Cascade Sound Picks a P.A. for Pickathon

Happy Valley, OR (October 27, 2025)—Pickathon, held in the woods outside Portland, OR in Happy Valley, has drawn crowds for a quarter-century, and this year’s edition was no exception, hosting dozens of acts, including Portugal. The Man, Taj Mahal, Greensky Bluegrass,  and many more. Providing audio for everyone on the main Paddock Stage was local AVL rental house Cascade Sound, which fielded a Martin Audio P.A. for the multi-day event.

Cascade’s VP Engineering and system designer, Sean Rathbun, was project lead at Pickathon and noted, “While this was our second year at the event, we have staff that have been supporting it for a number of years.” With that responsibility in mind, Cascade purchased 20 WPC and 10 SXC118 cardioid subs, along with THS, FP12 and XE wedges in advance of the festival.

While the show is in a scenic, wooded area, in recent years, housing has been developed close by, and with no apparent noise control or monitoring, complaints started to appear. Martin Audio’s Simon Honywill, with the aid of Martin Audio product & application support manager, Joe Lima, had some ideas about how to change that when the new P.A. was brought onsite.

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“We measured the SPL at the boundary, and it tied in with what Display [software] had predicted, with 35 dB reduction at the boundary,” says Honywill. On the stage itself, the site topography dictated that the left and right stage wings should be optimized differently. Hangs of nine WPC per side were complemented by 10 SXC115 in a broadside formation across the front—a set-up which was also expected to meet the aesthetic.

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“We had to explain why, from an audio perspective, it was good to have the P.A. on show…and agreeing that such a great-sounding P.A. should not be compromised, they went with it,” he said. And it certainly paid dividends. In addition, the Martin Audio speaker complement included eight FlexPoint FP12, (for front fill and outfill), two THS with two SXC115 for sidefill and a combination of XE300/XE500 for artist reference monitoring. The set-up was driven from iKON iK42 DSP amplifiers in 1-box resolution.