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Mid-afternoon build at a Mallorcan possessio courtyard, with crew lifting a line array module onto a tower, open flight cases on the gravel and cables run under cable ramps

Technical guide

Event Production
& Setup

The hours nobody sees. How an event is planned, built, tested and taken down: phases, schedules, plans, power, safety, supplier coordination and the things that always go wrong.

Updated August 2026 · 20 min read · FØNØY Sound

A five-hour event takes eight hours to build and three to take down. That ratio — which almost never comes up in a budget conversation — explains why two suppliers with identical equipment deliver different results, why an event runs late from ten in the morning without anyone being able to say exactly when it started to slip, and why half the problems of a Saturday night were decided on a Tuesday afternoon in a spreadsheet.

This guide is about those hours. Not about which loudspeaker to choose — that is in the guide to event sound equipment — but about how the work is organised around the equipment: what phases a build breaks into, how the hours are shared out, which documents you need, and in what order the trades enter a finca courtyard that only has room for one of them at a time.

It comes from rigging events in Mallorca since 2014, so it is full of detail that only matters here: access tracks with dry-stone walls on both sides, fincas with a 25-amp single-phase supply, the afternoon embat that turns up at the same time every day in July, and the absolute certainty that at seven on an August Saturday evening there is not a single shop open on the island. If your event is outdoors, the guide to outdoor event sound is the direct companion to this one.

In this guide

  1. 01 · The six phases of a build
  2. 02 · The schedule and its milestones
  3. 03 · Riders and floor plans
  4. 04 · Load-in, load-out and access
  5. 05 · Temporary power on site
  6. 06 · Safety and rigging
  7. 07 · Coordinating every trade
  8. 08 · Tools and consumables
  9. 09 · Production vs technical direction
  10. 10 · When something goes wrong
  11. → Typical schedule by size
  12. → Pre-event checklist
  13. → Frequently asked questions

01 — The structure

The six phases of a build

A build in sequence at a Mallorcan finca courtyard: a half-assembled modular stage, an unraised lifting tower, open flight cases and two technicians reading a plan on top of a case

Every build, from a thirty-guest ceremony to a festival, goes through the same six phases. The length of each one and the number of people involved change; the order and the nature of the work do not. Recognising them is useful for one very concrete reason: almost every disaster we have seen comes down to someone trying to skip one or squeeze it into half the time.

1 · Planning

Starts at signature and ends the night before. It covers the site visit, reading riders, the technical plan, the power calculation, permits and licences, the schedule and the running order. It is the only phase that costs nothing in equipment and the one that most determines the result. A well-planned event builds boringly, which is exactly the adjective you want.

2 · Prep and load-out

In the warehouse, the day before: pull the equipment against the list, test every item — nothing goes on the truck without being powered up — build racks and looms in labelled blocks, and load in reverse build order, so the first thing you need is the last thing that went in. A badly ordered load turns a forty-minute unload into two hours of shifting cases to reach the back.

3 · The build

On site, in an order that is not negotiable: structure and staging first, then power distribution, then rigging and lifting, then sound and lighting, and finally cable runs, ramps and tidying the scene. Each step depends on the one before. Hanging a fixture before the truss is level and ballasted means taking it down again when somebody levels it.

4 · Test and tune

Line check channel by channel, system tuning with measurement, subwoofer alignment, RF scan and frequency coordination, focusing and programming the lighting, and a rehearsal with the band or DJ if there is one. It is the phase that gets cut when the build runs late, and it is precisely the one that separates an event that sounds right from the first track from one that spends the night chasing the problem.

5 · The show

Live operation: mixing, scene changes between blocks, level management, responding to what the client asks for and watching the system. Most of the technical work here is anticipation — seeing the problem coming — and the rest is staying out of the way. A visibly busy engineer during the event is usually a sign that something was not resolved beforehand.

6 · De-rig

The build in reverse, in the small hours, tired and in a hurry. It is the phase with the most incidents of the whole process: damaged equipment, cables left behind, parts lost. The fix is an outbound inventory against the load list and the discipline of isolating power before touching anything. Whatever is not controlled on de-rig shows up as a fault at the next event.

The proportions between phases are fairly stable. At a 200-guest finca wedding, planning takes six to ten hours of desk work spread over weeks; warehouse prep, half a day; the build, six to eight hours with three or four people; tuning, a good hour and a half; the event, five or six hours; and de-rig, two and a half to three. Added up, the invisible work is three to four times the visible hours.

