Equaliser is a co-op for DJs, musicians and party hosts to access high fidelity audio equipment to support liberatory cultural practice in Birmingham.
History
The idea that spawned this project started as blog post on a founder member’s blog.
It was worked on and formalised as a proposal on the Co-op Brum Forum.
Equaliser is inspired by experiences at House of God and Oscillate and reggae soundsystems in Birmingham and audiophile dance parties in London such as Beauty and The Beat, All Our Friends and Rude Movements and by extension historic spaces such as David Mancuso’s Loft, The Gallery and the Paradise Garage.
The co-op began in November 2023 with £1000 of start up funding from Co-operation Birmingham.
We aim to open up the possibility of using interesting and underutilised spaces in Birmingham to build anti-capitalist counterculture through excellent sonics. All money raised goes back to the co-op to maintain and obtain equipment.
How does it work
Membership is £10 per month via OpenCollective or £5 per month if you’re struggling financially.
Subsequent membership after the initial setup of the co-op would require an interview and a vote by current members.
As a co-operative, each member will get a say in any large decisions made and a single share in the co-op (that is not transferable and worth an arbitrary value of £1). This means each member has an equal share of ownership in the co-operative without being able to make personal profit off the company.
We abide by the seven co-operative principles.
Members benefit from equipment hire rates at a fraction of the market rate.
We will use income to purchase, maintain and build equipment as decided by members.
Decision making
Our decision making process is the same as Co-operation Birmingham’s process.
We make decisions as a co-op in a democratic manner using tools such as consensus decision making and sociocracy.
Large decisions affecting everyone in the co-op would be made at quarterly synchronous online all members meetings.
We can use the polls feature on our own category on the Co-op Brum Forum to make medium decisions asynchronously.
Equipment hire for members: V1 Soundsystem
Members can hire the Version 1 Soundsystem for £50 per day.
This system is suitable for a small room up to 50 metre square (e.g. a house party or a very small venue.
The V1 Soundsystem will work well for a small DJ setup, acoustic act or conference style speaker. Alternatively, it could be used for stage monitors.
2 x Yamaha Stagepas 300 speakers
Speaker type: passive 2-way bass-reflex
Note that these speakers don’t come with stands.
Price: £20 per day
LEM Cyclops Subwoofer
Speaker type: active 15″ subwoofer
Price: £10 per day
Rack gear
Flight case with the following rack units
Price: £20 per day
Behringer FBQ1502 Graphic Equalizer
This allows you to EQ your system to suit the room and has a mono summed output with adjustable low pass filter crossover to send signal to a subwoofer.
DBX 266XL Compressor/Gate
Allows to add a safety limiter to ensure our speakers aren’t damage by signals being too high.
Yamaha P3200 Power Amplifier
Amplifier to provide power to passive speakers.
Contact
If you are interested in joining equaliser co-op or have equipment to donate email us at:
equaliser at cooperationbirmingham.org.uk
Frequently Asked Questions
Will you allow organisations to join?
We would like to see organisation or companies that run venues or events get their own soundsystems. It’s a vital part of building our city’s music culture.
The goal of this project is to support people who don’t have access to the capital needed to invest in this sound equipment have access to it. This shouldn’t be a way for venues to avoid investing in their own equipment to save money.
However, we would like to investigate allowing other co-operatives or democratic organisations to join. Contact us to discuss further.