Located on the seafront in the small surfing town of Montañita, Lost Beach boasts a number of spaces, including a terrace with sea-view, and a larger indoor room, known as the Cave. The venue was bought by current owner Kam Tadayon, or Kami, in 2012 and he brought his passion for high-quality sound and top-class DJs to the space, investing in Funktion-One loudspeakers and Van Damme cables. This initial installation was completed with the help of Blue Box-London and its owner Mark Metcalf, who as well as being a Funktion One aficionado, also exclusively uses VDC cable in his projects.
“I started working with Kami seven years ago – he has quite a long history in the dance market,” explained Metcalf. “He ended up in Ecuador, first of all doing one-off parties all over the country and then he bought a space on the beach that became Lost Beach. He gradually developed this into a regular dance club, investing in more and more kit; he started out with a relatively small mobile system and then built an indoor space (the Cave) so we took a new bespoke system out in 2014. I went out again at the end of 2017 and upgraded all the systems – there’s a lot of kit and a lot of cable.”
The 2014 install included a range of Van Damme cables as well as Funktion-One DS4 Dance Stacks with EVO 6SH skeletal speakers and F218 dual 18in bass enclosures for the mezzanine area.
“There’s quite a wide range of cable in the club,” said Metcalf. “The initial system was all pre-made road cable. Between the time I first supplied that system and 2014 I did some experiments when I was doing installs and I discovered the Van Damme 4sqmm Hi-Fi cable made a significant difference to my ears. I thought it was a significant enough difference to use it everywhere on installations so when we went back and did his indoor venue in 2014 we opted for this cable. It’s quite unusual to use it in this kind of application.”
In 2017 the decision was made to upgrade the audio system further, again opting for a combination of cable from VDC and Evo systems from Funktion-One.
Metcalf added: “For the latest install we went back to the road cable because it needs to be a removable and mobile system, meaning the Hi-Fi cable wasn’t robust enough. There’s quite a cross section of different cables in there, both manufactured and Van Damme product.
“I now use VDC exclusively. I’ve worked with them for many years – we started out at about the same time and have built along similar lines. I use it everywhere and I’d definitely recommend it.”