Mallorca tip

The phase most underestimated on the island is the first one, and specifically the site visit. Quoting an inland finca without going is guesswork: you do not know whether the truck gets in, whether there is three-phase or a 25-amp single-phase supply, whether the cobbled courtyard throws sound back, where the nearest house is, or which way the wind comes in at seven in the evening. A visit costs half a morning and saves the extra cost that always turns up at the worst moment — the morning of the build.

02 — The clock

The schedule and its milestones

A printed running order clipped to a flight case next to a radio and a marker pen, in the courtyard of a Mallorcan finca in mid-morning light

A build schedule is not a task list: it is a list of timed milestones, each of which blocks the next. It is written backwards from the moment guests arrive, and that direction matters, because it is the only one that reveals whether the plan actually fits in the day. Written forwards, every schedule looks feasible; written backwards, the two or three missing hours show up immediately.

The milestones to fix

Site access time. Structure standing. Stable power available. Stage clear for the technical test. Soundcheck start and finish. Guest arrival. Music curfew under the licence. Site cleared. Eight times written down, not eight intentions.

The point of no return

There is an hour after which the configuration can no longer change: moving a subwoofer, adding a delay line or relocating FOH stops being possible once the décor is in and guests are arriving. Fixing that time in writing — and saying it out loud — avoids the impossible conversation at nine in the evening.

Two practical rules sit on top of those milestones. The first is slack: there should be at least an hour of buffer between the end of technical tuning and the first guest, not zero. That gap is what absorbs the truck that arrived late, the RCD that trips and the microphone that turns out to be flat, and it is the first thing sacrificed when the plan is written optimistically. The second is the trades rule: in a small space two trades cannot work over the same area at once, so the schedule allocates space as well as time.

The document that makes all this real is the running order: one page with times, suppliers, the person responsible for each block and a phone number per company. It goes out to everyone involved — the venue included — at least a week ahead, and it gets printed on paper for the build day, because in an inland finca mobile coverage is a hypothesis. A running order that only exists in the organiser's head is not a schedule; it is an intention.

Mallorca tip

In July and August, traffic has to go into the schedule as a milestone in its own right. Palma's ring road and the exits towards the Llevant and the Pla clog up mid-morning and again mid-afternoon, and a forty-minute run in March is eighty in August. We move loads out towards Artà, Capdepera and Son Servera before eight in the morning; the rest of the year it would not matter, but in high season that departure time is the difference between building calmly and building with catering on your heels.

03 — The paperwork

Riders and floor plans

A dimensioned event floor plan and a technical rider spread across a work table beside a tape measure and a marker, lit warmly from the side

A build is run on two documents: the rider, which says what each artist needs, and the floor plan, which says where everything goes. Without the first you buy equipment blind; without the second you end up arguing about the position of the stage at nine in the morning with a crew standing around. Above a certain size neither is optional, and both should exist weeks ahead, not the night before.

Technical rider

Written by the artist or their engineer, it contains the input list, the stage plot, the minimum PA, the number of monitor sends, the backline, the power it draws, the crew required and load-in and soundcheck times. Reading it well means separating a genuine requirement — channels, sends, dimensions, times — from a brand preference, which almost always carries the words "or similar". Ask for it when you book the artist; a rider that arrives ten days out usually means reopening the budget.

Floor plan

The scale drawing of the space with everything that goes in it: stage, dance floor, tables, bar, reception area, photo point, access routes, fire exits and toilets. It has to be dimensioned — real metres, not rough proportions — because coverage distances, cable lengths and the decision on whether delay lines are needed all come out of those numbers. A plan without a scale is a nice sketch and is no use for calculating anything.

Technical layout drawing

The layer drawn on top of the floor plan: position of tops and subs, the FOH position, racks and distribution boards, cable routes, the supply point or generator location, and rigging or ballast points. It is the document that lets you argue with the client and the designer before the build, when moving a stack costs a click rather than forty minutes and a disagreement.

Running order and production book

The master document that pulls together schedule, contacts, plans, riders, access, parking, venue restrictions, curfews and the wet-weather plan. On big events it is a production book of twenty pages; at a wedding it fits on two. The size does not matter: what matters is that there is only one and that everyone is working from the same version.

There is one cross-check worth doing every time that almost nobody does: confirm that the artist's stage plot physically fits the stage that has been booked. A rider asking for six metres wide by four deep does not go on a three-by-two deck, and you find that out by reading two numbers, not by building. The same check applies to power: if the backline wants 6 kW and the finca has 5.5 kW usable in total, there is no technical solution on the day — there is a production decision that should have been taken weeks earlier.

Mallorca tip

Many of the island's fincas and possessions circulate a marketing plan designed to sell the space rather than to build in it: no dimensions, north the wrong way round and the courtyard drawn larger than it is. We always survey the site with a laser measure during the technical visit, even when the venue has already sent a plan. Half an hour measuring avoids the classic discovery that the gap between the cloister column and the wall is 2.80 m and the stage you booked is 3.

