to conduct frequent maintenance on the board for the past five years. “We had one of our microphone components start bleeding sound even when the microphone was off,” Hardcastle said. “The microphone was picking up sound, and even worse, it was picking up sound at a specific level. This part of the soundboard was broken. When we looked into fixing it, we couldn’t find any solutions because they don’t make replacement parts for this soundboard anymore.”
Hardcastle said that one electronics repair company quoted the station $150 to $165 an hour “with no guarantees to fix it.” “That was when we realized that we need the ability to have four microphones at the station, and we cannot afford to lose another microphone channel on our soundboard,” Hardcastle explained. “We need these microphone channels on our soundboard because performances during shows, and audio, are at the center of what we do. The audio quality affects our shows, and it’s a bummer that we are dealing with this.”
The station is now raising funds, $10,500, to purchase an Audioarts Lightning 16 mixing board. The Audioarts mixing board has modern technology that the 20-year-old Wheatstone lacks, including Bluetooth and USB inputs. “This mixing board is relatively inexpensive,” Hardcastle said. “There are much higher quality soundboards and technology that we would love to have. But we want to make sure that we have broadcast quality equipment and not amateur quality.”
Hardcastle said WBCR-lp currently has 25 different radio-show hosts and intends to celebrate its 20th anniversary this October. “This is an all-volunteer organization,” Hardcastle said. “Our expenses are rent, insurance, licensing, and equipment. We are doing what we can to be very frugal and resourceful.”
As of press time, the station has raised $3,309 of its $10,500 goal.
Visit the station’s website for more information.
