Do the stands come with the microphones and speakers, or do we hire them separately?

Everything on the stands page is priced by the piece, so a full-height stand is its own line at £2 a day rather than something folded into the microphone or speaker. That is deliberate: a choir on straight stands and a band on booms want different hardware under the same microphones, and you only pay for the stands you use. Choosing them is our job, though. If you hire microphones, speakers or lanterns from us, tell us what is being miked and where each speaker is going, and we pack the matching stands, clamps and bonds with them, plus spares. The one thing that does travel with the kit is the hook clamp for a hired lantern, which goes out with the fixture. Clamps and bonds for your own lanterns hire by the piece, in ratings matched to what is going up.

Our stage manager and front of house both need to talk. Is that one system or two?

Two, doing different jobs. The wired comms system is for the positions that never move: prompt corner, the lighting and sound operators and the followspot, running on standbys and gos rather than guesswork. The radios are for the people who walk about: the front of house manager, the door, the chaperones, whoever is meeting the van at the dock. A small play with one operator and a stage manager can get by on talkback alone. A dance school show with parents arriving, a chaperone at each dressing room and interval timings to pass to the foyer wants both. Tell us who has to reach whom and we will keep it to the fewest pieces that do the job.

Can you rig on our hall's existing bars?

Usually, yes, and it is often the tidiest option, because nothing stands on the floor. Hired lanterns bring their own rated hook clamps; for your own, G-clamps, half couplers and trigger clamps hire by the piece, rated at 20kg, 50kg and 250kg to suit the fixture. Every fixture gets a safety bond as a second, independent attachment, rated above its weight, and speakers and heavier hardware go on hanging clamps and shackles, with a wire rope drift to bridge an awkward hanging point. Ratchet straps have no part in any of that: they hold kit down, never up. What we need from you is what the bar is rated to carry, because we cannot check that from here, plus a rough idea of what you want to hang and what it weighs. If the rig means going up, a technician comes with the access equipment, because we do not lend ladders.

Do we need a table for the tech desk?

Almost certainly, and it is the thing most often forgotten until the desk is sitting on a chair. A sound or lighting desk needs a flat, steady surface out in the room where the operator can see and hear the stage, and the hall's own tables have a habit of being wanted for the interval at exactly that moment. A folding trestle table is £2.50 a day. Hire two if lighting and sound sit apart, and count another for the props in the wings.

Home Services Equipment Hire

Stands, Rigging and Comms Hire

Half the kit on a show is there to hold the other half up, and the part nobody sees is how the crew talk to each other. This page covers both. Microphone, speaker and lighting stands, T-bars and tank traps, the clamps, bonds, drifts and stage weights that fix a rig in place, and a trestle table for the wings. Then Mitex two-way radios for the people who move, and Pro Intercom wired talkback for calling the cues. Every piece hires on its own, by the day, alongside the lanterns and speakers it goes with. Start here if you know what you want to hang but not what holds it up, or how the show gets called.

Choose your kit.

Stands, Clamps & Rigging

The stands, clamps and weights that hold the rig up, hired by the piece.

from £0.25 / day

View & check dates

Mitex site bundle

Site-grade walkie talkies that reach from the stage door to the far end of the car park.

£16 / day

View & check dates

Pro Intercom Comms System (4-Way)

An always-open party line so the stage manager can call the show in a whisper.

£35 / day

View & check dates

Which stand does which job

Stands are the cheap end of the list and the easiest bit to get wrong. The tall boom microphone stand is the general worker: it reaches a singer, a speech or a seated instrument, and the boom leans out over a music stand. Short boom and kick stands do the floor-level work, kick drums and guitar amps. A straight stand suits a podium or a choir microphone that never needs to lean, and a table-top stand, 25p a day, puts a microphone on a lectern or a panel desk. Every other microphone stand is £2 a day. Speaker stands are about height. A tripod stand at £2 lifts an Alto or EV top above a seated audience, which is most of the job of being heard at the back. Where the top sits on a subwoofer, a £1 speaker pole mounts it there instead, on a smaller footprint. Lighting stands come as wind-up or fixed, both £5 a day and rated to carry 40kg. The wind-up cranks a full T-bar to height with nobody lifting; the fixed stand suits lighter loads and smaller rooms. Which your hall needs depends on what it has to hang from.