What each type of island venue demands — fincas, hotels, beach clubs, wineries — is broken down venue by venue in the guide to event venues in Mallorca.

04 — The logistics

Load-in, load-out and access

Sound equipment being unloaded from a van on the access track of a Mallorcan finca, with flight cases on a trolley, protective boards on the cobbles and dry-stone walls on both sides

Load-in is the part of a build that varies most between one event and the next, and the part that is estimated worst. At a city hotel with a loading bay and a goods lift, getting a full rig in takes forty minutes. At an inland finca with five hundred metres of dirt track, a 2.80 m gateway and a gravel slope, the same equipment takes two hours and needs an extra pair of hands. That difference cannot be solved on the day: it has to have been priced and scheduled.

What gets measured on the visit

Clear width and height of gates and archways, the turning radius on the last stretch, gradient and surface of the track, the real distance from where the vehicle stops to the build area, any steps or level changes on the way, and whether there is a lift or goods lift and what it measures inside. All in metres, written down. "You can get in fine" is not a measurement.

What decides the vehicle

Not the volume of equipment, but the narrowest point on the route. In Mallorca that constraint dominates so often that it frequently means transferring the load from a truck to a small van at the finca gate, with the time and crew cost that implies. Far better to know it at quoting stage than to discover it with a truck wedged between two dry-stone walls.

The load order in the warehouse is the other half of this, and it is purely mechanical: load in reverse build order. Structure and staging at the back — first out — then power distribution and cabling, then tops and subs, and last of all tools, consumables and microphones, which are what you use at the end and what you most often have to go looking for. Loading by size rather than by sequence feels more efficient in the warehouse and costs an hour on site.

Equipment either rolls or is carried by two people: transport trolleys and castors on flight cases are not a premium extra but a safety measure, because most injuries in this trade happen during load-in rather than during the build. And there is a courtesy rule that is also an economic one: protect the floor. Boards or carpet over the cobbles of a historic courtyard, planks on grass, and never dragging a subwoofer across a terracotta floor. A scar on the stonework of a possessió is a conversation with the owner that an apology does not close.

Mallorca tip

The island's country lanes have two quirks that catch out mainland suppliers: dry-stone walls are unforgiving — there is no verge, no margin, and scraping a protected wall is a serious matter — and many fincas share their access with neighbours who hold a right of way. Ask for the real usable width and whether there is a time when the lane will be blocked, and always put the vehicle registration and the driver's number on the running order in case it has to be moved in a hurry.

05 — The foundation

Temporary power on site

A portable event distribution board with RCDs and breakers open against a stone wall, CEE cables running to the ground and protected by cable ramps, in low amber light

Power is the first thing built and the last thing removed, and it is the most frequent reason an event stops dead. It is not a sound or a lighting matter: it is a complete temporary electrical installation, with its distribution, its protection and its earthing, built in a few hours and stripped out the same night. Treating it as "plugging the gear in" is the origin of ninety per cent of the frights.

Distribution board

The single point everything is fed from, with a main switch, RCDs and one breaker per circuit. It buys you something essential: a fault takes down one circuit rather than the whole event. It goes somewhere accessible, labelled, shielded from rain and away from guest traffic, with the circuit allocation written on the lid so that at two in the morning nobody has to guess which is which.

RCDs and discrimination

Protecting people is non-negotiable: 30 mA RCDs on general circuits. The practical problem is that the switched-mode supplies in LED drivers and audio electronics generate leakage currents that add up, and a single RCD covering the whole event will trip with no actual fault present. The answer is not to remove it but to split the load: several RCDs, each with few circuits, of a type suited to installations full of electronics.

Earthing

Without a proper earth the RCD does not protect and the audio system picks up noise. On an existing supply you verify the earth is there and measures what it should; with a generator you have to resolve it explicitly, with a rod and the neutral bonded as the machine requires. It is also half the explanation for hum: a good share of the "sound problems" at an event are in fact earthing and ground-loop problems.

Splitting by trade

Sound, lighting and catering go on independent circuits, with sound on the cleanest and most stable. The reason is specific: catering's regeneration ovens, fridges and ice machines are large loads that start and stop on their own, and sharing a circuit with them means voltage dips and, sooner or later, a trip in the middle of the first dance.

