Giving The Bitter End A Fresh Start

New York, NY (October 11, 2024)—New York City is world-renowned for its music venues, but while stages like Radio City and Madison Square Garden host acts as big and established as the venues themselves, it’s the smaller clubs that are the real heart of the city’s music scene. Over its more than 60 years, The Bitter End on Bleeker Street has hosted everyone from Stevie Wonder to Lady Gaga to earnest young folkies Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. Not bad for a venue that didn’t have a P.A. when it first opened in 1961—although it eventually upgraded to a single mic and a speaker.

The P.A. system grew sporadically over the years, becoming a hodgepodge of loudspeakers until recently the venue’s creative director, Theodore Pagano, felt the club would be best served “by investing in really good equipment. I thought, ‘Let me start at the top.’ I sent a cold email to Meyer Sound, and they called me an hour later.”

The Bitter End’s new Meyer Sound system centers around four Ultra-X40 compact loudspeakers and two 900-LFC compact low-frequency control elements, supported by two Ultra-X20 front fills and managed by a Galileo Galaxy 816 network platform. Meyer Sound’s Bob McCarthy, who designed the new system, explained, “Ultra-X40s have plenty of power to cover this space, but they open up really quickly, which you want to have because you’ve got people right up close. We were able to put them on their sides and mount them up high to get a nice, low profile and keep them out of sight.”

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The long room (100-by-25-feet) has the stage against a long wall, making the audience area shallow, and inevitably that makes the stage monitoring part of the room’s sound. Says Pagano, “You have to take that into consideration, so we put in some Ultra-X20s to cover the front space.” Additional 900-LFCs support the low end, he adds: “What I love about these subs is that they allow you to feel the punch of the kick or the bass guitar, and hear those frequencies nicely placed in the mix rather than them beating you up or confusing the mix.”

Helping keep the stage monitoring tidy are flown Ultra-X40s and Ultra-X20s: “They’re mounted up high, so they’re close to your head and very easy to hear,” Pagano says. “They’re so super clean. It’s fantastic.” A pair of MJF-208 high-power stage monitors provide additional support.

The result has been better listening experiences both in the crowd and onstage. “People notice it as soon as they walk in the door, which is important,” says The Bitter End’s owner, Paul Rizzo. “I’ve asked most of the musicians who play here on a regular basis what they think, and every one of them has said it’s a great improvement.”