When you hear the words “Jersey Surf,” you’ll either think of catching waves off the Jersey Shore or the Jersey-based competitive drum and bugle corps.
The Jersey Surf Drum and Bugle Corps – a New Jersey non-profit organization, dedicated to providing quality educational opportunities for young people in the performing arts – was founded in the winter of 1990 by a collection of school band directors who desired more performance opportunities for their students besides halftime shows during the football season. Two years later, in 1992, after an enthusiastic organizational meeting, the Surf had 102 members when they entered competition.
The Surf since has become a veritable institution in Jersey, with marching band members from a variety of high schools across many regions joining together to play in this competitive corps. The Surf is known for it’s great, booming sound, but when some of the venues required a little assistance to help the group project, it seemed a no-brainer to enlist the help of Canadian manufacturer, Yorkville Sound.
Steve Hendee, director of sales at Yorkville, says the partnership between The Surf and Yorkville started a few years back in 2012. “Yorkville Sound LTD is the Canadian distributor for MAPEX Drums,” Hendee explains. “In 2012, MAPEX helped put us in touch with Jersey Surf to offer them solutions for an on-field PA system for their summer programs. For the 2012 and 2013 seasons they used our Unity cabinet – U15P and LS801P subwoofer.”
For the Surf, two of the biggest challenges when considering the design for a drum corps field sound system are limited access to AC power and the fact that there’s minimal set up time – in most cases five minutes, and that’s including sound check. Yorkville met this challenge with a custom designed deep-cycle marine battery bank, which offered the group a self-contained AC power solution, providing 30 amperes for a minimum of three hours. This drastically reduces the set up time needed because it allows the sound system to be set up and line checked outside of the venue, then subsequently rolled onto the field while the system is already up and running.
Everything worked out so well with Yorkville’s redesign of the Surf’s sound reinforcement arsenal that the partnership continues on even to this day. The system consisting of two Yorkville Y15P’s and two LS801P’s was used for both the 2012 and 2013 seasons. In 2014, the decision was made to use a line array system, which enables the Surf to scale to individual venues, all while providing seamless coverage to the entire audience.
“For the 2014 season they were looking to upgrade their sound system and ‘step’ it up a notch or two,” Hendee continues. “Something a bit more scalable for the various venues they were using. For us the natural answer was our Paraline PSA1 full range loudspeaker system. The PSA1 full range loudspeaker system delivers the clarity and precision of a complex system in a compact, user-friendly format. This innovative cabinet design uses Yorkville Sound’s proven Paraline high frequency lens technology pioneered in our flagship VTC Elevation Series line array cabinets.
So for the 2014 season they used five of the PSA1’s along with four of the matching subwoofers – PSA1S. These 2 x 12″ powered subwoofers offer true 1400watts of unsurpassed Yorkville bass response. And here we are in the 2015 season, and once again they are employing our PSA1 and PSA2S cabinets.”
The Jersey Surf is celebrating 25 years of success this year. They celebrated with a special brunch at Cavanaugh’s River Deck in Philadelphia, PA. Friends and family of the Surf were invited to enjoy a special performance from the corps, a DJ, dancing, and a breakfast/lunch buffet. The corps then had their first “home” performance that following Saturday at the Eastern Classic in Allentown, PA, as well as a standstill performance at the Camden Riversharks baseball game the night before.
The Surf is holding general auditions in November for all sections and conductors in Sicklerville, NJ.