Sizing means adding up real loads with headroom, not trusting the venue's label. A 200-guest wedding with sound and both dance-floor and decorative lighting runs in the region of 15 to 25 kW at peak; catering alone can ask for as much again. Many Mallorcan fincas have a 25 or 30 A single-phase supply — around 5.5 to 6.6 kW usable — which does not get you started, so the honest conversation is the one about a generator: silenced, sized with real headroom over the expected peak, sited away from guests with the exhaust pointed clear, with fuel for the whole night and a load test done in the afternoon rather than at eleven.

The last stretch is cable. Long runs cause voltage drop, so cross-section is calculated from distance rather than from habit; cables cross walkways under ramps or channel — never under tape and good intentions; and outdoor connections stay off the ground, because a garden's automatic irrigation comes on by itself at three in the morning and has ruined more than one de-rig. Before energising the whole rig, currents are checked with a clamp meter and every outlet is tested for polarity and earth with a socket tester: two minutes of verification instead of a night of guesswork.

Mallorca tip

"There has always been plenty of power here" is the sentence that has cost us most in twelve years. At many inland fincas the installation is old, the protection has not been checked by anyone, and the supply was sized for a house rather than an event. We put a clamp meter on it during the technical visit, without exception, and decide from that number. And when an event depends on the finca's own installation, we bring a small backup generator for the critical circuits anyway: it costs little and turns a full blackout into a thirty-second anecdote.

06 — Non-negotiable

Safety and rigging

A technician in helmet and gloves inspecting a sling and shackle at the base of a ballasted lifting tower outside a Mallorcan finca in late afternoon light

This is the least-read part of the guide and the only one where a mistake cannot be corrected. An event build is a temporary construction site: there are suspended loads, work at height, provisional electrics and vehicles manoeuvring — and shortly afterwards, hundreds of people standing underneath all of it. The rules are not bureaucracy: they are the reason this goes right thousands of times in a row.

Basic site safety

Safety boots always, gloves when handling structure, helmets under suspended loads and a harness for work at height. The build area fenced off and free of public. Nobody works under a raised load, and no raised load is ever left unattended. Bring your own work lighting for de-rig: most of the knocks happen in the small hours, in the dark and in a hurry.

Loads and anchor points

Every piece of rigging hardware — slings, shackles, hoists, clamps — has a declared working load limit, and that is the figure that governs, not the breaking load. The anchor points of an old finca are not rigging points: a two-hundred-year-old sabina beam has no load certificate, and hanging from it because "it looks strong" is exactly the kind of decision that does not get made.

Lifting towers and truss come with two constraints that are easily forgotten. The first is ballast and levelling: a tower goes up plumb, on firm ground, with the legs fully extended and the counterweight the manufacturer specifies, and no more load than it is rated for. The second is wind, and outdoors it is the serious one: every structure has a maximum admissible wind speed, and above it the answer is to lower the load or take it down, not to see what happens. Anything that acts as a sail — a banner, a backdrop, a printed cloth — multiplies the force on the structure and changes that calculation completely.

On paperwork, what needs to be on the table before the build is specific: a current public liability policy with dates and cover, certification and declarations of conformity for structures and lifting hardware, a build plan with schedule and crew, and a risk assessment when the size of the event calls for one. Many venues and a good number of the island's town halls request these, and they always do so with forty-eight hours to go, which is exactly when they can no longer be obtained. Ask for them when you contract the supplier, not when they arrive to build.

Mallorca tip

The island's wind is predictable and should be treated as a design input. The embat comes in off the sea in mid-afternoon with fair punctuality in summer, and tramuntana gusts in the Serra can make a flown structure unviable within minutes. We check the gust forecast — not the mean wind — forty-eight hours out and again on the morning of the build, and for any outdoor flown structure we define in writing the threshold at which it comes down. Having that discussion with the client at seven in the evening, with the structure already up, is not a conversation: it is a problem.

07 — The order of entry

Coordinating every trade

Several crews working at once in a Mallorcan finca courtyard during the build: marquee riggers, sound technicians with speaker cabinets, florists with centrepieces and waiting staff dressing tables, at dusk

A mid-size event brings five to eight different companies into the same space on the same day: marquee, staging, sound and lighting, furniture, décor and florists, catering, photography and sometimes AV. Every one of them believes their part governs the others, and every one of them has a point. What prevents gridlock is not goodwill: it is an order of entry decided in advance by someone with the authority to enforce it.

1 · Structure and staging

Marquee, deck, truss and towers. This is what occupies the space with machinery and what sets the real dimensions everyone else works to. Anything that goes in earlier has to be moved out of the way; anything built after the structure is standing gets built once.

2 · Power

Board, circuits and outlets for everyone, catering and décor included. It goes before the rest because the other trades need it in order to work, and because cabling has to sit underneath whatever is built on top — carpet, decking, furniture — rather than snaking between tables that are already dressed.

