A tech rider is the one-page document a venue's operations manager wants from every vendor and rarely gets from a DJ. Bands send them. Production companies send them. DJs tend to send a text the day before asking what time they can get in. The rider exists so the venue can answer the six questions it actually has about us before we are standing at the dock with a hand truck. This is what ours covers, in the order a venue reads it, with the typical figures so you know what to expect on yours.
What is on the rider, and why the venue cares
Power
A DJ rig at corporate volume typically wants one or two dedicated 20-amp circuits, on their own breaker and not shared with the coffee urns or the caterer's warming cabinets. The reason is not that the gear draws that much continuously. It is that a shared circuit that trips at 8:40 PM takes the music and the microphones down together, in the dark, during a speech. The rider asks where the nearest outlets are and whether they share a breaker with anything else in the room. Older Manhattan buildings and converted lofts are where this matters most; a modern hotel ballroom usually has floor boxes and the answer is easy.
Footprint
A working setup needs something like a six-by-four-foot area for the table and the DJ, plus floor space on either side for two speakers on stands. Subwoofers, when the room needs them, sit on the floor in front. The rider gives the footprint so the venue can put it on the floor plan next to the dance area, near power, and not behind a pillar. The most common placement mistake is putting the DJ where the room looks nice rather than where the DJ can see both the floor and the lectern. A DJ who cannot see the microphone cannot take the cue.
Table and skirting
A six-foot skirted banquet table from the venue is the usual ask, and it saves bringing a facade through a freight elevator. The rider says whether we need one. Height matters more than people think: a standard banquet table is a working height, a cocktail-height table is not, and a low lounge table is a back injury by 10:00 PM.
Load-in window and access
Setup takes about ninety minutes to two hours from reaching the room, and roughly an hour to break down. The rider asks for a load-in time that allows that plus a sound check before doors, and it asks the practical questions: which entrance, whether there is a dock or a street loading zone, freight elevator hours, whether a house engineer or union steward has to be present, and whether the room will be set when we arrive. In Manhattan the building is the variable, not the gear. A room that opens to vendors at 4:00 PM for 6:30 PM doors is comfortable; one that opens at 5:30 PM is not, and we would rather know in August than on the day. Manhattan load-in covers what goes wrong.
House system or ours
Some venues require vendors to run through the house system, usually for sound-limit or neighbor reasons. The rider asks which it is. If it is the house system, we ask what input is available at the DJ position (XLR or quarter-inch, mono or stereo), where the house rack is, and who has the key, because a locked rack with the master level left where the last luncheon set it is the quiet failure nobody notices until the first speaker is inaudible at the back. If it is our system, we confirm the room dimensions and ceiling height so the sound is scaled to the room rather than to a guess.
Microphones
The rider lists how many wireless handhelds we bring by default and asks whether the venue runs any wireless of its own in the building. Two systems on overlapping frequencies in the same building interfere, and the symptom is a mic that drops out only when the speaker turns toward the window. We scan on the day, but knowing what the venue runs saves time.
Certificate of insurance
Almost every Manhattan venue and a growing number in New Jersey require a certificate of insurance before load-in, and many specify minimum limits, with the venue and frequently the building owner named as additional insured. The rider asks for the exact entity names, the address they want on the certificate, and the deadline. We issue the COI at no charge. What venues reject most is the wording, not the coverage; additional insured wording explains what to send us.
Contact
Two phone numbers: the venue's day-of operations contact and ours. Not the sales manager who booked the room, who will be home by the time the freight elevator sticks between floors.
What the rider is not
It is not a demand list. A band's rider might specify a stage size and a dressing room; ours says what we bring and what would make the room work better, and it is written so the venue can say "we cannot do that" and we can adjust. A room with one shared 15-amp circuit is not a reason to cancel. It is a reason to bring a smaller rig, run lighting from a different circuit, or skip the subs. Every one of those adjustments is easy in advance and hard at 5:45 PM, which is the whole point of asking early.
The figures above are typical, not exact. A rider for a 40-person mixer in a restaurant's private room and a rider for a 400-person gala in a ballroom describe different rigs, and we write each one against the room. Our space post covers how the footprint scales.
What we need from you to send it
- The venue's operations or catering contact, not only the sales contact.
- The room name. Large venues have several, and the load-in and power answers differ per room.
- The doors time and the hard out.
- Whether the venue has told you it requires the house system.
- Any COI requirements the venue has already sent, forwarded as-is.
From that, the rider goes to the venue within a few days and the venue's answers come back to us directly. You do not have to relay questions about breakers.
Questions to ask a venue before you sign
If you are still choosing between rooms, these five answers will tell you more about how the DJ portion will go than anything in the sales deck.
- When does the room open to vendors, and is there a charge for earlier access?
- Is there a freight elevator, and what are its hours on the day?
- Does the venue require vendors to use the house sound system?
- Where is power in the room, and does anything else run on it?
- What are the COI requirements, and what are the exact entity names to list?
The answers change nothing about our package pricing, but they can decide whether Early Setup or a Second Sound Zone belongs on the quote, and it is better to know that before the contract than after.
Send the date, the venue and the headcount through the contact page, with the venue contact if you have it, and we will get the rider out. We reply within 24 hours.