Mike and Neli get smart…
… or maybe we’re just getting a bit too old for some of this heavy lifting… after putting up and tearing down Campaniles 3 times in the last year or so, we wondered if there could be a better way 🙂
We decided to get this Dayton platform lift with a 880 lb capacity and used it to take down the top 170 lb cabinet of the Acapella Campanile…
.. and put up the 200 lb or so top cabinet of the Acapella Apollon.
[it’s not that these are so darn heavy, it is that they are tall cabinets which makes them a little unwieldy. No. Really. ;-)]
This platform lift, which doubles as a poor man and woman’s palette jack, is just the kind of thing that is so nice to have around the house.
We still do setup the speakers manually ourselves at distant customer’s homes and at shows (sometimes with help from Rusty, the show freight shipper, and friends)
The top cabinet of the Campanile coming down
The other Campanile cabinet already down and boxed.
The Apollon getting its upper cabinet into place.
Much saner. I don’t know how you manage it manually!
In your video and deployment of your neat industrial lift here you have demoed a wonderful solution, congratulations.
Look at some of Kenji Hosoi of Kenrick’s Sound Japan videos of pick up and delivery videos too. They frequently use body harness for major kit moves too. And gloves of course.
The platform lift is *so great*, it’s like cheating. I mean, put cabinet on, lift up *with foot pedal*, slide cabinet off. Safe. Easy. Fast. Shoulda bought this thing *years* ago. Happy side effect is that we can also use it to move around crates in the garage, including using the lift function for stacking. The only real issue is that it’s a giant heavy thing all on its own, so shipping it is an extra expense and it will not fit in the car.
Our manual process, — the process for folks of normal height — involves lifting the cabinet onto a suitable support (a table, or empty crate) that gets us about halfway there, then I stand on the crate, and Mike on a chair, and we lift up into position. The cabinet itself is taller than wide, so a little scary.
Two or three tall guys (e.g., Robert and Richard Rudolph of Acapella, or Rusty Griffin and his taller staff) just lift the damn thing up there like it’s nothing.