3 · Sound and lighting

Cabinets, subs, fixtures, cabling and tuning. It needs a clear space and its own noise: focusing lights and running a soundcheck with fifty people dressing tables around you is slow for everybody. This is the trade that benefits most from an exclusive window, however short.

4 · Furniture, décor and florists

They come in once the technical work is placed, because theirs is the layer that is seen and that cannot be walked over afterwards. This is where the classic clash appears: décor that blocks a speaker or a fixture, or a centrepiece that lands directly in front of the control position. If the layout drawing has been shared, that conversation lasts a minute.

5 · Catering

Last to build and the biggest consumer of power. They need their back-of-house area settled, their own electrical circuits and clear service routes. Agreeing the position of ovens and fridges with them before the day avoids the late discovery that the only free socket is the one feeding the sound system.

The coordination instrument is not a message thread: it is a running order with arrival times per company, a named contact per trade and one phone number per company, sent a week ahead and confirmed by everyone. On larger events add a coordination meeting a fortnight out — half an hour, in person or on video, with the plan in front of you — which resolves more than twenty emails. And during the build you need one person able to decide in real time: when two trades collide, somebody has to say who waits.

It is worth looking at dead time as a cost. A crew of three standing idle for ninety minutes because the marquee is running late is four and a half hours of lost work that somebody pays for, in money or in quality, because that hour and a half comes out of tuning later. That is the real reason a realistic schedule works out cheaper than an optimistic one, however it looks on paper.

Mallorca tip

At international weddings — which in Mallorca means most of them — the build is often coordinated in three languages at once: the couple in English or German, the planner in Spanish and the riggers in Mallorquín. A written running order, with times rather than descriptions, is what stops a nuance getting lost on the way. We send it in the client's language and in Spanish, and on site we work to the times, which everybody understands.

What each musical format demands in staging, channels and rehearsal time is broken down in the guide to event entertainment types.

08 — The toolbox

Tools and consumables

An event technician's toolbox open on a flight case, with spanners, a multimeter, rolls of black gaffer tape, cable ties, a head torch and electrical adaptors laid out

A build fails for want of a cable tie more often than for want of a loudspeaker. Tools and consumables are the part of the inventory nobody budgets for, nobody shows off and everybody needs, and their absence is always paid for at the worst possible moment: when no shop is open and there are forty minutes until the first guest arrives.

Tools

A set of spanners and a ratchet — the 19 mm is the truss one and it always disappears — flat and cross screwdrivers, pliers and cable cutters, a knife, tape measure and laser measure, a spirit level, a cordless drill with a charged battery, a ladder, a head torch per person, and for the electrical side a multimeter, a socket tester that checks polarity and earth, and a clamp meter.

Consumables

Black gaffer tape — matt, not shiny, for anything that will be seen — double-sided tape, hazard tape, cable ties in three sizes, hook-and-loop for dressing cable, cable ramps and trunking, ballast bags, loose fixings, fuses, AA and 9 V batteries in indecent quantities, and a bag of adaptors: Schuko, CEE, powerCON, male-male and female-female XLR, jack, RCA and minijack.

Alongside that goes the critical spares kit, which is what turns a failure into an anecdote: a complete spare wireless microphone, a spare network cable and several XLRs, a small fill speaker, a secondary playback device already loaded with the event's music, fresh batteries and a set of speaker cables. It does not appear on the quote and it goes unused at eight events out of ten; at the ninth it pays for the whole year.

The discipline that keeps all this working is labelling and putting things back. Every cable labelled by length and type, every case with its contents on the lid, and on de-rig everything returns to its place even at four in the morning. A multicore coiled carelessly is a multicore that fails three events from now, and a consumables case nobody restocks is an empty case on the day it matters. That is why restocking happens on return to the warehouse, not on the way out to the next job.

Mallorca tip

On an island, the spares kit is worth double. If a wireless receiver dies at seven on an August Saturday evening at a finca near Artà, there is no supplier, no service centre and no courier that will fix it that night: the part is, at best, a flight away. That is why we always leave with a duplicate of everything critical, whether or not it appears on the quote. A rig that arrives with nothing to spare is a rig that does not arrive.

09 — Who decides what

Production vs technical direction

Two event leads going through a running order and a plan together next to a half-built stage, radios in hand, with the finca courtyard behind them

These are two distinct jobs that one person does at small events and that cannot be done simultaneously at large ones. Confusing them produces a very recognisable problem: somebody promises the client something that does not technically fit, and the conflict surfaces when there is no longer room to solve it.

Production direction

Runs the project: budget and financial close, contracting suppliers, permits and licences, the overall schedule, crew, transport, accommodation, insurance and the relationship with the client and the venue. It decides what happens and with what resources, and it holds the whole picture of the event rather than only the technical part.

