Studio B has both a DJ booth and a stage.

Just north of hipster haven Williamsburg is Greenpoint, a waterfront slice of Brooklyn commonly dubbed “Little Poland” because of its large Polish-American population. But when a club catering to that community failed, the New York-based operators of downtown Miami’s Studio A (an elusive clan including Pedro Mena, Robert Nowak and Motherf*cker’s Georgie Seville) snatched up the vacant venue and decided to make it into their second project, aptly named Studio B.

 Rather than declare the space a Polish club – or a dance party venue, or a rock bar, for that matter – the owners decided to let the clientele determine the 7,000-square-foot club’s identity. So, they set an initial budget, and saved capital to fund the tweaks, alterations and renovations that would inevitably ensue.

“Putting a big club in Greenpoint, [the owners] were really taking a chance,” says Eric Presti of Bayside, Brooklyn’s Surround Sound Innovations (surroundsoundinnovations.com), who designed the sound and lighting systems at both Studio A and B. “They wanted to bring the Williamsburg vibe, and expand it.”

One Bad Mother
To promote and book, ownership brought on Justine D, aka Justine Delaney, the creative force behind NYC spectacle/party Motherf*cker. She quickly helped Studio draw a large, diverse crowd of scenesters, who proved to be more welcoming than their Manhattan counterparts, be they trust fund table-hoppers, dance music elitists, or indie rock fanatics.

“I refrain from booking mainstream acts,” Delaney says. “I focus mostly on DJs, parties and bands that I’m either a fan of, or that I respect artistically. My motto is ‘quality over quantity,’ to be intelligent with my curating and create line-ups with a cohesiveness.”

And the result has been fortuitous, alluring DJs and bands (Studio B is equipped for both), as well as art shows, corporate events, and even a burlesque festival.

Big nights have included live shows by acts like Justice, Soulwax, M.I.A. and Battles, and DJ sets by Miss Kittin, Ellen Alien, Carl Craig and the DFA crew. “[Studio B being] both a party and live performance space gives me an advantage, because I come from a background of incorporating a band into a party atmosphere,” Delaney adds. “That’s what my Motherf*cker parties are like.”

“This club has a vibe to it,” adds Presti. “They’re not trying to be bottle service cool. They don’t want to be MTV cool. They want to be a little bit more creative, on the cutting edge of what’s new in music, art.”

De-Supersize Me
Studio B’s dancefloor is a sunken square with an ample black rectangle of a DJ booth at front. To its right, the front bar sits under a faux starscape, and beyond that a modest stage is nestled above the corner of the dancefloor. Directly across is the Midas console.

Swept with strobes and gobos, the dancefloor is the heart of the space. The platform surrounding it adds a feeling of greater vastness with distinct environs that foster exploring, socializing and spectating. Past the stage there are couches for lounging; behind the live board is another bar; beside that, a small room is decked with chandeliers and low-slung sofas for separate parties or chilling out.

Though the 550-capacity club is by no means tiny, the owners didn’t want to waste space, particularly on the dancefloor, when they started the redesign.

“When we came in, the club had these huge, tremendous speakers, like six feet long with dual 15’s and giant lenses,” Presti says. “They really made it feel small.”

So after trussing was installed around the boxy dancefloor – to give the venue a clubbier look, and to hold both audio and lighting gear – Presti and his team hunted for compact speakers. Ultimately, they chose used EAW JF200’s, which fit the budget and could be hung sideways, saving valuable vertical space.

“I figured out the spread of the horn and put them equidistant all around the room,” Presti says. “With a lot of speakers spread out and aimed correctly, we didn’t need huge boxes.”

To maximize dancefloor real estate, the live system also shares sub-bass cabinets with the dance system. “I use sub-mixers to mix the signal from one crossover and a signal from the other crossover to share all those [SK Professional] 18-inch subs in front of the stage,” Presti explains. The cabinets also saved on budget because they were custom fabricated, but never used, for the Miami club.

Book agents are impressed with Studio's cadre of live gear.

Hybridize
The initial focus of the audio design was the dance system. “Everything had to be done in stages,” Presti says. “So, the first thing we had to tackle was just getting a disco system in there. We used the existing DJ booth for a little while, and found that it really did not work with the flow of the room. You can see why the previous club didn’t work.” The booth was relocated from 40 feet away (in the current amp room) to its current home at the front of the dancefloor.

At first, live shows required equipment rentals, but when their popularity and frequency started to increase, Presti came back in to install a permanent live rig. “That was my specialty when I started out,” he says. “Doing pure dance clubs that are also live venues.” Presti had accrued hybrid experience back in the ’90s, working on Peter Gatien’s clubs (Limelight, Tunnel, Palladium), where long weeks and diverse events were the norm.

“When we found out that the bands were going well, we put in a PA,” he adds. “[Booking agents] really did want to see the Midas [console], they wanted to see the [EAW] 650 [Series], and we responded.”

The EAW 650 speakers replaced the initial FOH speakers, and a six-way monitor mix was added to the stage, as well as sizeable side fills (JBL SR4732 three-ways) with subs: “a few boxes with four ohm JBL 18’s in them, so they get a lot of juice on the bottom end.”

In the upgrade, Presti also incorporated an Ashly unit. “It’s a great unit for the 650s,” he says. “You go to EAW’s site, download their initial settings and then pink noise the room. You make minor adjustments. Do a few shows, pink noise it again, see how it works out. Six months later you’ve got it really tuned in.”

More Than The Sum
Ever resourceful and budget-conscious, Presti’s team took advantage of lighting that remained from the previous club in their design. Lucky for them, that included four of Clay Paky’s legendary Golden Scans. “The strobes we put up were actually in the dancefloor,” Presti says. “We had to chisel them out of the floor.”

But Presti opted for newly purchased American DJ 64B LED Pro par cans on the stage. “Especially in this situation, they’re perfect. You don’t have to change the gels, the power is nothing, they can strobe, chase each other, change color. We don’t have a long throw. We don’t need that intensity of light that’s 30 feet away. We’re literally right on their heads,” said Presti. “Plus, if you put 20 [conventional] par cans on the stage, the band feels like a burger under a heat lamp. There’s something for every budget and every purpose.”

Other gear from the original club that was inoperable was still used for parts. DJs got massive overhead monitors, with custom tweaks. “They were complaining, so we hung some custom-made clones of three-way EV boxes,” says Presti. “I had a friend remake them in bolted birch. It actually changed the sound a lot, really made it punchy.”

Despite the fact it’s outside the big city, even outside the big city’s hippest outpost (Williamsburg), Studio B is thriving, filling a void for a hybrid music-first space that’s safe for the beer, rather than the bottle, crowd. “The creative team has had a lot of control over the programming,” Delaney says, “which is one of the keys to [Studio’s] prosperity.”

The club hopes to extend its success by never getting too flat on its feet. “It’s a work in progress,” says Presti. “And any real club should be a work in progress; as your needs change, like any business, you respond to the market.”

www.clubstudiob.com

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