What is a Dry or Wet Hire?

Yamaha CP4 stage piano set up for live performance (dry hire)

A wet hire refers to renting of equipment and an operator or technician that would be present throughout the event. The technician will be there to operate the AV equipment.

A dry hire would mean that we would supply you equipment only, without anyone present. We will show you the basics of operating the equipment, and would only collect at the end of the rental period.

What are the advantages of a wet hire?

The advantage of having an operator present throughout the event is to mainly troubleshoot and resolve issues that may arise. The operator will also help to manage the system, such as adjusting the equaliser so that the audio does not feedback, switching video sources, etc.

Having a operator around also helps you to take your mind off managing the equipment, so that you can focus on running your event.

What are the advantages of a dry hire?

If you are technical or familiar with the equipment that you would like to rent, you will not need to have a technician around to manage the system. This would help you to reduce cost. Even if it is a dry hire, we would still set up the system for you.

What do we recommend?

For simple audio and visual jobs, requiring one or two microphones and basic music playback, you can easily learn how to use the mixer to adjust the volumes, so a dry hire would be suitable. This would also apply if you would require just one TV or projector.

For more complex or larger jobs, such as live band performances, lighting shows, live-streaming, etc, we would recommend to have a technician or an AV team (depending on the scale of your event) to handle the system.

Either way, if you do not feel confident of handling the equipment or would like to have an operator manage the AV equipment for you, do let us know and we can provide you with the necessary operators.