Technical direction

Runs feasibility: layout drawings, reading and translating riders, load and power calculations, the build plan, structural and electrical safety, the specific choice of equipment and command of the technical crews. It decides how it happens and, above all, has the authority to say what cannot happen.

There is a third role that appears on the day and gets forgotten at quoting stage: the stage manager, who owns the clock once there are people on site. They cue people on and off, call the band, coordinate the changeover between blocks, talk to the MC and to catering, and decide on the spot whether the speeches move earlier because dinner is running late. At a wedding the planner usually takes this on; at a corporate event with a fixed programme you need somebody dedicated, because nobody operating a console can also run the script.

The practical rule for when to split: as long as there is one technical supplier, fewer than a hundred guests and no flown structure, one person can carry it all. As soon as there is a stage, several trades, artists with riders or a programme with fixed times, you need at least two heads — and it is worth writing down who decides in the event of a clash. That line — who has the last word on the clock and who on safety — is what avoids the eight-in-the-evening argument.

Mallorca tip

On the island, a good share of private events arrive with a wedding planner doing production and nobody doing technical direction. The gap always shows up in the same places: power badly estimated, riders nobody has cross-checked against the real space, and build times shared out without knowing how long each trade takes. When we take that part on as well, the change is not in the equipment: it is that decisions which depend on a number get taken with the number in front of us.

10 — When something goes wrong

Contingency planning

A technician checking a distribution board by head torch during a night event at a Mallorcan finca, with the amber-lit party out of focus behind

The things that go wrong at an event are not infinite: there are essentially five, they recur with almost tedious regularity, and every one of them has a prepared answer. What marks out a professional build is not that nothing happens, but that when it does it was already anticipated and the solution is not being invented in front of the client.

Power failure

The most frequent and the most spectacular, because it takes music, lighting and the kitchen at the same time. Prevention is splitting circuits and keeping power headroom; the backup is a small generator for critical circuits or, at the very least, a UPS on the console and processing, which prevents a system reboot and buys the minutes needed to diagnose calmly.

Rain or wind

Solved with a time, not with a tarpaulin. The contract fixes a decision time — four to six hours before guests arrive — at which plan A or plan B is chosen with the forecast in hand, and that decision is not revisited. Plan B has to be drawn on a plan, not described in words: what gets built indoors, how long it takes and what is lost.

A supplier running late

Almost never recovered; what you do is reorder. That is why the schedule should state which tasks can be brought forward if the preceding trade is late and which cannot. And it is why the hour of slack before guests arrive is not a luxury: it is the only real tool that exists against somebody else's delay.

Equipment failure

Covered by redundancy at the single points of failure: the ceremony microphone, the music playback, the network cable running to the stage. You do not need to duplicate the whole system — nobody pays for that — you need to identify the three or four items whose failure stops the event and carry a spare of exactly those.

A late change from the client

Moving the ceremony, adding speeches, bringing dinner forward or slipping in a video surprise. Usually manageable with notice and very expensive after the point of no return. The right answer is not "no": it is to explain in thirty seconds what it involves and let the client decide with the facts in front of them.

Behind all five sits one principle: decide early. Almost every contingency has a cheap solution if it is addressed three hours out and none at all if it is addressed fifteen minutes after the problem starts. That is why what matters about a plan B is not its content but the time at which it is triggered — and why that time belongs in the contract alongside the other milestones.

Mallorca tip

The September downpour in Mallorca is short, intense and very local: it can dump for twenty minutes on a finca in Binissalem and leave an olive grove six kilometres away dry. That makes the island-wide forecast close to useless and short-range radar the thing worth watching. Our practice is simple: anything that must not get wet — console, racks, laptop — lives under cover from the first minute of the build, even on a clear day, because covering a control position with the party in full swing costs far more than covering it at eleven in the morning.

The reference

Typical schedule by size

Indicative hours and crew for an event in Mallorca with sound and lighting. Difficult access, a flown structure or a build shared with several trades moves any of these rows up a step.

