Summer 2017 New England FrankenFest - June 24th in Clinton MA

In the Barter Town thread, our organizer-in-chief Jim posted:

"We need some place more centrally located."

This raises the interesting question, "Centrally located for who?" The event is billed as the "New England FrankenFest." The geographical center of NE is around Dunbarton, NH but most of the population of NE is concentrated south and probably west of there. If this is aimed at a New England audience, Clinton has been a pretty good location.

Moving it toward CT will start peeling off people from ME, NH and VT even as it draws more from CT, NY, NJ. What is the right answer? Maybe there isn't one. If there is, I sure don't have it.
 
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Thanks for bringing this conversation here - where it belongs.
Clinton has served us well, and even though it's a bit further away for our southern participants I think it makes up for that by its funkiness and the hospitality of Frank - our host.
Moving it south a bit does disadvantage our northern attendees (NH, VT & ME) but I suspect that is a fact of life for those living in those fairly rural locales.

I think having a location between Worcester and Hartford would not be a significant hardship for most attendees and would be beneficial to others.

Currently it's about a 50 minute drive for me to Clinton - to someplace in the area I propose my drive would probably increase by 30 minutes or so.

We should start thinking about our fall event - when and where.

One thought I have is to find a VFW hall that we could rent - if we have a VFW member we could get a discounted rate.
Another option is to find a member with space we could use or an audio related business that wants to host us.

Comments are encouraged.
 
Spencer has a 4H camp with a meeting hall, and a VFW hall. There is also a barn which hosts events.
Camp Marshall is the 4H, and Zukas is the Xmas barn. Spencer is located in Central Mass, along RT 9. Just north of the Pike and 84 interchange.
Sturbridge is also loaded with hotels, many of which have halls available. Problem with most halls is they lack a smaller listening room and some may not allow the byob that many of us enjoy.
 
w1jim said:
Thanks for bringing this conversation here - where it belongs.
Clinton has served us well, and even though it's a bit further away for our southern participants I think it makes up for that by its funkiness and the hospitality of Frank - our host.
Moving it south a bit does disadvantage our northern attendees (NH, VT & ME) but I suspect that is a fact of life for those living in those fairly rural locales.

I think having a location between Worcester and Hartford would not be a significant hardship for most attendees and would be beneficial to others.

Currently it's about a 50 minute drive for me to Clinton - to someplace in the area I propose my drive would probably increase by 30 minutes or so.

We should start thinking about our fall event - when and where.

One thought I have is to find a VFW hall that we could rent - if we have a VFW member we could get a discounted rate.
Another option is to find a member with space we could use or an audio related business that wants to host us.

Comments are encouraged.
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Good idea about the VFW. Any of those types of places would be good. Knights of Columbus, FOP, churches etc.

This is a non profit event. So the most we'd pay is normal rate. Maybe $150 or something. I know a hall in the Tiverton RI/Fall River MA line that had the rate on their sign. It was like $50-$100 4hrs vs 8hr or something like that. Cheap (like me). Could charge an entrance fee, or do donations via PayPal maybe. Maybe an auction with donated items. Put any extra in an interest bearing account for the next one. Do raffles to help out also maybe. Solicit donations from vendors? There's many ways to do it.
 
LexDM3 said:
In the Barter Town thread, our organizer-in-chief Jim posted:

"We need some place more centrally located."

This raises the interesting question, "Centrally located for who?" The event is billed as the "New England FrankenFest." The geographical center of NE is around Dunbarton, NH but most of the population of NE is concentrated south and probably west of there. If this is aimed at a New England audience, Clinton has been a pretty good location.

Moving it toward CT will start peeling off people from ME, NH and VT even as it draws more from CT, NY, NJ. What is the right answer? Maybe there isn't one. If there is, I sure don't have it.
Click to expand...

The right answer is to have it in my town. So I don't have to drive. ;)

Selfish? My bad I thought you said shellfish. :)
 
Todd MacDona said:
Spencer has a 4H camp with a meeting hall, and a VFW hall. There is also a barn which hosts events.
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Excellent! If we do it in a barn and/or at a 4H club, we HAVE to have a tube milking contest. Whazzat, you ask? If you look at a tube guitar amp, you'll see that the tubes are upside down. And they look something like the parts of a cow that you milk. Matched quads! So we could milk them. No, you won't get milk but you WILL get toasted fingers if the amp is on.

OK, seriously now, someplace in Westernish MA along Rt. 91 might be ideal, probably somewhere in the Springfield to Northampton stretch. It's reasonably centrally located for the NJ to ME crew we now attract, it's on or near major highways, and a lot of us should be able to get there with no more than a 60-90 minute drive.
 
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Hi all,

Looks like we'll be bringing most of the same setup as last time (VMPS Tower ii, Eagle 2 amp, SAE preamp and Oppo BDP83-SE) as well as some other amps we haven't decided on yet to have some fun comparing them. Maybe my son's SAE X10. Feel free to bring your disks if you want to hear your music through this setup.

Also, in the libations department, I bottled some homebrew a few days ago. If there are sufficient bubbles we'll be bringing that along as well.

Cheers,

Ed
 
stupidhead said:
So I am happy to say that I will be able to attend. Diane will not be joining me but maybe next time.

I am toying with the idea of bringing a Fully refurbed Marantz 2270 and a set of AR2ax and AR5 so folks can hear in person an a/b of these models. If there is interest please chime in.

Geoff
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Hi there and thanx for the interest in this! I have decided to change it up a bit for a variety of reasons. We have out of town visitors coming for Saturday afternoon/evening so for ease of setup/breakdown of such a display I will bring the Marantz 2270 and a set of AR4x and a set of EPI 100W. Both have been rehabbed and very nice examples of each. Comparing the two is an interesting exercise.

Geoff
 
For amps I currently plan on taking both my Eagle 2, SAE x10a and SAE2200. If there is enough space I might take the second X10a for some bi-amping fun.
 
One week to go - time to start figuring out how to load you vehicle!

Also, all T-Shirts have been spoken for.
 
fcarpcarp said:
This will be my last fest as host. More on this later.

Did a quick look up.
My first fest post was June 13, 2008 for a October 4, 2008 fest.

This fest announced May 12, 2017 for a fest on June 24,2017

That's nine years give or take. Pretty good run if I do say myself :)

I need to make something absolutely clear. Without the invaluable efforts of Wjim and Audio Don this would not have happened. Don worked on outreach and education and Jim on outreach and scheduling. They didn't get asked, they just stepped up and got it done. I've joked about our 60 second organizational meetings. Not a joke, that's exactly how it worked.
I cannot thank either of them enough, and neither can you.

Frank C.
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FRANK! Sad to hear this is the last Frank fest, and sad I've been out of new England for the last 4 years, but I'm EXTREMELY happy with the memories from all past ones...

Damn. I miss you guys :) fire up some open Baffles for me!
 
I just talked with Frank to confirm that we are a "GO" for this Saturday.
As expected we will have Frank's shop, the hallway and the basement area.
Frank is checking to see if we can use the upstairs hallway.

This should be well attended (for a summer) event with about 60 people based on feedback and the number of people picking up T-Shirts.

Just 5 more days!!
 
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