The Chameleon Club has been described as the premier music club in Central Pennsylvania, the mothership for Lancaster's local music scene, and has been credited with launching more than one local band (Innocence Mission; Suddenly Tammy!; Live) into national prominence.
Most of the success of the 12-year-old club is thanks to the hard work and simple - but straight-forward - philosophy of founder and owner Rich Ruoff. His creed: live is better.
"Unlike any other art form, the beauty of live musical performance is that it demands audience interaction," Ruoff says. "When a band and audience connect, the music attains a higher level which can be magical and at times spiritual.
"These moments are what Chameleon is all about."
He must know what he's talking about because the Chameleon Club, in its second decade, is going stronger than ever and its energetic owner not only runs the immensely popular, massive club, but has added to his load an independent record label (Lizard Records) and a 30-minute television show on the PRISM cable network in the Philadelphia area.
A University of Wisconsin dropout, Ruoff grew up in Lancaster, but left college to race bicycles. After racing in 44 different states, he was - at the age of 23 - working as a janitor in Lancaster when he and his then-girlfriend, Alexandra Brown, decided what Lancaster needed was a live music venue. They opened the Chameleon Club June 15, 1985 in the back room of Tim Paine's Restaurant on North Christian St. The total amount of management experience between Ruoff and his friend: Zero. He admits, with a smile, "I was clueless."
A month after it opened, the Chameleon Club saw its first sellout behind a co-billing of Tommy Conwell & the Young Rumblers, a Philadelphia-based band, and Rocket 88, a local Lancaster group. As the club gained in popularity, it out grew its original premises and in June of 1988 moved to its present 10,000-square-foot building at 223 N. Water St.
One of the things he learned was that if you're going to feature live music, you'd better have a sound system that delivers. When Ruoff decided last year he wanted to upgrade the club's system to the best he could get, he sought out an expert, audio consultant Rick Coberly, whose 15 years of experience includes, among other credits, Michael Jackson's Victory Tours.
After looking over the club the first time, Coberly remembers thinking he was starring at nothing but problems. "The club is on two floors. The first floor, dance floor area is about 60 feet by 20 feet. A second-floor balcony, which is about 30 feet deep wraps around the dance floor," he said. "My first impression was, this will be well-nigh impossible to make sound decent."
But he had an idea. "Rather than try to address every problem individually, and put speakers in every nook and cranny to try to cover everything, what I decided to do was set up the system so that the speakers were all in a line array, go for point-source - and let the problems sort themselves out," he said.
Coberly, who had first worked with BAG END loudspeaker systems on the first Michael Jackson Victory Tour, knew he needed some muscle for the job. And, he had heard that BAG END had just introduced its first series of high-output speakers.
"I had inquired about high-output speakers long before BAG END was manufacturing them, and kept up a gentle prodding," he said. "As soon as we heard about the Crystals, we ordered a pair through Wray Music in Lancaster, and I went to hear them as soon as Wray got them in."
"The demo room at Wray's is very difficult to evaluate speakers; it's a modular steel structure with all kinds of resonances," Coberly said. "But what little bit I could I evaluate I liked - and convinced Rich to buy them unheard."
Coberly built the Chameleon Club system around just four BAG END Crystals, which each contain a pair of 12-inch, high-efficiency, low-frequency cone drivers and a high compression driver with a 3-inch copper voice coil driving a custom-designed oval, high-frequency wave guide. Each of the wedge-shaped enclosures has a coverage area of 40 degrees vertical by 50 degrees horizontal at -6dB points.
Coberly set the Crystals in alignment vertically with four BAG END D18E- I subwoofers. The subs are controlled by a BAG END ELF-1 (extended low frequency) processor that will extend the bass down to 8 Hz. with a flat response. "I placed one Crystal on top of the other with about a four-foot space between the subwoofer and the first Crystal, and then another four-foot space before the next Crystal above that," Coberly explained. "I tried to make it natural, in-phase aligned sound and the let the chips fall where they may in the back of the room."
The system is simplicity itself: the four BAG END Crystals and four BAG END subs are powered by four Crest CA-9 amplifiers (one for each stack) and mixed on a Mackie 8-buss board with an Ashley 31-band EQ. The amps are in the rack to parallel the way the speakers are flying.
Asked if the system needs much tweaking, Coberly replied, "The answer is yes and no. When I mix there I do very little EQing. I like a natural, open sound and go for frequency and dB. A lot of engineers who come into the club - especially for the first time, EQ the heck out of it - especially about 120 and then around 630 - to get it to sound like their old Perkins bins and old multi-cell horns or whatever they have on the road. Eventually they come around to flattening out the second time in, and by the third gig, they're loving it."
Coberly added, "With BAG END, it's a re-education. You have to stop thinking the way you've been thinking about sound, like boosting the low frequencies to get that thumpy kick drum - and just let the sound come through - and listen to it with new ears and hear what it really sounds like."
"The most impressive thing about the BAG END system at the Chameleon Club is that if you slowly bring the master volume down, there is no change in the character of the sound at all. It just gets quieter and quieter until all you hear in the band on stage," he said. "If you have a good sound on stage - like recently when Todd Rundgren was there - its just beautiful. Conversely, if your turn it up it just gets louder and louder without changing the character."
Coberly makes no secret of his feeling for BAG END. "What appeals to me about BAG END is they attack the problem of sound reproduction from a different angle. Everyone else is just trying to make subs sound louder or making them smaller and lighter, but BAG END makes sound `real.' They come the closest to audiophile hi-fi quality in professional audio equipment. I have a lot of faith in the company."
And that suits Ruoff just fine. "Music is the focus here," he said. "We have a kind of earnestness here that I think people like." It's safe to say he's clueless no more.
The Chameleon Club's address is: 223 N. Water Street, Lancaster, PA 17603. Its e-mail address is: chameleon@chameleonpa.com. Its very entertaining and complete website is: www.chameleonpa.com.
If all else fails, the telephone number is (717) 293-3684.
Coberly can be reached at (717) 284-3045.
For more information on BAG END products, contact BAG END at 22272 Pepper Road, Barrington, IL 60010, or call BAG END at (847) 382-4550.
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