Elevated view of a Mallorcan finca courtyard in mid-afternoon with the build nearly finished: stage, speakers in position, dressed tables and two technicians adjusting the control position

Up to 50 · reception or ceremony

Build: 2–3 h on the day, in the morning

Tune: 30–45 min line check and tuning

De-rig: 1–1.5 h with 2 technicians

50–120 · private party

Build: 4 h on the day

Tune: 1 h including system tuning

De-rig: 2 h with 2–3 technicians

120–250 · finca wedding

Build: 6–8 h from first light, overlapping trades

Tune: 1.5–2 h with measurement and band check

De-rig: 2.5–3 h overnight with 3–4 technicians

250–500 · corporate or gala

Build: day before for structure plus 8 h on the day

Tune: 3 h plus programme and speaker rehearsal

De-rig: 4 h with 5–6 technicians

500+ · concert or festival

Build: 1–2 full days with certified rigging

Tune: half a day of system tuning and checks

De-rig: 1 day with 8+ technicians in shifts

Access decides the hours; the trades decide the order

Before doors

Pre-event checklist

The four cut-off points we use at every event. Not a wish list: what gets checked, with whom, and at what time.

One week out

  • Running order sent and confirmed by every supplier and by the venue
  • Layout drawing closed and shared with décor and catering
  • Riders received and cross-checked against the real stage and power
  • Paperwork delivered: liability cover, structure certificates, build plan
  • Music curfew and site clearance times confirmed in writing
  • Plan B decision time fixed and communicated to the client

The day before

  • Equipment pulled, tested item by item and loaded in reverse order
  • Critical spares kit and consumables restocked and counted
  • Batteries charged: wireless, drill, torches, radios
  • Wind and rain forecast reviewed, with the structure threshold clear
  • Route, departure time and driver contact confirmed
  • Scenes and presets prepared on the console and the lighting desk

On the day, during the build

  • Floor protected before any equipment goes in
  • Board built, circuits labelled and load measured with a clamp meter
  • Polarity and earth checked at every outlet before energising
  • Structures plumb, ballasted and within their declared load
  • Cables protected across every walkway
  • RF scan and frequency coordination done on site

The last hour

  • Full line check, channel by channel, with each block's scene stored
  • System tuning and subwoofer alignment verified from the audience position
  • Ceremony microphone and its spare tested, with fresh batteries
  • Backup music loaded on a second playback device
  • Control position covered and cabling cleared from walkways
  • Welcome scene running and background level set before anyone comes in

Whatever is not checked beforehand gets discovered in front of the guests

Our angle

A good build is a boring build

If there is one thing we have learned in more than a decade of building events on this island, it is that drama during a build is a bad sign. The days people remember for what got solved on the fly are days when something was planned badly weeks earlier. A build that goes well is tedious: the equipment arrives when it was supposed to, there is power where there was meant to be, each trade comes in on cue, and by seven in the evening there is a long hour with nothing to do.

Getting there does not depend on equipment but on three cheap decisions: go and see the site before quoting, write the schedule backwards from guest arrival, and put in writing who decides what. None of the three appears on an invoice, and all three are what separate a calm event from one that spends the day chasing itself.

That is why we have worked since 2014 with our own stock, a technical visit whenever the event is outdoors, an engineer on site from start to finish, and a single point of contact for sound, lighting and power — which is the simplest way to make sure nobody passes the buck at nine in the evening. You can see how that plays out at weddings, corporate events and concerts and festivals, and what the full service covers at technical production.