Lighting a hall with nothing to hang from

A school hall or dance studio with no lighting bar gets lit from the floor, and the wind-up lighting stand is the tool. A T-bar goes across the top, up to four fixtures hang from it, and it cranks up with nobody lifting a lantern overhead. It touches nothing but the floor, so there is no fixing into the building and nothing to make good afterwards. T-bars come in three widths, 1m at £1, 1.5m at £1.50 and 2m at £2; pick the width by how many fixtures go up. The thing to get right is the base. A stand with four fixtures on top is tall and top-heavy, and on a polished hall floor it walks when somebody brushes past in the dark. So each lighting stand gets 12.5kg stage weights across its base, £1.20 each. Tell us the rig and we will count them in. Dance is different. Dancers are lit from the side, low down, and a scaffold pole in a tank trap base does that: the base at £5, a 2m pole at £1, weighted, at the edge of the stage where a tall stand would be in the way.

Hanging on the venue's own bars

When the hall does have bars, the hardware changes, and so does who does the work. Our own lanterns still travel with their hook clamps. For your own lanterns, and for anything else that has to hang, the clamps hire by the piece and come in ratings matched to the fixture. A steel G-clamp, rated to 20kg, hooks over a bar of up to 50mm and takes a small lantern or an LED par. An aluminium half coupler, rated to 50kg, closes right round a 48-51mm bar or truss tube for the same kind of small fixture, and is kinder to the tube than steel. A trigger clamp, rated to 250kg, snaps shut on the bar one-handed and holds the weight while the bolt is tightened; it is the clamp for a moving head, a wash bar or a speaker bracket. Hanging clamps with a shackle slot and 1t bow shackles, 50p each, take speakers and heavier hardware. A 2m wire rope drift at £1, rated to a 250kg working load limit, reaches a hanging point the bar does not. A 750mm boom arm at £2, rated at 37kg, puts a fixture out to the side of a vertical boom. Then the bond. Anything hanging above a person gets a safety bond as a second, independent attachment, every time, rated above the fixture and everything bolted to it. Bonds come in three ratings to match: a 35cm bond at 25kg for a light sitting right under the bar, where a short bond keeps any drop small, and 75cm bonds at 20kg, 50p, and at 50kg, which is the one that goes with a moving head on a trigger clamp. Use the shortest bond that reaches, looped round the bar rather than the clamp. The ratings are marked on the hardware. The one thing we cannot rate from here is your bar, so ask your site manager what it was installed to carry. Ratchet straps are on the shelf too, and they are a different thing altogether: polyester webbing and a steel ratchet that pull a flight case tight in the van, a speaker snug on its stand or a stack of flats together in the wings. They are restraint, never suspension. A strap holds kit down and never holds it up over anyone; that is what the bonds are for. For the trigger clamps, half couplers, G-clamps, the 25kg and 50kg bonds and the straps, contact us for pricing. What we do not send is the ladder. Working at height is a job we do rather than a thing we lend, so when a rig means someone up a ladder or a tower, a technician comes with the access equipment and the training, quoted as part of the job.

Calling the show: wired talkback or radios

A show is called on a wired party line, and ours is the Pro Intercom comms system at £35 a day. The base station powers one channel, always open, and a beltpack and single-ear headset sit at each of four positions: prompt corner (the stage manager's desk in the wings), lighting, sound and a followspot. Nobody presses anything. The stage manager gives a standby, the warning that a cue is coming, the go follows at a murmur, and not a word reaches the audience. Beltpacks are powered down the cable, so nothing dies in act two, and more positions can be added. Radios are for the people who move. The Mitex bundle at £16 a day, extra handhelds £4 each, is a set of 5 watt site radios that cover the building and the car park, with 16 channels so front of house and backstage can talk separately. Press the side button, speak, let go. Plenty of shows want both: talkback for the positions that never leave their chair, radios for front of house, the chaperones and the door. Where a steel frame or thick walls swallow radio signal, the wire still works.

