Location Recording: Power to the Bag!!!

     Petrol Bags, a company known for it's innovation in the audio bag sector has been bought by a bigger fish in the film accessories game and have been re-branded to suit. Petrol bags are now Sachtler branded and built. They now have a classy black and red colour scheme and what feels like a better price point. So I bought one for my new revised location recording rig (rather than trying to shoehorn everything in to an old Portabrace, which was built for my SQN and not much else!).

     I spent most of a morning fitting out my new Sachtler SN601 "Eargonizer" audio bag. For a fairly modest sized bag I was pleasantly surprised to squeeze in so much kit. I've paired the bag with the SN605 Heavy Duty Harness to reduce the strain of 8.5kg (!!) across my back.

Here's what I've jammed into it:

- A Sound Devices 744T recorder with line inputs driven by...
- A SQN-4S Series II...
- Powered by a Hawk-Woods DV-SQN2s power supply with a DSTE NP-F970 high capacity battery.
- Headphone monitoring through Audio-Technica AT-M50x.
- Two Sennheiser G2 RX packs (soon to be upgraded).

     One thing I like a lot in this bag is the internal cable routing built into the pockets on the front and rear; allowing me to run those power cables around the bag and giving quick access to the battery for fast changes. Also the fact that the front and rear panels fold down when unzipped giving me access to the recessed option switches on the underside of the SQN.

     It also comes with these nice little radio pouches, so you can keep your belt pack receivers outside the bag for marginally better signal, and faster access. They are detachable and have a nice locking clip on them which can be attached at four points around the bag. The heavy duty harness also has a couple of attachment points, so I can use them for any further comms units I may require on set.

    It's the best bag I've ever owned and well worth it's price of entry and considerably cheaper than similarly sized audio utility bags from ORCA and K-Tek. The harness is also good, but for whatever reason seems difficult to adjust to someone of my quite slight build. I also feel that with the bag loaded to it's heaviest weight it would be advisable to take advantage of the waist belt fixing on the bag, in addition to the shoulder harness, so the the bag doesn't pull your stance out too much. Sachtler don't actually make a belt but pretty much any well adjusted padded belt would do it. Something from Setwear or Dirty Rigger would probably suffice.

     Another new addition to the kit is the Hawk-Woods power supply that now live in the front pocket, which delivers 12 Volts to up to three devices. That serves both the SQN and the 744T, so that I don't have to carry any more batteries around with me than is absolutely necessary. It means the SQN doesn't have to be loaded with its eight AA cells; taking vital grams out of the bag.

     At this point I reckon my kit is quite tricked out. I'll agree that some of the kit is quite old in comparison to the very latest and greatest stuff out there, but in terms of the sheer functionality and audio quality I don't think I can have much cause for complaint.
     My radio mics are a good utility set, as they operate in the license free channel 70 block. They can infact be reversed so that they could be used for camera feeds as scratch audio tracks. For a higher quality radios, rental companies do excellent prices on top of the range kits, which actually work out to not that much more expensive than renting one of my sets of G2's.

    What more could a sound recordist want...