Frequently asked questions

About production and setup

How long does it take to rig sound and lighting for a wedding?
For a wedding of 120 to 250 guests at a finca, a full sound and lighting rig takes six to eight hours with a crew of three or four, plus an hour and a half to two hours of tuning and checks before anyone arrives. The practical reference we use is that the build takes three to four times as long as the technical part of the event itself. De-rig is faster — two and a half to three hours — but it happens in the small hours with accumulated fatigue, which is exactly when things get broken. What stretches a build is rarely the equipment: it is bad access, power that was not where they said it was, and dead time waiting for another supplier to clear the space.
Who coordinates all the suppliers on the day?
There should always be one named person with that responsibility and the authority to decide: the production manager, the wedding planner or, at small events, the technical supplier themselves if the client delegates it in writing. What does not work is coordination by consensus, with five suppliers negotiating in the courtyard about who goes in first. The concrete instrument is a shared running order with an arrival time for each supplier, the build sequence and one phone number per company, circulated at least a week ahead. If nobody has written it, the event coordinates itself — which means it coordinates badly.
What is the difference between production direction and technical direction?
Production direction runs the project: budget, contracts, suppliers, permits, the overall schedule, crew and logistics. It talks to the client and decides what happens. Technical direction runs feasibility: technical plans, riders, structural loads, electrical capacity, safety and the choice of equipment. It talks to the crew and decides how it happens — and what cannot happen. At an event under a hundred guests one person usually covers both and nothing goes wrong. Above 250, or as soon as there are flown structures, a stage, several suppliers and artists with riders, splitting them stops being a luxury: they are two full-time jobs that get in each other's way inside one head.
What technical paperwork should I ask a supplier for?
As a minimum: a current public liability policy showing dates and cover; certification for any flown structure and rigging hardware (towers, truss, slings, shackles, hoists); a build plan with schedule and crew numbers; and the electrical load the whole rig will draw, in kW and per phase. Many venues and a good number of the island's town halls ask for these, and they always ask late — forty-eight hours out, when they can no longer be obtained. Request them when you contract the supplier, not when they arrive to build.
How much electrical power does an event need, and what if the venue does not have it?
A 200-guest wedding with sound, decorative lighting and dance-floor lighting draws in the region of 15 to 25 kW at peak, on top of whatever catering asks for — and catering is usually the hungriest item on site: regeneration ovens and refrigeration comfortably outdraw sound and lighting combined. Many Mallorcan fincas have a single-phase supply of 25 or 30 A, roughly 5.5 to 6.6 kW usable, which is not enough. When it is not enough there are two routes: a silenced generator sized with real headroom, or splitting the event between the house supply and a generator, keeping sound on the cleanest line. What never works is trusting "there has always been plenty of power here" without having put a clamp meter on it.
Can everything be built on the day, or do you need the day before?
Up to about 250 guests, with no flown structures and decent access, building on the morning of the event is normal and it works. Beyond that — or as soon as there is a line array on towers, a modular stage, flown truss, artist rehearsals or a marquee — the build splits across two days: structure and power the day before, sound, lighting and tuning on the day. The factor that forces a pre-build day is not the volume of kit but the collision of trades: if marquee, staging, décor, florists and catering all have to get into the same courtyard on the same day, they do not fit, and the result is that everyone builds badly and late.
What happens if it rains or the wind gets up?
What decides the outcome is not the weather but what time the decision is taken. For every outdoor event we set a contractual cut-off — normally four to six hours before guests arrive — at which plan A or plan B is chosen with the forecast in hand, and that decision is not revisited. Wind is more restrictive than rain: lifting towers and truss have a maximum wind speed declared by the manufacturer, and above it the load comes down; it is not a matter for discussion. In Mallorca the afternoon embat and tramuntana gusts are predictable almost to the day, so they are part of the rig design rather than something to improvise around.
What time does de-rig happen, and who decides?
The venue licence and the contract set it, not the mood on the dance floor, and it is worth having two separate times in writing: music curfew and the time the site must be cleared. There should be real slack between them — two to three hours at a finca wedding — because de-rig in the small hours is the phase with the most incidents of the whole event: fatigue, poor light, guests still moving around and everyone in a hurry. Some venues require the kit to be removed the same night and others allow it to stay until the morning, and that changes both the price and the crew size. It is one of the three or four questions to ask a venue before signing anything.

Keep reading

A complete professional sound rig on the courtyard of a Mallorcan finca at dusk, with two stacks flanking a stage and a digital console at the control position

Sound equipment

Event sound equipment

The whole chain piece by piece: PA, subwoofers, amplification, processing, consoles, microphones, monitors and riders.
Cobbled courtyard of a Mallorcan finca at dusk with two sound stacks flanking a wooden stage

Outdoor sound

Sound for outdoor events

Why it sounds different outside, subwoofers and neighbours, generators, wind and the noise limits in the Balearics.
The terrace of a Mallorcan finca set up for an event at sunset, with tables laid and views towards the mountains

Venues

Event venues in Mallorca

Fincas, hotels, beach clubs and wineries, with what has to be solved technically at each one.
Courtyard of a Mallorcan finca mid-party at night, with a live band on a stage and the dance floor lit in amber

Music and entertainment

Event entertainment types

Twelve music formats and what each one demands in channels, staging and decibels.
A Mallorcan finca lit at night with warm uplighting on the stone walls and LED fixtures over the dance floor

Lighting

Event lighting types

Twelve types of light with what each one does well, what it does badly and what it takes to rig.

Request a quote

Technical production for your event

Tell us the date, the place and how many people. We'll send a proposal within 24h, with the build plan, crew and timings itemised.

WhatsApp

+34 600 073 515

Phone

+34 600 073 515

Email

fonoysound@gmail.com

Full production

Our services in Mallorca

Weddings

Sound and lighting for ceremony, cocktail hour, dinner and party. Technician included.

Private parties

DJ gear, LED lighting and subs for your villa or finca party.

Corporate events

Wireless microphones, PA and technical production for conferences and galas.

Concerts & festivals

Line array, moving heads and full production for concerts.

DJ Mallorca

Professional DJ with sound and lighting included. 10+ years on the island.

Equipment rental

Full catalogue of sound, lighting and structures.

Technical production

Design, rigging and full operation of sound and lighting.

Guides

Technical articles on sound, lighting and event venues in Mallorca.