USA - Roots festival Pickathon 2025 celebrated its 25th anniversary by adopting a Martin Audio Wavefront Precision system for its main Paddock Stage - set on the picturesque Pendarvis Farm, in the Happy Valley district of Portland, Oregon.
When word reached Martin Audio’s Simon Honywill from long-time friend Graeme Harrison that festival chief, Zale Schoenborn, was looking to upgrade the main stage sound, a meeting was brokered with local AVL rental house Cascade Sound, who immediately invested in 20 WPC and 10 SXC118 cardioid subs, along with THS, FP12 and XE wedges. As their VP engineering and system designer, Sean Rathbun - who was project lead at Pickathon - points out: “While this was our second year at the event, we have staff that have been supporting it for a number of years.”
Simon Honywill, meanwhile, set to work on the design. Describing the site as “wooded and scenic”, he said: “It’s a very cool and crafted festival, and the aesthetic changes every year. Sustainability is a core value here and pretty much everything gets re-purposed in some way. This festival is deeply connected to the lifestyle of Portland”.
At the heart of this year’s scenic expanse was a series of rhythmic timber cylinders, forming a dynamic backdrop to the Paddock Stage highlighted customised lighting.
In recent years, housing has been developed close to the site, and with no apparent noise control or monitoring, complaints started to appear. Honywill, with the aid of Martin Audio product and application support manager, Joe Lima, decided that Martin Audio’s advanced control could mitigate this, and the deployment of cardioid subs would create the necessary rear rejection.
“We measured the SPL at the boundary, and it tied in with what Display [software] had predicted, with 35dB reduction at the boundary,” continued Honywill. On the stage itself, the site topography dictated that the left and right stage wings should be optimised differently. Hangs of nine WPC per side were complemented by 10 SXC115 in a broadside formation across the front - a set-up which was also expected to meet the aesthetic.
In addition, the Martin Audio speaker complement included eight FlexPoint FP12 (for front-fill and out-fill), two THS with two SXC115 for side-fill and a combination of XE300/XE500 for artist reference monitoring. The set-up was driven from iKON iK42 DSP amplifiers in one-box resolution.
Described as “a summer camp for the soul” and “an immersive, nature-based music festival” this four-day honky-tonk featured over nine stages with 55 different acts.
Working with Simon Honywill were the house engineers, Anya Gearhart at FOH and Mai Lon Brosseau on monitors.