The table in the wings, and hiring it all by the piece

The last line on the list is a folding trestle table at £2.50 a day, and it earns its place: a props table in the wings, a merch desk in the foyer, somewhere for the tea urn, and a surface for the sound desk. Hire one more than you think. Everything here hires by the piece, per day, and none of it costs much on its own: stands from 25p to £5, hanging clamps and the 20kg bond from 50p, weights at £1.20; for the newer clamps, bonds and straps, contact us for pricing. The hardware for a small rig usually adds up to less than a single fixture. If you are hiring speakers and lanterns from us, say where each one is going and the right stands, clamps, bonds and spares arrive in the same case, tested and counted, so nothing depends on a clamp somebody found in a cupboard. You do not have to build the list yourself. Tell us the room, what is going up, what it hangs on and who needs to talk to whom, and we will send the hardware to match, as many pieces as the show needs. If the list changes at the technical rehearsal, ring us.

Hire rates

Item	Rate
Stands, Clamps & Rigging (from)	£0.25 / day
Mitex Site Radio Bundle	£16 / day
Pro Intercom Comms System (4-Way)	£35 / day

Rates are per day and exclude VAT. A longer hire costs less per day — tell us your dates and we will price the period exactly. Ask us about delivery and hiring with a technician.

Common questions

Everything on the stands page is priced by the piece, so a full-height stand is its own line at £2 a day rather than something folded into the microphone or speaker. That is deliberate: a choir on straight stands and a band on booms want different hardware under the same microphones, and you only pay for the stands you use. Choosing them is our job, though. If you hire microphones, speakers or lanterns from us, tell us what is being miked and where each speaker is going, and we pack the matching stands, clamps and bonds with them, plus spares. The one thing that does travel with the kit is the hook clamp for a hired lantern, which goes out with the fixture. Clamps and bonds for your own lanterns hire by the piece, in ratings matched to what is going up.
Two, doing different jobs. The wired comms system is for the positions that never move: prompt corner, the lighting and sound operators and the followspot, running on standbys and gos rather than guesswork. The radios are for the people who walk about: the front of house manager, the door, the chaperones, whoever is meeting the van at the dock. A small play with one operator and a stage manager can get by on talkback alone. A dance school show with parents arriving, a chaperone at each dressing room and interval timings to pass to the foyer wants both. Tell us who has to reach whom and we will keep it to the fewest pieces that do the job.
Usually, yes, and it is often the tidiest option, because nothing stands on the floor. Hired lanterns bring their own rated hook clamps; for your own, G-clamps, half couplers and trigger clamps hire by the piece, rated at 20kg, 50kg and 250kg to suit the fixture. Every fixture gets a safety bond as a second, independent attachment, rated above its weight, and speakers and heavier hardware go on hanging clamps and shackles, with a wire rope drift to bridge an awkward hanging point. Ratchet straps have no part in any of that: they hold kit down, never up. What we need from you is what the bar is rated to carry, because we cannot check that from here, plus a rough idea of what you want to hang and what it weighs. If the rig means going up, a technician comes with the access equipment, because we do not lend ladders.
Almost certainly, and it is the thing most often forgotten until the desk is sitting on a chair. A sound or lighting desk needs a flat, steady surface out in the room where the operator can see and hear the stage, and the hall's own tables have a habit of being wanted for the interval at exactly that moment. A folding trestle table is £2.50 a day. Hire two if lighting and sound sit apart, and count another for the props in the wings.

Also for hire: sound desk hire · pa system hire · radio microphone hire · stage lighting hire · smoke, haze and effects hire · wired microphone hire · power and cabling hire · av and video hire

Talk to us

Not sure which is right for your venue? Tell us about the show and we will recommend what suits it.

Call 0333 404 0621, email [email protected], or send us the details of your production.