(l-r): Matt Cotton with his new SD8, James Gordon,
John Stadius, Dave Bigg, Dan Page
London (October 1, 2010)—DiGiCo named the winner of a contest for the 500th SD8 console that aided the families of live sound legends John Roden and Jim Douglas.
Roden—longtime monitor engineer for Paul McCartney, AC/DC, Michael Jackson and others—and Jim Douglas, director of tour sound for audio provider Sound Image, passed away in 2007 and 2008 respectively, but were fittingly remembered with the contest, which attracted entries from across the globe.
The lucky winner, chosen from a drawing at PLASA 2010, is from DiGiCo’s home turf: Matthew Cotton, from Southampton, collected his one-of-a-kind, liveried SD8 from the DiGiCo offices on September 22.
“I didn’t believe it when David Webster [DiGiCo’s marketing director] called to say that I’d won,” grins Cotton. “It was only when a friend from Entec, who was with Noreen Roden at the show when she made the draw, rang me that I knew it was true.” Cotton is a fitting recipient for the console as both John and Jim graced the monitor position of many a high profile tour.
“We’re really pleased the console is going to a fellow engineer,” says DiGiCo managing director, James Gordon. “We’ve raised in excess of £30K in total, which will be divided equally between John and Jim’s families, and to know that this special console has gone to someone who understands exactly what these guys were about is perfect.”
“It still hasn’t quite sunk in,” said Cotton as the DiGiCo team helped him load the SD8 into his van, “although it did become a bit more real when my wife, who has worked in lighting and has an idea of the size of desks, asked me where I was going to put it!
“This really has come at the perfect time for me. I used an SD8 earlier on this year on the Australian Pink Floyd tour and I loved it, so I’m really looking forward to getting it home and having the chance to get to know it all over again.”
”I’m delighted for Matt,” says Noreen O’Riordan, John Roden’s partner. “And the fact that we’ve worked together on Aussie Pink Floyd means that my lighting boxes might be snuggling up to this special edition console in the back of a truck sometime soon.”
“I’m as pleased as could be that Matt is a sound engineer like Jim and John and that he’s even from the same neck of the woods,” adds Jim’s wife Carol. “It couldn’t be more fitting.”
DiGiCo
www.digiconsoles.com
