National Club
A New Chapter for New Bedford: National Club Mexican Cantina Opens With a Full KGEAR Audio System
For most of its history, the National Club was a place New Bedford locals knew to avoid. A notoriously rough waterfront bar, it sat empty for years before Servedwell Hospitality took it over and committed to a complete reinvention. The result, which opened late last year, is National Club Mexican Cantina: a multimillion-dollar transformation that preserved the building's historic exterior while building an entirely new interior around elevated dining, a full-service bar, and a patio overlooking New Bedford's waterfront.
Servedwell Hospitality has built K-array audio systems into several of their venues, including The Black Whale, Cisco Brewers New Bedford, Sail Loft in Dartmouth, and The Brotherhood in Nantucket. National Club would be no different. Central Communications Systems, Inc. was brought in to design and install a system capable of serving three distinct environments: a main dining room, bar area, and outdoor patio, each with different coverage requirements and, in the case of the outdoor spaces, demanding hardware suited to New England's waterfront conditions.
The dining areas are covered by KGEAR GF82 I column speakers paired with GS6 compact subwoofers, their compact profiles and controlled horizontal dispersion keeping the audio consistent and the aesthetic intact. The bar, designed to handle the demands of late-night programming, is anchored by KGEAR GH8 speakers and a GS18 18" passive subwoofer. The enclosed patio relies on four KGEAR GH4M speakers and two K-array Rumble-KU44M compact subwoofers, both finished in Marine Grade coating for long-term coastal exposure. A recent addition to the outdoor seating area, two KGEAR GF162M column speakers in custom Marine Grade finish, extend the system's reach to the cantina's new summer patio, their 16-driver Pure Array Technology design delivering even coverage and long throw across the open-air space. Throughout, a QSC Core DSP provides volume control across the various zones via a touch panel above the main server station, all designed and programmed by Central, with KGEAR amplification handling the system's power needs.
The result is a system that moves cleanly through every area the cantina offers, from a quiet dinner to a late night at the bar to a summer evening on the water. For Servedwell, it's the continuation of a relationship built across several of their venues. For New Bedford's waterfront, it’s a welcome upgrade and one that finally looks as good as it sounds.
