Jay-Z hits the road with RapcoHorizon

Jay-Z recently hit the road in support of his album Magna Carta Holy Grail, his first release in four years.

The stage set-up for the stadium tour included intricate rigs, some of which were on 28-foot-high risers, putting the techs in a position where they needed cabling that was both durable and wouldn’t degrade sound quality over distances as long as 50 or 100 feet.

“With guitar, bass, and keyboard player, Clay Sears, up 28-feet in the air, 22-feet above Jay-Z, I had to have instrument and speaker cables that were able to handle the degradation that happens from that distance,” says A.J. “Jukebox” Srybnik, guitar and bass tech for the Magna Carter Holy Tour.

“These cables work just like they are three feet long. I know that in talking to my monitor engineers and FOH guys, they’re just ecstatic with the tones we are getting, and I don’t think it’s necessarily from all the gear, but rather from the cables. I have a lot of runs that go in different lengths, and you’d think my sound would be inhibited, but it’s not. The cables are so dependable.”

The stage set-up during the Magna Carter World Tour

“I’m thrilled to be working with RapcoHorizon,” says Benjamin Jacobs, keyboard tech and backline crew chief for the tour. “These cables outperform every other brand we’ve tried. We recently did a one-off date in Abu Dhabi and my cable looms, which are comprised of the RapcoHorizon cables, were one of the only pieces of our permanent touring gear that I brought along.”

Srybnik also admits that his rig isn’t the most complicated on the tour and that Jacobs uses nearly three times as many instrument cables as him. “He’s got probably 30 keyboards all doing stereo runs, so you’re looking at 60 runs, and these cables get beat up the most. Any time he has a problem, it ends up being an outboard problem or some other audio issue. It never comes back as a bad cable, which is funny because that’s what you always used to hear – ‘swap out the cable, it’s bad’ – you’re just not hearing that anymore.”

www.rapcohorizon.com